Victoria Perry

Events and Tours Manager, Harrow School Enterprises Ltd

Transcript of video:

My name is Victoria Perry, I’m 28 and I currently work as the Events and Tours Manager for Harrow School Enterprises. HSEL is the commercial arm of Harrow School; a private, all boys boarding school in northwest London.

My job involves selling Harrow’s unique venues and spaces in the school holidays for commercial activity, where all of the revenue generated goes back into the upkeep of the school.

How did I get into events? I didn’t have any event experience. I am a history graduate. I was at university and finished in 2016. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I didn’t have a set career path and got contacted by a recruitment company that was looking for an event apprentice at Harrow School.

And then that’s how I was partnered up with David Preston and the team at Realise and taken on board as, I think, one of the first apprenticeship cohorts to complete around 18 months of apprenticeship training.

Over 18 months, you cover a different chapter of event planning, whether that’s budgeting, financing, inquiries, forecasting, marketing. And so it’s a really, well-rounded program that prepares you for all of the different elements of events.

I’ve been with Harrow ever since, which is coming up to five years, next month, which has gone incredibly fast, and have worked up the ladder. I was taken on as an apprentice. I then became an Assistant, a Coordinator, a Senior Events Coordinator, and now I’m the Events and Tours Manager.

We’re a small team. A team of two. I really like what I do; love where I work; and wouldn’t be here without the work of Realise and David’s fantastic mentoring scheme.

Working in events matches and aligns quite well with my personality. I’m highly organized and quite a people person. I don’t like to be sat at a desk from nine till five. And I’m quite creative.

Lots of people say, you know, “You’re a history graduate. What are you doing in events?”

I always say that, I’m working in a beautiful, historic venue. Harrow School is a 450-year-old school. And so you know, its rich in history. We’ve just celebrated the School’s anniversary last year. So there were some amazing events that I was involved in. And that’s kind of where the passion for history still comes in. Because I still get to be in a beautiful, historic venue. And now part of the way that my role has changed is I very much look after the events, but I am the main contact with the tours business with the school. So I look after all of the private and public tours for external visitors, which is about 10,000 people a year.

I quite enjoy being out and meeting people and every event is different. We cover everything from weddings to working with the NFL two months ago. HSEL do a lot of filming, music videos, corporate events, private birthday parties, kids birthday parties. And that’s what I like. Every day every month is really quite different. And it keeps it fun.

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