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Perhaps more important than any of the individual activities for the cohort, however, were the feelings they experienced on meeting so many of their contemporaries.

“Once those elevator doors opened after I checked in, I walked out and I just saw this amazing spectrum of colour,” said Aamna Khan (right), a master’s student at the University of East Anglia. “This reassuring sense of belonging was an absolute wave, and it made me realise, ‘Wow, I belong. I belong in chemistry’.

"This is a space for chemists and people in the chemical sciences because it's a programme for people of colour in the chemical sciences and it was just overwhelmingly awesome.”

Reflections from year one

Some familiar faces started off day two’s activities. Six members of the inaugural cohort – Carla Aldington, Zakariyya Dar, Johanna Fish, Cyrille Kiaku, Michelle Andrea Salins, and Seán Adeoti Thompson – reunited on stage for a panel discussion, chaired by Dr Laura Reyes, programme manager in our Race and Ethnicity Unit.

A Q&A followed as the new generation peppered their predecessors with questions, eager to extract as much knowledge as possible. Everything from their site visits and mentoring to the inclusion landscape came up, with the new group making an instant impression.

For one of the original cohort who is now a walking ambassador of the scheme's progress, the chance to meet with some of her successors was a special moment.

The graduates and students first met with the industry representatives over lunch, putting their networking training into practice as they went on fact-finding missions.

Stalls surrounded the edge of a conference room in the Manchester Deansgate Hilton, with fervorous discussions taking place until the next session kicked off an hour later.

Our CEO Dr Helen Pain officially welcomed the partner companies with a short speech before handing over to Strategic Partnerships Lead Ian Knibbs (right), who introduced each of the 11 companies for the next session.

Shared experiences

Six industry representatives took to the stage for the day's final formal session. During the panel session, they shared details of their careers and experiences as Black and minority ethnic people in the chemical sciences.

After another series of varied and intriguing questions from the audience, the day's formal activities were over. For those on the stage, it was an eye-opening experience seeing how the cohort responded.

"Having shared my story, I was surprised by how much resonated with quite a few people. The fact that they then came to me later and spoke to me about it was really interesting," said Dr Alan Stephen, a catalyst scientist at Johnson Matthey who took part in both of the afternoon's sessions.

"It did feel validating to be in a space where everyone had similar experiences, but also very different ones at the same time and felt like a community where we could share them and actually talk and laugh about them in some ways."

Farzana Patel, a tolling production manager at Syngenta, added: "Coming out of university I maybe wasn’t aware of the presence of any bias in industry in this day and age but a role I had early in my career was my first experience of this. It resulted in me questioning my competence and took a hit to my confidence. Now working in a very different environment and culture to this, I have felt the difference this can make and have thrived as a result.

"I think if there was something like this for me when I was a student, I would have probably been better prepared to say ‘actually, I belong in what I'm doing. I have confidence in that.'"

One-to-one insights and closing remarks

An abbreviated final day was no less busy for the cohort, with the morning dominated by one-to-one networking opportunities. The 10-minute sessions enabled the students and graduates to get the insights they need to inform the next steps of their career journeys.

Each member of the cohort had the chance to book a dedicated 10-minute session with the company of their choice, with some getting more than one. There was also the chance to hold an informal chat with the Afro Caribbean Commercial Science Network and Science Solutions Recruitment during the two-hour window.

Video messages from Dr Pain and Professor Reid were shown at midday as the taster event drew to a close, followed by a 10-minute montage of the previous cohort's site visits.

Dr Jasiewicz and Dr Rehana Sidat, vice-president of risk management at GSK, rounded a busy three days with short speeches to the cohort. The former noted the site visit opportunities coming up in the next few months, while Dr Sidat stressed the need for the participants to continue engaging and build on what they learned at the taster event. Site visits have commenced since the end of the taster events, marking the next step on the cohort's journey.

"Of course, we're running as a three-year pilot, so we expect the numbers to increase year on year. It is only possible if we have the funding and what is amazing that we have the funding now from the partners to invest in this.

"But what really makes a difference is once you have a first cohort, they can be role models for the second cohort and then this cohort will be role models for the next cohort next year."

She added: "We need to make a difference. There's no point just talking about commitment and saying things need to be better. We need to be proactively enabling that to change and to happen so I've got real optimism for the future, but we must keep going."