ABOUT

So what do you actually do?

I am a reporter at Courier Media, a global media company at the intersection of business and lifestyle. We are for people who want to live and work on their own terms.

What that means day-to-day is that I get to profile cool people running unique, innovative businesses in a number of sectors, as well as researching industry trends, interviewing experts and producing genuinely resourceful content for small business owners and modern entrepreneurs.

In my spare time, I also volunteer at The Felix Project, a food redistribution charity based in London.

What has your career path been?

My career hasn't been super long as such - I am only 25, so a relative baby in the media industry - but it has still been a long road to get here. I always knew I wanted to be a journalist but something about the practicalities of it, as well as having absolutely no idea how to get there, put me off when I was choosing what to do at university.

So I went to business school in 2014, and during uni, completed a placement year at a major consultancy firm. I wasn't particularly excited about it, but at the time, they were the only job offer I had, and a placement almost always guaranteed a grad job. As someone from an immigrant family, financial security was always front and centre of my mind, so I took it, and lo and behold, I got the grad job in 2018.

I struggled with the grad job, both personally and professionally, for multiple reasons. Culturally, I didn't feel like I fitted into the organisation, and it was becoming clearer that the dream of being a journalist wasn't going anywhere. I actually started freelancing as a journalist the same month I started the job!

After nine months of very patchy writing here and there, I had my first big break: a special series on Diversity and Inclusion in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. After that, I decided to specialise in business and sustainability journalism, something that I'd studied in my final year at university, and the opportunities kept rolling in: I wrote for gal-dem, Dazed, the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy, became a Climate Editor at shado magazine, spoke at Welcome Kitchen, for a Converse partnership and for Global Action Plan, and was put on a list of the top 100 BAME climate activists in the UK. All this time, I was still doing my corporate job on the side!

Getting offered the job at Courier was such a dream come true. I could finally write about what I loved every day - and nearly eight months later, it still feels that way!

What is the best part of your job?

The best part about my job is getting to speak to amazing people. Entrepreneurialism and business can sometimes be dirty words in the mainstream media, because we tend to associate them with the Bezos' and Zuckerburgs and Musks of the world. This is none of that. This is people on the ground really grafting and hustling to change up an industry and speak to customers one-on-one.

Just today, I spoke to someone who had started a sperm freezing service in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and last week, I got to interview the brain behind a new platform that is connecting consumers to small-scale tailors and seamsters. And that's just two of so many!

What inspired you to do your job?

I feel very privileged to have got this job, but I recognise that full-time journalism is extremely unattainable for many. A career that you have chosen is a massive privilege, in an economy where just having a job is a blessing. So that is my practical answer: I do my job to earn a living first and foremost.

I also do my job because I believe in the power of independent, specialist, educational media that has the sole purpose of producing genuinely insightful and resourceful content. We go out of our way at Courier to challenge the framing of mainstream narratives and dig out new stories. It's a challenge, but it makes for an extremely loyal readership, because they know they can rely on us to learn more about the small business landscape.

One piece of advice for someone starting in your role?

Read. I grew up reading and I assume that most writers read as well. But read widely and read things that challenge your perspective. Read translated articles from international media platforms. Read your own work and others works to compare styles, tones of voice and arguments framing.

Check out Sharlene’s Twitter below!

DAY IN THE LIFE

Everyone's days are obviously massively skewed at the moment because of our work-from-home cycles, but it certainly helps that I am a morning person. I'll do yoga three times a week before work, just to get into the groove.

I usually get all my best work done in the morning, so that is when I'll attend to anything urgent, like big interviews, large pieces of writing, and redrafts (which I find difficult). I also prefer to do meetings and interviews close together, so that I have the few hours at the beginning or end of the day to either get into deep research holes, or bang a full article out.

Given the lack of social interaction, I try to step away from my laptop for at least thirty minutes at lunch time. I also try to stop working at a reasonable time, usually before 6.30pm - mostly because anything after 4pm is just admin anyway. My brain is too fried by that point to be doing any new writing!

I like to do a non-screen activity after work, whether it's a walk, a shop, a few hours of reading, or a bit of cooking. It helps me to ground myself in my reality outside of work, which I'm learning is just as important as being engaged at work.