Profile

Hi,

I’m K-Jo! I originally come from Ireland where I had no engineering background whatsoever (just a lot of potatoes and farming). I moved to England when I was 13 to live on a canal boat and start my first proper education. I originally thought I was going to do something with music and dance as I wasn’t that good at engineering and science. However, my physics teacher in year 10 really helped me find my inspiration that I had deep in my heart from a very young age – it just needed help being brought out. When I lived in Ireland, I was always intrigued about space and engineering and my inspiration actually came from jigsaws weirdly! Before my dad passed away when I was 9, we use to do jigsaws all the time and the whole idea of how they came together was amazing in my head which I then put towards the idea of engines and how they come together, just like jigsaws! Anyhow, once I finished secondary school, I magically fell upon an apprenticeship in space engineering. That was my life for 4 years!

But unfortunately, I became very unwell and had to rethink my next steps in life. Sometimes, we think that steps back in our life can be bad, but I had to move some of my life around and had to find a new career that worked alongside my illness. My new company gave me the amazing opportunity to still continue my career, while working towards making myself better, and I fell into a career I truly love and get to help everyone within the company while still working in the engineering and software world 😊

Being an Operations and Cyber Security Manager for an AI and robotics company is like a digital protector. For the Cyber Security side of things, I make sure that all the companies computers, robots, and AI systems are safe from hackers and problems. My amazing team and I work to stop anyone from stealing important information or causing damage to the technology and data.

For the Operations side of the company, my team and I make sure everything runs smoothly behind the scenes. I work with different teams to make sure all the parts are in place, applications and systems are working properly, and everything is on time. If there’s a problem, my team and I help solve it quickly so the company can keep moving forward. I’m always looking for ways to improve things, making sure the company is always getting better at creating smart robots and AI.

My day-to-day work life involves daily catch ups with the amazing team to make sure our accreditation projects are progressing well and discuss any actions that may be held up by any problems. I then catch up with various other team members to make sure everything and everyone is all okay in the running of the company, check to see if there are any issues and to discuss any processes we can improve. I then tend to spend the afternoon completing Cyber Security or Operations actions on my list of things to do.

I tend to start my work day at 9:00 AM and finish around 5:00 PM. Once I’ve finished work, I have dinner, take my German Shepherd on a walk and sit down and enjoy some reading in my mini library 😊