Matt

Tell us a bit about yourself 

Matt

My name is Matt, Communications Manager at the National CBRN Centre. I’ve been in role for just over 12 months. I live in Wolverhampton with my wife and son. Sport has always been a big part of my life. I was a county level rugby player and junior international athlete in my youth, representing Team GB in the Hammer. This allowed me to travel to extensively throughout Europe and Africa. I‘ve maintained my involvement in sport by becoming a qualified athletics coach and overseeing a successful squad of junior international athletes. 

Can you tell us about your role?  

Primarily, I create and manage the Communications Strategy at the National CBRN Centre. The strategy includes both internal and external engagement. Being tri-service, our immediate partners are police, ambulance and fire. My role requires me to engage heavily with both partners and stakeholders to improve communication, alignment and awareness of the centre and its functions. I have involvement in the organisation of exercises and hold the responsibility to seek out appropriate promotional opportunities, these include conferences, career fairs, recruitment days and public engagement. 

As the centre is national function and falls under Protect & Prepare, I am also required to assist in the development communications strategy when CBRN incidents occur, these include comms support to live incidents, dissemination of health advice and initial operational response. Often this will require us to work alongside partners and academia who support us with their behavioural scientific expertise, this ensures our approach is both aligned and effective. 

What does a typical day look like for you?   

A typical day involves a commute, I then grab some breakfast upon arrival before starting my days’ work. Often, I will start the day by reading the duty officer (DO) report and then review my ‘to do’ list for the day, adding and prioritising tasks. I then plan my day. After updating our digital comms screen, I will then walk the centre and speak with each of the teams prior to either the weekly senior leadership team (SLT) meet or DO handover, these meetings can last up to two hours, updates provided help keep me up to speed with all goings on in centre and within the world of CBRN. I will then begin to work through my day which includes the completion of objectives and attending scheduled meetings. Quite often, I am out and about visiting partners and stakeholders, I feel it is an important part of my role to engage face to face. 

What has your career path been to this role?  

Unconventionally, I had spent 20 years as a general manager within the leisure industry before securing this role. These included the running of gyms, casinos, bingo halls and pubs. During the pandemic, I oversaw a successful PR campaign for the company I was working for at the time, engaging MP’s and ultimately the Prime Minister. This experience certainly gave me an idea of what role I would like to pursue in the future, I would never have thought that it would lead to being part of the CT network!  

I cannot deny it has been and continues to be a huge learning curve, while on the surface, my role has no correlation with my previous experience, I feel I have been successful in transferring many of my existing skills to this role. Nothing ventured nothing gained. 

What has been your proudest achievement?   

I’m proud of the relationships I‘ve formed with my colleagues in centre, partners and stakeholders. It has been challenging to enter a world in which I have zero experience, but forming these relationships has helped me build knowledge quickly, mainly through colleagues answering/tolerating my stupid questions. Secondly, I’m proud of the work I have done with diverse support groups to help remove misconceptions that exist around the world of CBRN and exploring ways to adapt communications for diverse communities. This has provided me with a great platform to develop my work in the coming year. 

What do you find most rewarding in your job? 

I find it rewarding in a couple of ways, being part of a function that helps save lives makes it easy to get out of bed in the morning, it certainly beats simply improving the bottom line of a business! Secondly, I find what we do very interesting! Every day is a school day!