What is a commercial adviser? 

Alexandra Lawson breaks down her role of commercial adviser with Shell for us. We discuss the reality of being a woman in STEM, how the energy industry has changed over the past few years, and how she juggles her Instagram account as a business on the side

Participants

• Emily Slade - podcast producer and host, Prospects
• Alexandra Lawson - commercial adviser, Shell

Transcript

Alexandra Lawson: So many people, when I say my first job was, you know, literally in a hard hat and a boiler suit at a gas plant, often ask, were you the only female? And while females, at the time were few and far between, every year you're seeing the equality and 50/50 split get closer together.

Emily Slade: Hello and welcome to Future You, the podcast run by graduate careers experts Prospects. I'm your host, Emily Slade and this week I speak to Alexandra Lawson about her role as a commercial adviser for Shell.

Alexandra Lawson: Hi, I'm Alex, I work as a commercial adviser for Shell within the integrated energy solutions space. And I'm an engineer by background, I studied chemical engineering, and then found myself working in the renewable space and over the last two years.

Emily Slade: Excellent. And so what is it that you specifically do? What is your job,

Alexandra Lawson: So I'm responsible for the commercial negotiations between Shell and our customers who are interested in adding on site energy solutions, which is technically solar or battery to their site. So a lot of companies have decarbonisation plans, whereby they aspire to meet certain targets by 2030, or 2050. And often one of the ways in which they will meet that target is by installing solar or battery storage onto their site. So I'm responsible for letting them know what the offering that we can provide is and then working on that contract and negotiating the terms of that contract for their eventual fiber optic from that asset.

Emily Slade: Perfect. Thank you. So you mentioned that you trained originally as an engineer, so did you go to university to do that?

Alexandra Lawson: I did. Yes. I went to Strathclyde University and studied a Masters in chemical engineering.

Emily Slade: Excellent, and I suppose that the next question is, is your degree relevant to what you're doing now? And I suppose it is?

Alexandra Lawson: Yes and no. I wouldn't say that I use the core parts of my degree at all in my day to day job. But certainly those kind of base concepts and learnings are certainly helpful. And what I do now, the most aligned kind of industrial job with my degree is a role called process engineer. I did that when I was an intern quite a long time ago now, but I've never done it in the corporate world as a job. So although the concepts are there, I wouldn't say it's kind of a necessity to do the role that I do.

Emily Slade: Okay. And was there a reason that you chose that specific course? I imagine there were quite a few to choose from in the engineering route?

Alexandra Lawson: Yes, so at the time, I loved chemistry and physics at school, and I wasn't 100% sure what I wanted to do. And I knew that chemical engineering gave me lots of different options at the end of my time at university. So I could have gone into the fast moving consumer goods worlds, like Procter and Gamble, and you're kind of beauty products, etc. I also could have gone into the drinks industry. So there were many options. But yeah, I found myself in the energy industry.

Emily Slade: Nice, and was that something that you always wanted to do, ever since you were young? Did you always been drawn to these are those chemistry, physics, maths roles?

Alexandra Lawson: Yeah I was certainly always drawn to STEM subjects. But I did first think that I wanted to be a dentist. I went on work experience, and then came home, and then that idea was in a distant memory after spending a week on work experience.

Emily Slade: That's good. I guess that's what work experience is for. So that's very useful.

Alexandra Lawson: Absolutely. Yes. And my friends now a dentist, they love it. But I have to say, I'm glad I didn't go the dentistry route.

Emily Slade: Less stickers involved in the energy industry, which is a shame

Alexandra Lawson: Very true

Emily Slade: So how did you get into the energy sector?

Alexandra Lawson: So probably my first introduction to the kind of energy world was in 2014. I was fortunate to go on an internship program to Dubai through Heriot-Watt University at the time, they have a campus out there. And that was my first introduction to the world of oil and gas to the energy industry. And I worked as an assistant to the university department, they're organising various different companies to come in and pitch to the Masters students. So that gives me a grounding in what different companies in the energy industry were doing. And it also gave me a taste for living and working abroad. Fast forward a couple of years, I secured a place on the Shell assessed internship program, and I spent 12 weeks living in Aberdeen, working as a process engineering intern. And that was a real proper job within the energy industry, it opened my eyes to not only oil and gas, but also energy as a whole. And I thoroughly enjoyed that summer, I was very fortunate to pass the internship and then be eligible to join a grad program with Shell. And the role that was then possible for me to join Shell was on the Operations Engineering scheme. So I then joined in 2017, as an operations engineer, and spent my first two years of my career really working as an operations supervisor at one of our UK, onshore gas terminals. So straight from designing valves on paper to seeing those valves in practice in real life, which looking back now was a real fantastic first job out of university.

