23 Jan Twitter Vice President inspires our pupils to be creative and determined to get dream jobs
Written by Alesha, Hannah, Victoria, Keira and Vedhasa, Year 7 Student Reporters, Whitley Academy
Achieving true happiness and balance at work can be seen as a never ending challenge. This is something that Bruce Daisley (Vice President for Europe, Twitter) knows only too well.
On the 11th of January 2019, Bruce visited our pupils to share with us his achievements at work despite challenging circumstances at home.
Born on a council estate in Birmingham (actually one of the biggest estates in Europe), Bruce grew up with a father who had quite ‘a colourful life’, and a community where not many reached for high goals in life. Bruce explained that having a positive outlook on his future was often difficult.
“I never got any opportunities through my Dad, but I will never be ashamed of him”, said Bruce.
The whole audience went silent, as we listened to Bruce tell stories about his Dad’s experiences with the Police. It wasn’t Bruce’s fault after all. Even at a young age, his childhood had given him the strength and determination to take responsibility for his life.
“I was never top of the class, in school or at university. I think when you are not at the top, it makes you try a bit harder. One of the biggest challenges you’re facing at the moment is thinking about what you want to do for a job, but you have to believe in your ability to get noticed and succeed”.
After a few failed attempts at submitting his Curriculum Vitae (CV) to big companies in order to get a job, Bruce realised that he needed to be more creative to make himself stand out from other applicants. He decided that he would draw his CV instead of writing it, and made a four-page cartoon story of his life. Later on he found out he was nick-named ‘the cartoon boy’ by people at companies who had viewed his application! But Bruce took that as a big compliment.
A few years later Bruce applied to work at Radio 1. With his strong imagination, Bruce designed his CV and saved it on CD format; a great idea which resulted in him being employed! Bruce also shared with us the time he worked at Google and YouTube before being offered a job at Twitter, where he works today. He now works with amazing friends who have constantly supported him to achieve what he has done so far. The whole audience of nearly 200 students kept completely silent to listen to Bruce’s stories, word by word, story by story.
In ‘a Conversation with Bruce’ we, the student reporters, had the chance to personally put our questions to Bruce. One pupil asked him if his father and his past had an impacted on the way he is today.
”You shouldn’t let your background define your dreams”, said Bruce.
Another interesting question put to Bruce was if he was an active member of any charities. His response was that he worked and supported Comic Relief, UNICEF (the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund) and Age UK . This made us think of Bruce as a giving man who supported others as best as he could. Bruce also shared with us that he supports the internationally well-known charity ‘Green Peace’.
The last, and most engaging question we asked Bruce, was how important free speech is for Twitter. He believes free speech has a fundamental role in the world of social media, and it’s an important part of living in a democracy.
A snapshot of other questions we asked Bruce:
Q: What is your thought of the future of Twitter?
“As Twitter is being used more and more by politicians, we want to ensure that people see both sides of the argument”.
Q: How do you feel knowing that a quarter of our generation’s teenagers use Twitter?
“We understand that there are a lot of younger people using Twitter. At the moment there are around 330 million people using Twitter. There are around 500 million tweets everyday. It’s become integral to our society, but we have to be careful with how people use it”.
Upon reflection, our pupils really enjoyed their experience with Bruce. We were most impressed by the fact that, even with little support from his family when he was young, and almost no knowledge of the jobs that were available at that time, Bruce still managed to become successful in work life. His determination and creativity played a big part in this, and this is the lesson we will take away from his visit.
Thank you for reading this blog! Make sure you aim high in life and try the best you can!