Challenging expectations — Claire King
Claire King (Newnham 1990) is a specialist in transformation, helping organisations to reshape work processes and solve systemic problems through a human-centred approach.
We caught up with her to talk about overcoming socioeconomic barriers on her journey to Cambridge, and how she turned her experiences into a passion for helping others succeed.
Claire's journey to Cambridge
"My daughter got her A-level results yesterday. Already people in my network are reaching out with offers of mentoring, contacts, financial support. It matters. Think about who you could help through an offer of mentoring".
When we spotted this in a LinkedIn post by Claire, we knew we had to get in touch with her and find out the story behind it. How had mentoring become such an important part of her life?
As it turns out, this is just the latest stage in a remarkable journey of reassessing and challenging expectations of both herself and others. Claire takes up the story:
"I'm from South Yorkshire, a town called Mexborough, and at the time I was at school it was one of the most deprived parts of the UK."
At 16, Claire's parents were going through a difficult divorce after her mother had endured years in an abusive relationship: "There was a lot of anger, the worst kinds of violence, an atmosphere of fear. Leaving took courage and left us in poverty; my mum worked so hard then to get us through."
Neither of Claire’s parents were university-educated, and most people at her school didn't know many people who had been to university.
"You have the paradigm that people in your world give you around what you can expect out of life, what life expects out of you – particularly as a woman – and how you're expected to behave," she reflects.
Claire with her grandad and brother
Claire with her grandad and brother
Claire with her grandad and brother
Claire with her grandad and brother
"When you're 18 and you want to escape poverty or abuse, or support an abused mother with no financial or social capital, but the only professionals you know are your teachers, and when all the world has to judge you on is how you look, how you speak, and those grades that proxy for your intelligence, who you know matters."
Even the television programmes that Claire watched growing up seemed to reinforce these paradigms, making it difficult to comprehend there might be an alternative.
Claire muses: "I think for a lot of people in those kinds of circumstances, there has to be some kind of catalyst moment that makes you reject the limitations you see around you, otherwise nothing changes. If you’re lucky you find a mentor, or someone who sees the world differently, who can put that seed of doubt – or hope – in your mind."
Claire's turning point
"When I started high school, I went back to my primary school teacher and showed her my first report card. She said, 'You're really clever; you could go to Oxford or Cambridge.' I had no idea what that even meant at the time!"
The comment planted the seed for Claire, and when it was time to take her A-levels, she'd made up her mind to apply to university. It wasn't plain sailing, though; her school pushed back with: 'We don't know how it works; we don't send people to Cambridge; but you can try'"...
And try she did, overcoming one obstacle after another – from material resources to attitudes. "This was before the Internet, and I couldn't afford open days or a train to a university to sit an entrance exam (which is why I didn’t apply to Oxford). I didn't even have appropriate clothes to visit universities. So, I wrote off for prospectuses instead".
"I decided I was going to apply to study maths, because that was my best subject at school. But my passion was and still is for storytelling, and how much words matter. I wanted to do English, but my school wouldn’t even let me take it at A-level".
"I picked Newnham College out just because I like the picture of it."
"I applied to Newnham to read maths. They responded that maths was overly competitive and suggested I apply for economics instead."
Claire tells us that Newnham gave her an accessible offer, which also considered her General Studies grade - somewhat unusual at the time as General Studies was rarely considered worthy of UCAS points.
"Going to Cambridge was like stepping into Narnia..."
Claire as a fresher, 1990
Claire as a fresher, 1990
Claire as a fresher, 1990
Claire as a fresher, 1990
Graduation with her mum and gran
Graduation with her mum and gran
Graduation with her mum and gran
Graduation with her mum and gran
Claire recalls getting the offer to study
"My mum turned up at the school in tears with the letter! They sent someone running to tell me. I was fearing the worst, but then I saw her waving the letter at me and I thought, ‘OH OK’…. I’ll never forget that day."
"Going to Cambridge was like stepping into Narnia. Everything was so clean and beautiful. And at my school it hadn’t been cool to be clever. You could get bullied for being clever, so lot of people tried to hide their intelligence or push their aspirations away. So, to be in a place full of people who were bright and wanted to be bright was amazing."
Claire tells us that she was ready to go in fighting, expecting to be an outsider and to have to defend her place, but instead: "One of the first things that happened just softened me, because I immediately met people who were just like me."
Claire threw herself into everything — "I joined the modern pentathlon, and was the JCR Bar president at Newnham, campaigning to move it to where it is now – a much bigger, nicer bar. I just I did loads and loads of stuff. Basically, I thought 'I'm going to do it all.'"
