Gemma Rogerson
My journey into tech wasn’t exactly linear. I wanted to be a hairdresser after I came out of university with a Business Management degree. Life took a different turn and I became one of the first police community support officers in West Yorkshire and, at about that point, I started to realise that I wanted to do something that gave back to the community.
I joined the NHS about 17 years ago and now I’m working in Digital Collaboration Services. We support the workforce by providing national products, available through NHS.net Connect, that enable them to communicate and collaborate safely and securely.
I think it's really important for my development to move roles, to learn, to adapt, to gain new skills and absorb information from new people.
I admit, before I joined this team, I thought it was going to be mainly about email and Microsoft Teams – but it is so much more. In just the first hour I was astounded by the potential of what we were doing.
And it really hit home when we enabled 1.6 million healthcare colleagues transition to working from home during the pandemic, basically overnight.
I'm still waiting for that moment when I am in a GP surgery or a hospital and see something on the screen that my team has delivered to the NHS. Maybe then I can show my family what I do and perhaps get them to stop asking me to fix their computers!