Home Local News Passion for helping others prompts career change for Sara

Passion for helping others prompts career change for Sara

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Dedicated student Sara Norburn has undergone a complete career change, swapping education for nutrition, and has already managed to secure her dream job after graduating from Edge Hill University on Saturday 1st December.

Sara (28), from Ormskirk, completed an undergraduate degree in Early Years Education at Edge Hill in 2010, and enjoyed her university experience so much, she returned to complete a Masters in Public Health Nutrition.

After a few years working in education, Sara started teaching fitness classes in her spare time in a bid to help people that felt uncomfortable to go to the gym to get fit and feel healthier.

“I loved doing this and decided I needed to have a career change to help as many people as possible lead healthier happier lives, so I decided to return to Edge Hill to learn more about nutrition,” said Sara.

“I really enjoyed the course. It was a great balance of learning about nutrition for individuals and the effects of certain foods, to practical sessions in the lab – which was a bit nerve wracking at first as the last time I’d been in a lab was in secondary school.  We also learnt about international food insecurity issues as well as local malnutrition and food bank usage.”

Sara works at an occupational health and wellbeing company People Asset Management (PAM) in Warrington, where she puts all the skills she learnt on her course into practice on a daily basis.

“I was very lucky to start a new venture at PAM as part of PAM LIFE – it will be an exciting support service for employees,” said Sara. “We are a team of life coaches that work behind the scenes on a website and app full of health and fitness information, providing a service which allows individuals to get personalised health and wellbeing advice from ourselves as well as accessing a range of fitness videos, cookery videos and podcasts.”

“Each coach has a different specialism, including fitness, psychology and health, and mine is nutrition – I’m the food coach.  The idea behind it is that employers can purchase PAM LIFE as a service for their employees to keep everyone healthy and happy.  My job involves creating the content for the website, travelling up and down the country helping individuals to use our health genie which tells people all their health stats, as well as providing one on one email or skype consultations and support.”

Dr Jane Bradbury, Senior Lecturer in Nutrition and Health, who taught Sara, said:

“I’m so pleased for Sara.  This is a fantastic job and well deserved. PAM will find in Sara an enthusiastic, motivated and determined team member, who will always do her very best.”

Sara has some words of wisdom for current students who are hoping to secure a job before they graduate.

“Obtain work experience wherever and whenever you can and network with people in the right industry,” said Sara. “Your lecturers are there to help, so if you’re ever stuck ask, decide on your research topic as soon as you start the course and start reading a little bit, and finally don’t panic, you will be fine.”

For more information about Edge Hill’s MSc Public Health Nutrition programme, click here: www.edgehill.ac.uk/courses/public-health-nutrition

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