Eton’s Employability Week runs alongside National Careers Week and is marked by a succession of seminars on different careers. Our second workshop of the week was a hugely stimulating presentation on Careers in Political Lobbying given by Charlie Napier OE (JGLN,TCB,’91) of Atlas Partners and Ollie Lane OE (ROQ,’91) of PLMR. They started by describing and explaining their interestingly different career tracks to date and their passion for participation in the political sphere. Charlie has worked in political communications for twenty years on different campaigns in sectors ranging from gambling, energy and the creative industries to animal welfare, foreign governments and horse racing. Ollie specialises in strategy, public affairs, proactive media planning, reputation promotion/management and crisis communications and previously led the media operation at the Department for Education and was part of the press team at No 10 under Prime Minister David Cameron. Before that he was a journalist for the News of the World,Evening Standard & Mail on Sunday. They both brought different perspectives to what lobbyists do, illustrated by fascinating case studies of recent campaigns. These gave real insight into the ways in which politicians and parties are made aware of issues of public importance and then nudged and even cajoled along different paths. They explained the benefits of lobbying to the political establishment and we were helped to understand the challenges of effective lobbying as well as the satisfaction of running a successful campaign. The audience was left in no doubt of the sheer variety of working as a lobbyist and went away convinced that there were exciting and rewarding careers in politics other than being a politician!
GDF
