Alumni stories: Ben Szreter

I was at Hills Road from 2010 to 2012 and I studied History, Chemistry, Maths and Economics. My time at Hills was a lot of fun and the perfect staging post between school and university. Aside from my A-levels, I also played football for the college and I was involved with the History society. My overaching memory of Hills would be that it felt like a very exciting place to be, with all these motivated and interesting people from across the county coming together.

After I left university, I spent several months in Myanmar working on international trade, experiencing a completely different society. It was a time of huge social, economic and cultural change when Myanmwar was the fastest growing economy in the world. I then came back to the UK and worked at the Cambridge United Foundation for three years. It was brilliant to be able to combine football with social impact in the city I grew up in. Cambridge had just been named the most unequal city in the UK and I worked with the council to try and tackle the problems that arise from this. We worked on delivering disability sport, reducing isolation and also helped to make Cambridge United the first mentally healthy football club through mental health awareness and mental health first aid training across the club.

After a time working for Daniel Zeichner, MP for Cambridge, I joined the Behavioural Insights team in London working on using behavioural science in public policy. It was very varied; I could spend an hour working on home decarbonisation, the next hour working on countering misinformation in eastern Europe; the next on civil service security behaviours. It was fascinating work that taught me a lot.

Eighteen months ago I moved to work for Labour Together; a think tank connected to the Labour Party. During the election campaign I worked at Labour HQ focusing on campaign messaging and public opinion as well as supporting the ground campaign. Since the election, I’ve been supporting the government to deliver on its priorities, to understand public opinion and look at longer-term policy development.

I’ve also kept my connection to Cambridge throughout including acting as a commissioner to the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority’s Commission on Climate change over the last 5 years. I’ve supported the commission on behaviour change and ensuring a just transition.

My time since Hills Road has flown past, but I still have brilliant memories. When I got married last year, one of my two best men was someone I met on my first day at Hills Road.