Emily Slade: Ooh, yeah, absolutely. So what do you love most about your job?

Alexandra Lawson: I think one of the things I love most is the diversity. So even though I've been within the same company for seven years, I've done very different things during that time from working, I guess as many would say at the coalface of doing the real operational oil and gas role. I've also worked in pipeline infrastructure, making sure the UK is able to meet their energy demands for gas usage and now I'm working on renewables, which is completely different again, and it's really fantastic within one company and against one skill set to be able to do so many different things. So probably that the diversity of the role of the industry is one of my favorite things. And then the second thing is that I'm a real people person, I love physical interaction and chatting with people and communicating. So being able to communicate with lots of different people across a project is something that I really enjoy.

Emily Slade: It is interesting. When I think of the energy world as it were, I really only have this tunnel vision of renewable energy. And I assume sort of everyone in that industry works on solar panels and wind turbines and that sort of thing. But that's not necessarily the case.

Alexandra Lawson: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think renewable energy, of course, is rising in popularity, and we absolutely need it to be a bigger part of our energy mix going forward. But if I even rewind seven years to when I joined Shell, I didn't really consider the carbon policy of a company or those types of things weren't important at the time during my choice of company versus when you look at graduates now in terms of what they rank or prioritise before joining a company, they're really interested in, you know, carbon policies and net zero emissions. So even seven years, I think we've, we've seen quite a change in it. But certainly the energy industry I joined was very much old school oil and gas.

Emily Slade: That feels like a really quick turnaround, just seven years. And when you consider a pandemic, in the middle of that, that seems very quick to suddenly have this wonderful, you know, interest in renewable energy and actively making a difference in the world in the in the industries.

Alexandra Lawson: Certainly, people are a lot more clued up about it now than what they perhaps were before. And that's because they intentionally go and learn and read up about these things more so than we perhaps did six or seven years ago. And certainly the young generation are far more interested in it than what we initially were around two decades ago. But it's good to see such change so quickly, because that's the kind of piece that we need if we're really going to get some some traction within the energy industry.

Emily Slade: Absolutely. So you've you've mentioned how sort of diverse your role and company are, you've had the opportunity to do lots of different things. So my next question is, how do you continue learning and growing as a professional?

Alexandra Lawson: I think there's a couple of parts of this within my day job, I try to always find other projects like with my kind of core role that I can get involved with with so for example, shall have a group called future energy leaders, which is a grassroots employee led network, trying to educate and encourage people to really get involved and take their seat at the table with regards to energy transitions, that has really helped me improve my energy transition and decarbonisation knowledge. But I also get involved in external networking events, seminars, panels that are happening. And I'm also a member of a network in London here called The Career Edit, which is a network basically, that gets rid of the kind of formal stuffy networking that we all have grown to hate over the years. And as a very kind of cool forward thinking, a group of people that come together from all different aspects, creative industries, lawyers, accountants, you name it, there's there's that because we get in the room and I feel going to events like that brings real diversity of thought often things that I wouldn't have thought about or a different point of view. And really good also for the kind of soft skills sides of developing your courage and thinking about how to be take that leap of faith to the going for the next promotion, or get kind of the confidence to, to pat yourself for a pay, raise those types of things, I find those external forums are a great place to develop.

Emily Slade: Yeah, definitely. So you are a woman in STEM, has that impacted your career in any noticeable way at all?

Alexandra Lawson: Yeah, I can say it's probably, you know, impacted me positively. For the most part, so many people when I say that my first job was, you know, literally in a hardhat boiler suit at a gas plant often asked, Were you the only female and whilst females were at the time, kind of few and far between when I joined, you're, every year, you know, seeing the the quality and 50/50 split, get closer together. But I had a lot of opportunity when I was at university through you know, women only science and engineering programs. I was very lucky to work and be the Shell rep on the board for the young professionals, Women in Science, Engineering boards. And those opportunities were afforded to me through organisations who really tried to champion women in STEM so I can honestly say that it's positively impacted impact my career. And that internship that I spoke about in Dubai was also through a project called Athena Swan, which is all about gender diversity and equality within the science and engineering space.

Emily Slade: Oh, fantastic. That's brilliant. Thank you. So throughout your career, what would you say the best piece of advice you've ever received is?

