Alumni

Henry Colyer

Career Path: Head of Marketing, Goodrays
Location: London, UK

Following graduation from Northumbria I took up a Field Marketing Manager role at Vita Coco where I worked to get Vita Coco's products into consumers' hands across the country. I managed teams of students and part-time employees to drive sales in our key cities (London, Edinburgh, Manchester & Birmingham). My academic learnings from Northumbria were great in helping me to understand launching new products to consumers.

I was then promoted into a Brand Manager position, looking after the launch of two new brands in the Vita Coco business, looking after budgets, our profit and loss account and our relationships with retailers. I joined Oppo Brothers, a healthy ice cream brand based in the UK, in 2018 as Global Brand Manager. As part of this role I grew the business in the UK, looking after our advertising, influencer marketing and retailer relationships. I regularly met with the UK and Europe's biggest retailers such as Tesco, Sainsbury's and Waitrose in the UK as well as supermarkets like Albert Heijn and Edeka in the Netherlands and Germany. Before leaving, Oppo Brothers was the number one healthy ice cream in Europe.

I now work for Goodrays, one of the UK's leading CBD brands producing CBD Drinks, CBD Oils and CBD Gummies with our products being sold online and in-store. Whilst the business is in its infancy, we have very exciting plans coming up. I genuinely feel my experience at Northumbria, from the academic work to the placement scheme and the Business Clinic module, gave me the foundations to build out a successful career in marketing. I now know where my skillset lies and where my passion points are. Without Northumbria I may have chosen or experienced a very different career path.

What are you doing now?

I currently work as Head of Marketing for Goodrays, a start-up CBD brand based in the UK. CBD is a very interesting, rapidly growing category in the UK. We are a team of around 10 with a passion for health and wellness. My job is to grow brand awareness and grow our sales in our sales channels as well as supporting our sales team in securing new sales. My job is very digitally focused and I work regularly with our social media accounts, website sales channels and Amazon alongside working with traditional sales channels like supermarkets and health stores.

What was it about Northumbria that made you decide to study here?

The state-of-the-art Business School facilities and the modern options of the placement year and business clinic module were a huge factor in my decision. Plus the fact that Newcastle is a great city to live in as a student.

What was it like studying at Northumbria?

I enjoyed my studies, we were given a good level of autonomy in choosing our ways of working and we had a good support team in place from lecturers and seminar tutors.

How connected was your course with industry?

The placement year option had a huge level of impact on my career. I attribute a lot of my initial success in job hunts to having valuable experience on my CV from a placement on top of my Business Clinic module and academic studies.

If you took on a placement during your course how did you feel this helped you in your career/ with your studies?

Northumbria was great with helping the whole course in finding a placement or study abroad year, to which I attribute a lot of my career success. Having some experience in the workplace was crucial in helping me find a full-time job after graduating. In my one year at Johnson & Johnson I was given a huge amount of responsibility with plenty of support. I worked on the Calpol brand team working on everything from website builds to packaging designs for our product on-shelf. Not only did the role give me lots of valuable experience but it gave me an understanding of the type of job I wanted to go into after I graduated.

What was the best thing about your course?

Outside of my placement year and Business Clinic module, I feel that the modern modules throughout the course were exciting and interesting. Studying real businesses and case studies as well as pure academic theory gave me a varied mix of understanding business.

How did studying at Northumbria help you achieve your career goals/ give your career an edge?

The University regularly helped us in developing life skills, whether that was helping us with CV preparation or interview questions.

Which skills/knowledge did you learn on your course that you use most now throughout your career?

I feel my course developed my analytical thinking towards business and marketing, something that gave me a great base skill level to take into work.

What did you enjoy most about your time at Northumbria University?

Outside of the University, the culture of Newcastle and the like-minded students I met made my years there thoroughly enjoyable.

What advice would you give somebody who is considering studying at Northumbria?

Get down to an open day and ask the students what they think of the University, throughout my time there I didn't meet anyone who was dissatisfied with their experience.