Rosalind

Corporate Affairs

When I left Bristol University I didn’t really know exactly what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to go into a comms role and I was very interested in PR, but I was also interested in government affairs, charity work and the corporate responsibility work that companies do. And so the Tesco scheme was quite unique in that it offered me the opportunity to get involved in all of those different teams.

Corporate Affairs is quite a diverse department, so it includes everything from Government Affairs to Press Office and Internal Comms. It includes all of our charity work and team that was set up to tackle climate change. It also has a team for Investor Relations and Regional Corporate Affairs. There’s also a team that work with our International Corporate Affairs teams in countries throughout Asia, Europe and recently the US. But it’s mainly there to protect and promote the Tesco brand.

I guess I didn’t really realise how ambitious Tesco is. People individually are very ambitious and very passionate about what they do, but Tesco as a company is very ambitious too. We’ve recently opened stores in the US and we’ve just announced we’re going into India. That ambition and drive, I didn’t really appreciate how strong it was.

At the moment I think I’d like to stay within Corporate Affairs. It’s so diverse that moving from one team to the next can offer a completely different view of Tesco and can open completely different doors for you. There are people in the department that have worked in Marketing, Tesco.com and Business Development. In my team alone there are people that have worked in Turkey, Malaysia, Tokyo and so I’m very open to suggestions – and who knows what the future will hold?