Meet Adele…
9th December 2020
In the second instalment of our ‘Meet the Team’ blogs, we caught up with Programme Manager, Adele Blythe…
Adele Blythe
Programme Manager
Welcome to the team Adele, it’s great to have you on the team. You’ve joined as a Programme Manager as part of the Economic Growth team, but can you tell us a little about your background?
I have 20 years of healthcare sales experience varying from medical devices to service provisions. I started out by selling cutting-edge sonic toothbrushes to dentists (now they are everywhere but 20 years ago no one had heard of them). I moved into selling into the NHS with a new deep vein thrombosis prevention product to theatres, moving onto wound-care technology. I also trained consultants on a new endoscopy technique, which was interesting to say the least. I then moved onto selling service provisions for private hospitals and then into mental health and NHS services. This is where felt I could make a difference on positive patient outcomes and help to reduce healthcare inequalities.
What are you most looking forward to in this role?
I am really looking forward to helping make someone’s vision a reality and seeing something grow from an idea to being adopted system-wide and to see it making a difference to people.
Thinking about the development of ideas, and the adoption of those new innovations, what does the term ‘innovation’ mean to you?
Improvement – where you look at a product or service and think “how can we do this more efficiently and make it more effective?”
It has been such a challenging year in many ways – what has it been like to start a new role during a national lockdown, any tips for others starting a new role during this period?
Honestly? It’s been good; I think Teams has really helped as you can turn the camera on and see people and everyone has been so welcoming. I think the daily catch up on the first Monday was a great way to meet everyone at once in a casual way, a bit like you would in an office environment catching up in the kitchen whilst making a cup of tea, so I would suggest this for new starters as it was a nice ice breaker.
Thanks Adele. The final (and potentially the most interesting!) questions:
What is your favourite Quality Street chocolate? Strawberry delight
What was your very first job? Sales in a shoe shop (Dolces – Saturday afternoon shift was not the best, nose pegs at the ready!)
Thanks for chatting to us Adele, it has been great to find out a little more about you!