Alexandra Lawson: I think probably one of the best pieces of advice somebody once said to me actually was very recently; talking and being curious are the two best things you can do for your career. If you think about how you met your work best friend - what did you do? You went up and you spoke to them. If you think about how you built a relationship with somebody who you landed a great customer deal with, how did that start, you called them and you spoke to them. So continuing to be curious and not being afraid to, you know, walk up and introduce yourself and just start the conversation. It's amazing how many people now will not pick up the phone, they would rather just send an email, and they wouldn't go to a networking event and physically speak to somebody. But that power of kind of conversation and, and human connection can still, you know, it still trumps over any sort of email or any other sort of social networking. So that's probably the best piece of advice I have.

Emily Slade: Amazing. How do you organise and manage your time?

Alexandra Lawson: I wouldn't say I've got it nailed, I'm still trying to still trying to strike a balance, especially because when I'm not at Shell, I also run a business, in the home interiors world, and that also takes a large portion of my spare time. And to be able to balance both of those and trying to have some sort of social life, I have to be pretty on it. So I typically will review kind of emails and things for my own business and the morning, you know, kind of between the hours of 6-8 when I'm doing things like going to the gym and doing things for myself. And then I tend to block my time during the day. So if I've know I've got activities that need to be done, I will physically put that into my calendar, you know, whether it's writing a plan for XYZ, or writing a certain document, I will physically block that time into my diary to make sure that I get the time to be able to do it. Because often I find otherwise people see all your calendars free will be just have a connect. And actually, you need that as working time. So I find that blocking working time really helps. And I also find that blocking in the breaks helps too because so often we can get stuck in a rut and beside our desks for for too long. And then you realise it's like six ever since you went outside and got some fresh air. So i'm also trying to be a bit more conscious with taking proactive breaks. But yeah, definitely still trying to strike the right balance. I don't quite have it. 100% Nailed yet.

Emily Slade: I love calendar blocking ever since I discovered it, it's changed my life. I'm such a fan of calendar blocking. You can color code it it's wonderful, big fan of that. Yeah. And I think you're absolutely right. Blocking in breaks is so important. I find myself setting timers to be like go and get some fresh air. Otherwise, yeah, you can get completely sidetracked and hyper focused. Are you happy to briefly tell us about your side business?

Alexandra Lawson: Yeah, absolutely. So back in 2019, I bought my first house. And unfortunately, just before I bought that house, I sadly lost my dad and, and growing up, my dad would have never paid somebody for something he could do himself. So I find myself with new white walls. And like many people, I'd poured all of my pennies into the bricks and mortar and I didn't have the money to then pay workmen to come and do the jobs for me. So I take to YouTube. And with my dad's tools on hand, I just decided to have a go. And I can't believe now the community that it's grown to because I never for a minute. That wasn't why I started it. I just started it as a personal diary of doing the house. And over around 18 months, their account grew to roughly 10,000. And I was delighted because at the time, that was when you didn't get any sort of swipe up function until you had 10,000 followers on Instagram. So that used to be like the big milestone to me. And then it was when reels were just kind of becoming a thing and short form video was really starting to take off. And I then had two videos or three videos in very quick succession, which really took off and I went from 10k to almost 200k in the space of six weeks. And then you find yourself with a business literally overnight, because you start to receive lots of inquiries. And I was, you know, I will be the first to say I was totally out of my depth, it was a whole new world. I never once thought I would make money from this business. Companies are pitching fees to you and you have no idea whether what you're charging is correct. So I then at that point, took the decision to join an agency who I'm still with now that I absolutely love Farq Media. And they now deal with all of my brand partnerships on my behalf. And I've now probably run it as a proper business for around two two and a half years.

Emily Slade: That's amazing. That's fantastic. What a lovely story. That's really nice.

Alexandra Lawson: Yeah, it's nice that something so positive has come out of such a dark. And now I get to do quite cool things like last week, I got to go to Paris for the day just because I was going to a press show for a friend's interior company. So it also brings up a whole world of opportunities that I didn't know existed before.

Emily Slade: Yeah. Oh, that's so fun. That's brilliant. I'm definitely going gonna go and check that out. So back to your career. Are there any expectations that you've had about your career that turned out to be different in reality?

