I want to be a motivation for women of colour

From a young age, education and university was really instilled into me – quite a lot of my family work in engineering and I thought this would be the career route for me.

After my GCSEs, I went to an engineering sixth form college in Birmingham which was then followed by an internship at Jaguar Land Rover.

However, I just wasn’t enjoying it, so after a year I left. Subsequently, I was unemployed for four months. I didn’t know what to do or which way to turn.

I started looking at apprenticeships online and found one at the Berkeley Group Plc (I’d never heard of them before).

I undertook some due diligence and that’s when I came across their apprenticeship for business admin on their future skills webpage.

You could say the rest is history. Following an assessment, I got a call to say I’d got the job. I completed a two-week induction programme in London and then came back to Birmingham, where my site is just 10 minutes from where I live.

Honestly, I’m having an absolute blast and the support from everyone at Berkeley Group is fantastic. My next step is to go into project management and work my way up the ladder – with the goal to become a site manager.

Finally, there are lots of misconceptions out there about careers in construction. When people hear or see jobs in construction they think of a brick layer but there’s lot more to it. For example, if you excel at maths you could be a quantity surveyor or if you’re good at drawing then a technical co-odinator role might be a good choice.

I'm a woman of colour working in construction and I really hope my journey can be a source of motivation to more women.

So take my advice - don’t just assume.