After choosing our new North cohort, we officially launched the programme with our
first masterclass at BBC Sport.
The first masterclass was an opportunity for our new class to meet each other as well as Tom Gayle, who leads the North group and BCOMS operations manager, Andrew Ducille.
We had an exciting day which began with a short video highlighting the previous year and what the BCOMS programme is all about. This was followed by introductory speeches by Tom Gayle and Andrew Ducille and a panel discussion with BCOMS North alumni Paige Eagle, Mujtaba Ali, Aadam Patel and Usmaan Akhtar.
Our alumni shared their experiences and spoke about the different opportunities they had through BCOMS, including working as runner for the BBC, working Wimbledon and the Commonwealth Games. They also gave the new class advice for their journey within BCOMS and especially told them to network and say yes to every opportunity.
We then broke out into two groups, one visited the BBC Sport offices while the other had one or one chats and took professional portraits.
We followed by having another panel with BBC staff including Katy Jones, Daniel Raza, Jonathan McKeith and Becky Grey who spoke to us about their careers and their journey’s to the BBC.
To end the day we had the privilege of having David Ornstein speak to us about his career, being a journalist at BBC Sport, establishing himself on social media and now being at The Athletic. We ended the session with a Q&A from the audience and from our class.