"Cambridge had a massively positive impact on me. I made friends for life, who have gone on to do some amazing things. Cambridge made me a better person and really opened my mind. It challenged the ideas I had about what was true and false, and taught me a lot about not judging other people. It gave me the beginnings of a sense of personal agency. And human nature, it turned out, was much nicer in general than I had expected."
“Cambridge made me a better person and really opened my mind. It challenged the ideas I had about what was true and false."
Beyond Cambridge: early career opportunities led to a passion for inspiring others
"In my second year at Cambridge, I was recruited to do a summer internship for Proctor and Gamble (P&G), who then offered me a job coming out of my third year. It was relatively well-paid, and I knew the company, so it felt safe and secure, and at that point I needed a job. I needed security."
"P&G is a fantastic employer, but back in the nineties my experience was very much: men would network on the golf course, ladies wore high heels. A lot of my career has been working out what's normal and what doesn't have to be normal. After a couple of years I thought, 'I'm cut out for something more than this.' I asked about an international assignment, and at that point Eastern Europe had just opened up due to the fall of the Soviet Union."
This offered Claire an early opportunity to climb the career ladder: "I graduated in 1993 and in 1996 I got on a plane to start work setting up P&G Ukraine, which was amazing. I was recruiting and training a sales team and setting up distribution. To have that level of responsibility in a foreign country, so soon after graduating — the world had opened up for me!"
"By the time I came back to the UK, I'd made contacts across Europe, knew more senior people and I was used to having conversations at a more strategic level. That’s why a move into management consulting was a natural fit, it's all about helping people create and manage change, which I really, really love."
Discovering a 'people-focused' approach
"I was working for a company called Gemini Consulting in 2000 when it was acquired by Capgemini, along with the consulting arm of Ernst & Young (EY). Capgemini brought a revolutionary approach to working with clients: a way of designing processes to unpick complexity and create alignment. It used the existing experience and wisdom of the people to collectively agree on the best ways forward."
"When I started learning and using this approach, it was a lightbulb moment. I fell in love with this way of working and it coincided with discussions with my (now) husband about how we would create the space and time we wanted for a family, whilst still doing work we found rewarding."
"Having already done some work with the French team at Capgemini, I proposed I could freelance for them part-time."
"A lot of my career has been, I think, working out what's normal and what doesn't have to be normal."
Claire completing her goal of hiking from the Thames source to the Thames Barrier in London. Quite the journey, like her story.
Claire completing her goal of hiking from the Thames source to the Thames Barrier in London. Quite the journey, like her story.
Capgemini agreed, so in 2002 Claire and her husband made the decision to move to France, where they stayed until 2016.
"Both our daughters were born in Perpignan. It was quite risky in some ways because I'd effectively jumped off the career ladder, but it gave me the work/life balance that I wanted for my kids"
If that wasn’t enough, during this time Claire also wrote and published two novels, reconnecting with her early love of words and storytelling: "It felt so great to have achieved a dream I’d had since I was young."
We asked Claire about her LinkedIn post on mentoring...
"I've found my groove now. One of my old team members from Ukraine saw the LinkedIn post and commented, 'You're the person who helps people to be what they can be.' And it's true; that's exactly what I love about the work I do."
"In 2022 I took on a more formal learning and development role at EY as a team coach, and then last year I finally returned to a full-time role with PwC (another of the 'Big 4' professional services and consulting firms). Not only is there a great team to mentor and support, but there's some amazing client work too — the perfect mix! Now I'm in my fifties, it’s energizing to work with so many young, bright people. I try to think about what I would have wanted back in my twenties: probably a listening ear and someone to give me the courage to forge my own path. So I seek out opportunities to help where I can."
Claire's thoughts turn to the future: "I love the work I do now. I've got an amazing team, and they're our future directors and partners. I want them to remember me in 15 years’ time and think, 'That was an important moment for my career. I learned something about myself.'"
And does she have any advice for a young person thinking about applying to Cambridge today?
"My advice would be that you cannot be what other people expect you to be, whether you’re expected to go to Cambridge or not. If people have low expectations of you, you don't have to accept that either. Understand who you want to be and follow your heart."
Claire at her book launch in 2013
Claire at her book launch in 2013
Find Claire's Author page and more information on her novels here. You can also buy her book The Night Rainbow on Amazon UK.
If you would like to share your own alumni story with us we'd love to hear from you! Get in touch at contact@alumni.cam.ac.uk
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