Law students keen to pursue international careers in law and finance enjoyed a unique and inspiring opportunity to hear from four Kent Law School alumni employed by leading firms across the globe.
All four, who graduated ten years ago, were keen to return and share their top tips for success with students at an event organised by Law School Employability and Career Development Officer Jayne Instone. They included:
- Giovanni Li Voti who also completed an LPC before taking the New York Bar, working at Accenture and is now an in-house legal professional at Cloudreach
- Vasileios Klianis who worked in accountancy at KPMG before joining the National Bank of Abu Dhabi
- Nithin Bopanna who worked at JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank before joining the London Stock Exchange Group as a Change Advisory
- Alessandro Maiano who completed his LPC and worked as a corporate solicitor before becoming an investment manager with venture capital firm Wilbe Ventures
After an informal presentation from each alumnus about their career, the panel shared their tips for successful networking, offering advice on how to make and use contacts effectively.
Jayne said: ‘The event was a big hit with students – one of the Kent LLM students who attended told me it was the best careers event he had attended. Another student told me that it was really inspiring to see how useful her degree will be to get jobs outside of the legal profession. She said that she could now appreciate just how beneficial her legal skills would be in whatever profession she chose to follow.
‘It was inspiring to hear that success will happen if you keep chasing it. The employability programme at Kent Law School is all the richer for having alumni involvement and we wish to thank our panel for taking part.’
Almnus Alessandro, who is already a member of the Law School’s Alumni Mentoring Scheme, took the opportunity while visiting Kent to invite his mentee out to dinner with all five members of the panel. Other attendees followed up on the advice given about effective networking with the result that one student is now being formally mentored by one of the panel (Giovanni) and another is engaged in useful discussions with Nithin about banking careers (with the possibility of informal mentoring).
