Since the long Easter weekend is the perfect time to indulge in one’s passions, the PMP Team wanted to share their personal passions with you, our community and also encourage you to share yours with us. 😍
🎨 Chris:
I’m passionate about being creative. When I was a child I would get bored of toys really quickly, and preferred to play with musical instruments, or draw portraits of my classmates. I used to love writing stories, and drawing the pictures to go with them. As a teenager I spent my evenings playing and rewinding cassette tapes, learning how to play my favourite songs on my guitar, through trial and error. My break times at school were spent in the music room sequencing compositions on a keyboard and Atari ST, until my father bought me a computer to use at home. I played guitar and wrote songs for a punk band in college, but by that time my real passion was producing electronic music, and DJing. I studied Philosophy at University, which itself still is a sort of passion, but I’m most proud of the music I produced at that time. Sadly, life happened and I had to earn a living, so I lost the time to continue. Luckily though, my first job gave me the freedom to teach myself web design and programming, which became my new medium. I went on to have a very enjoyable career in web development, and even made a website, or two, that you may have heard of. I am also passionate about my children, my business, and playing Scrabble.
🏑Niall:
If I had to choose one of my passions it would be sport. As a teenager I played hockey for Cheshire and achieved a national qualifying time for 100 metres Breaststroke. Unfortunately, injury put an end to my career as an athlete, but I still had a huge passion for sport so I decided to do a degree in Sport Business Management. I am also an avid Liverpool fan, something I inherited from my late Grandad, and hope to share with my children when the time comes. For many people, football is a hobby, passion, way of life. For me it was all of these and I was lucky enough to have a job within this industry as a Director of Operations for a Non League football club. For me this was a perfect way to combine my degree and passion, as well as help to revive a club held dear by so many. After 3 years, a promotion and a league cup win, it was time to move on. I joined PMP after being a member for a year and a half, as the Commercial Manager in July 2021, and have loved every moment of my first 9 months. I look forward to helping Chris and the rest of the team sculpt what the coming years will look like for PMP!
🏳️🌈 Zsanett:
For me, one of the most important things is LGBTQIA+ rights because I want to see a world where future generations are able to get married and adopt kids in Hungary (where I am from) as well as in the UK. Today there is a witch hunt going on in Hungary – fuelled by the government – and the main enemy is the LGBTQIA+ community. I hope this will change there and in other countries too, and more people will open their eyes and fight for equality.
As I am providing an admin service to PMP from Hungary, I am trying to help the community there, that’s why I volunteered at the recent general election too as a teller.
🧏♀️ Emma:
I have always had a flair for languages and when choosing my first University Degree I chose a very unique course: Theatre, Education and Deaf Studies at Reading University. A course which has sadly had to be closed down now. Here I learnt the History of Deaf Education, about Deaf Theatre/Sign Theatre, a little about the D/deaf community and undertook British Sign Language (BSL) Levels One and Two exams, amongst other modules. I have since passed Level Three. I am now fiercely passionate about accessibility. I would love to teach BSL Level One in my spare time and utilise my love for BSL and my Teaching skills. (After Reading I went on to pass a PGCE in Primary Education, a career which sadly didn’t turn out to be all I wanted it to be.) However I am in two minds about it as many of the D/deaf community feel that the hearing community should learn from a D/deaf tutor and I don’t want to offend anybody in the community that I support. I am, of course, following the progress of the BSL bill through parliament and hope that BSL users will soon have their rights met.
💭 Jack:
I really enjoy problem solving. My first obsession with problem solving was when I learned how to solve the Rubik’s cube, and subsequently many other cube type puzzles of all shapes and sizes. I think this is what inspired my decision to go into programming. I have a passion for technology – I was naturally drawn to technology from a young age and could use near anything without instruction, it just made sense to me. Because of this I quickly became the go-to trouble-shooter in the family. The fact I could marry up working with tech and problem solving was a dream come true. I also have a discovered a more recent passion for health and fitness, I was never a sporty kid in school however I am currently really enjoying running and eating well.
📰 Beth:
I am passionate about all things creative; movies, music, art & writing. Writing is where my creative side has thrived in the last few years. During my time as a Journalism student at university, I have written countless articles which have all varied in styles and topics. Looking at my future, I plan to keep my creative side alive by entering the marketing world and using my flair to my advantage.
If you would like to share something that you love with us, please use the comments section below. We would love to get to know our community a little better!
Photo by Steve Johnson from Pexels