Alexandra Lawson: So this is actually one that's probably changed the most, most recently, because I can honestly say, I came into joining Shell and joining the energy industry and always thought, that's me, I've got my job, I'm going to work for 35 years now in this industry, and then I'll retire just like everybody else does. And it's only in the last kind of two or three years. And I guess also, as I've diversified my own income streams, what comes with that is choices, and deciding what the future might look like. And whilst I still firmly believe I will work in the energy industry, in some form, I definitely don't think I will necessarily retire from the energy industry still working in it five days a week. And so that's probably one of the biggest things I think I was definitely thought I'd be with one company for my entire career. And I would just do that traditional climbing the corporate ladder. But I also think once you're on that hamster wheel, you very quickly realise it isn't just a ladder. And there's a fantastic concept called this squiggly career and how you go in many different twists and turns, and you eventually end up against where you're supposed to be. So that's probably one of the biggest, one of the biggest changes. And also, I joined in a very old probational technical, heavy role. And in the last few years, I've moved to the commercial world to see what that had to offer, and that I love being able to blend this technical commercial skill set that I have, and not being super, super technical. I think when you're at university, doing an engineering degree, it's very easy to think, gosh, you know, for the rest of my days, I'm just gonna be doing loads of calculations about something. And then you get into the real world. And you realise you don't actually use any of those calculations, it gives you a basis for understanding a lot of stuff. So I really enjoy being able to blend my technical and commercial knowledge today. And that is quite unusual to have both in skill sets and the, in the technical space. So yeah, I'm enjoying figuring that out at the moment.

Emily Slade: Yeah, I love that I love this sort of new squiggly careers, this idea of multi hyphenated careers, all of that wonderful. So to sort of talk about your skill set, what technical skills do you rely on for your job?

Alexandra Lawson: So quite a lot of our customers have tricky processes. So they might be like, a brewery, they could be a manufacturing plant, it could be a packaging plant, it could be still pond glassmaker. So what my core degree does get me is the opportunity to be able to understand how these processes work, because at the end of the day, most processes involve a volume of some sort of material, and a pressure and a temperature or a speed of the line. And my chemical engineering degree is essentially process engineering. So one of the core kind of things in terms of understanding the customer's business is being able to really understand their court process and how they use energy. So how is the energy use coming into their system and what outputs that they have from their system, either by waste or by useful product? That we can then see what parts of that we can tap into? So that's probably Yeah, understanding your core processes is the main thing.

Emily Slade: And what about soft skills you've already mentioned, communication is a big one. But what other soft skills have you relied on?

Alexandra Lawson: Being able to work as a team player is really, really important, particularly on any project, there's so many different pieces to bring a full project together, whether that's contractor can procurement to help you procure your your contractors and the materials that you need finance to help you with working on figures, people from the core business who manage these customers, really being able to work cross functionally across a team is so important. And if you're somebody who only can work you know, in silos or isn't able to kind of cross functionally work that I think that would really hinder you in this space. And also being able to communicate clearly, it's very easy when you fully understand the subject to quite often communicate it in words that might make sense to you, but don't make sense to the general public or people who aren't as familiar with it. So think being able to be very clear communicator and communicate your message well, is also a really important skill in this space.

Emily Slade: Amazing. So what advice do you have for anyone looking to enter the industry?

Alexandra Lawson: I would say don't let any of your perhaps like, pre misconceptions of the industry put you off. There are so many talented young people who tell a fantastic career in this industry. And just last week, I was saying that I think one of my best friends is expecting a baby at the moment. And we were saying well wonder what she'll do is a job and I said, probably a job that doesn't exist it because of the rate of change of technology and how fast things are moving you might find that you know, a job someday will graduate and doing 20 years probably doesn't exist right now. So there's a really fantastic career to be had in the energy industry. The opportunity at the moment is is vast, you know, I'm going to have gone from joining an industry where I worked at a gas terminal and I can't wait to see what industry I retire from looks like it really is of the rate of change. things that we're seeing is is unprecedented and that a lot of it is a first for many companies. So it's like a cutting edge time to join the industry and really make a change and make an impact on what the energy mix of the future is and how it's used.

Emily Slade: That's brilliant. Thank you so so much for your time today. If people want to find your YouTube channel, where can they go?

Alexandra Lawson: Yeah, you can reach me @CasaLawson is my handle across socials and also happy to connect on LinkedIn if anybody wants to chat further.

Emily Slade: That's brilliant. Thank you so much for your time today.

Alexandra Lawson: Thank you, cheers.

Emily Slade: Thank you so much for listening, if you're enjoying Future You, or you got something out of that episode we’d love it if you could drop us a review on Apple or Spotify, and while you're there - give us a follow! For even more information or to find jobs in the energy industry, you can head to Prospects.ac.uk, or find us on Instagram and TikTok - all the links are in the description. Once again, thanks for listening and good luck on your journey to Future You.

Notes on transcript

This transcript was produced using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. The audio version is definitive and should be checked before quoting.

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