New staff member – Meet Lauren

We’re thrilled to welcome our newest member of staff, Lauren Collins. Lauren joined us as Marketing & Communications Executive at the beginning of February.  A keen environmentalist, Lauren is passionate about protecting and conserving the natural world around us, and is looking forward to inspiring others to do the same in fun, new, creative ways.

“I’m so excited to be joining the fantastic team at the Hawk Conservancy Trust! I’ve always wanted to work in some form of animal conservation, even at one point taking a course in Animal Management with the intention of going into zookeeping. I’ve also always loved creative skills such as writing and photography and found myself working in the field of marketing. So when I saw the job on the Trust’s website, it was an opportunity too good to miss!

This role is a bit of a dream job for me – combining my passion for creativity and communication with animal conservation. The Trust is such a unique place, where it’s intimate setting and friendly staff make visitors feel at home and inspired to support our vital conservation work across the globe, here in Britain, and on-site. I’m looking forward to getting really creative with the teams here to see how we can help spread information and awareness of the work the Trust is involved in in new ways.

My first few weeks have definitely been a bit of a whirlwind, with Storm Eunice disrupting my online work. However whilst offline, I’ve been incredibly lucky to be able to spend some valuable time with the Bird Team and around the Trust grounds, getting a better idea of how the different teams work on a day-to-day basis, and watching our incredible birds in action during the displays. I have even been able to take part in a Meet The Burrowers experience, and I’ll never forget the confident little Diamond Back landing in my palm for the first time!

I recently spent a morning shadowing Events Manager and Bird Team member Tom Morath on his daily tasks of feeding and weighing some of the birds in the middle section of the grounds. It was such a good eye-opener into the work that goes into caring for our birds, and thrilling to meet some of our birds up close. I’ll be working with the Bird Team quite closely to bring you all behind-the-scenes sneak peeks and previews across our communication channels, so keep an eye out for exciting things to come!

I’ve already learnt so much and although I still have a long way to go (and a lot of bird names to memorise!) I feel very lucky to be working alongside a bunch of passionate and friendly people, all so dedicated towards the conservation of birds of prey and the natural world around us.”