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How my career grew new wings

Brian Reid, 53, swapped careers from aerospace and space rocket engineering to arranging community talks for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

"I spent the first thirty years of my working life in the aerospace industry. Eighteen of those were at the space end of it, including working on structures for the Arianne rocket programme.

"As my employers became more international they became more bureaucratic, and I was spending more time reporting than doing, which meant long hours catching up with the work I wanted to get done.

"When I decided to leave, my intention was to be a self-employed industrial photographer, but now everybody has a pocket digital camera there wasn’t a market for that. I looked for jobs at organisations like the Environment Agency and the RSPB, and was very glad when they took me on.

"My job title is community talks manager. Basically, I work in the public affairs division, helping to present the RSPB, dispel myths, enthuse and inform people about what we do, by finding speakers round the country to talk to community groups like the Women’s Institute and the U3A. I make sure speakers have the right equipment, and am very impressed with the quality of people who apply for these jobs.

"My father gave me an interest in the outdoors, I’d been an RSPB member for many years, but I’m not a bird specialist, although I do find them spiritually uplifting.

"It’s not all beards and binoculars here, and not everybody is involved in conservation, but we do have an interest in the environment. For me, the most satisfying thing has been the change from a culture of reporting to a culture of doing. That’s what my work used to be like."

What did you do next? If you’d like to tell us about your big career change, email web.editor@saga.co.uk

Written by Martin Gurdon 

This article was created: 1 November 2006.
This article was last edited: 6 November 2006.

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