Grace Bjorn started by telling us how she studied biology, philosophy, geography and art at A Level - she didn’t know what she wanted to do, so she chose the subjects she enjoyed most. She told us the main thing she got out of A Levels, that she encouraged us to take from it too, was the importance of a good work ethic.

She went on to study Philosophy at Leeds University, and while she didn’t enjoy it as much as school, she was able to make the most of it by meeting lots of different people and obtaining her degree.

Bjørn was always interested in sports, and recognised the extreme lack of women’s sports on TV. She thought that the only way she could work in sports was by being a sports teacher, so that was her original plan. For a little over a year, she worked as a TA at a primary school, after which she contacted the father of an old school friend who worked in the TV industry. Through him, she obtained some work experience at the show Loose Women, and then went to work at the show This Morning. Bjørn liked the immediacy and adrenaline of live TV, but wasn’t interested in entertainment, so she finally went into sports.

Grace Bjørn made her production sporting debut at the Australian open, however she was made to buy her own flight ticket! After that, she spent four months in Delhi in 2010, working at the Commonwealth Games. An interview came up where she was asked almost exclusively about golf, and, despite having no knowledge of the sport whatsoever, she managed to make her way through it and land the job, which had her spending 3 years on golf tours. Bjorn then worked at BT Sport, covering rugby for 2 years, then moving on to the Premier and Champions Leagues for 3 years after that. Bjørn then spent 5 years working freelance.

For the past three years, Grace Bjørn has worked as a senior producer at Whisper, a sports production company that is contracted to put sports on live television. While being at her company, she worked on Formula 1 and the Paralympics for Channel 4, the Women’s Euros for BBC Sport, and countless other exciting events.

She has an editorial and production role. For example, she speaks to the pundits about what they will say about an upcoming match, and then is on set, producing the show at the match. When she talked to us, she was about to start preparing for the Liverpool match on Saturday.

She told us about her role in putting a deaf presenter for the first time on live television, which consisted of 3 signers on set and technology not previously used to make it run smoothly, since the presenter couldn’t wear an earpiece. She outlined that it was a fantastic experience, and it went very well.

Bjørn told us that it is difficult to be a woman in television, or even a woman in any industry, but she thinks it’s getting easier. She advised us to say yes to every opportunity that comes our way, telling us we’ll get something out of it. And she told us not to worry if we don’t know what we want to do at this time in our lives - she only figured it out in her mid 20s.

This Monday we had a more unusual assembly. We met Joe, who works at the Amy Winehouse Foundation, a wellbeing charity that's been around since 2011 with the maxim ‘In Amy’s memory, we work to inspire children and young people to build their self esteem and resilience, so that they can flourish.’ In this assembly, we weren’t given the usual runthrough of our speaker’s academic career and professions before they got to where they are now, instead Joe performed his job in front of us, which meant giving the intensely personal story of his life and his history of alcohol and drug addiction, and eventually his sobriety. His role in his job is to engage young people and open them up to ultimately empower them to think about their choices and make the best of their lives. He shared that he has spoken to roughly 100k young people over the past few years, our hall of Camden sixth formers adding to this number..

Joe began his talk through interacting with his audience, getting everyone to think of the highest number of followers or viewers they had ever got on social media, then asking us to stand up and then sit down once he called out our highest number. This went on until the final few people standing were asked to share their highest number of viewers/likes/followers they’d ever had on their socials, the highest being 3.2 million (which was perhaps a joke).

After some clapping and gasping, Joe proposed a situation to us where we all had 3.2 million followers on a social media platform. He made us imagine us spending hours taking and mulling over a selfie to eventually post on this platform. He then said, ‘And then imagine if you post this picture, and it only gets three likes! Out of the 3.2 million people that follow you! Only three!’ and then ‘How do you think you’d feel after that?’. The key question he then asked was ‘Do you care what others think of you?’ People were slightly more hesitant to raise their hands to answer ‘yes’ to this question, some looking around to their friends to see if their arms were raised before putting up their own. This was something Joe commented on specifically, saying something like ‘In looking around to see if your mates’ hands are raised you prove further that you care what others think of you!’

By now, Joe had engaged his sixth form audience, and even made them acknowledge that we are all a little vulnerable. He then turned his talk onto himself. He spoke of how deeply he cared what others thought of him when he was young and how his insecurities were underpinned by fear, fear of not being good or popular or clever or brave enough. He went on to share intimate anecdote after anecdote about his parents and his school life to further paint an image of the insecurities and low self esteem he suffered from primary school days up to his early twenties. One anecdote he shared was how he punched a boy in primary school to alter what others thought of him, and then got suspended. When he walked back into the classroom after his week-long suspension, everyone turned to look at him (or at least he thought everyone did), and he spoke of the wave of crippling self-consciousness he felt at that moment. I think it is fair to speak for the audience in terms of the fact that we all related in some way to the feelings he described.

He went on to speak about his secondary school years and told us about his first interactions with alcohol and weed at 14, which were only done in the first place to extinguish his fear of missing out. He told us that drinking and smoking made him feel suddenly better about himself, turning him into the version of himself that he wanted to be. He felt so great when he drank and smoked that his habits got more and more excessive, however, and by 16 he was even dealing, something he admitted a younger version of himself would never believe himself to do. Joe never took on the cliche ‘don’t do drugs’ assembly tone with us, and he even mocked the ‘don’t do this, or you’ll die’ he was told repetitively in a drug assembly when he was at school. He spoke of how people no longer wanted to be around him like they used to, his addictions got in the way of and ruined his relationships. Joe described his experiences to such a detailed and personal degree that his storytelling was stripped of the ‘I know better’ attitude; he never adopted the tone of a telling off or lecture, which I believe made his story all the more moving and - speaking for myself and friends I spoke with afterwards - impactful. One of his final anecdotes was the story of when he went to Mexico with some of his closest friends at 19, which ended with him leaving the city in order to get drugs in secret and him doing them alone in his hotel room once his friends had left him in anger.