Winter 2024 graduation

Socially Mobile founders Sarah Waddington CBE and Stephen Waddington presented graduating students from the Winter semester programme with a certificate recognising their new qualification and achievements at a ceremony in London this week.

The community interest company Socially Mobile was born from a determination to improve diversity in public relations through management training. It aims to help practitioners from lower socio-economic backgrounds, as well as under-served groups such as people with disabilities, the LGBTQ+ community, women returners; and Black, Asian and ethnic minority colleagues.

“We stand here in the context of a cost-of-living crisis, which makes highly targeted programmes like this more important than ever. We are delighted to have now completed cohort six and in the last week, onboarded cohort seven,” said Sarah Waddington CBE.

“Socially Mobile is a deliberately fast-paced executive education course with robust marking. It’s not for the fainthearted or those who aren’t committed. Despite busy and demanding work and home lives, our students have risen to the challenge, and more than this, they have excelled. We are proud of each one of them,” said Stephen Waddington.

We would like to congratulate the following students, in alphabetical order, on their graduation from the Socially Mobile programme.

• Helen Brennan Ainsworth

• Sarah Birkett-Wendes

• Lynne Carstairs who graduated with distinction

• Nicola D’Hubert who graduated with distinction

• Chelsey Downing who graduated with distinction

• Matthew Dunn who graduated with distinction

• Louise Harris who graduated with distinction

• Peter Harris

• Farhana Khan who graduated with distinction

• Natasha Mann

• Sam Pollock who graduated with distinction

• Alastair Reed who graduated with distinction

• Serena Rianjongdee

• Leonie Roberts who graduated with distinction

• Elisha Smith who graduated with distinction

• Laura Varney who graduated with distinction

• Sophie Wells

Ella Minty, our Chief Examiner, asks us to recognise an exceptional student from each cohort, for their attitude, development and contribution to the Socially Mobile community. The Chief Examiner’s Award recipient has the cost of the CIPR’s Chartered Assessment paid for by Socially Mobile. The recipient of the Chief Examiners Award for this cohort is Matthew Dunn.

The CIPR and PRCA provide a year’s free membership to fully funded Socially Mobile graduates, and AMEC provides access to its Foundation in Media Measurement and Evaluation Course to all graduates.

Applications for paid and funded places on the next Socially Mobile cohort close on 19 May. Please head to the website for more information and share the details with anyone you think might benefit.