This is Spectator Radio, the Spectator's curated podcast collection.

Hello and welcome to Women of Balls, where I, Katie Balls, talk to today's trailblazers.

Today I'm delighted to be joined by Mary Kernick Cook.

Kernit Cook is the former CEO of UCAS, the University and College Admission Service, and now sits

on the governing body of the Open University.

She was awarded an Order of the British Empire in 2000 for assisting training within

the hospitality industry.

During her time at UCAS, Kurnet Cook spoke up about the discrimination of men in education,

highlighting the fact that boys are falling behind.

So thank you very much for joining us today, Mary. And I thought just before we get on to your

experience at UCAS, which I mentioned in the introduction, I thought it would be interesting to talk

about, as we do on this podcast, how you got to that role and I think one of the

quite striking things about your journey is that although you've had a long career in higher

education and looking at how you get more pupils into that you yourself when you left school did

not go into higher education you You went straight into a job.

I did. I left school at 16. I was actually quite clever and I did my A levels before I left school,

but didn't do very well. And I ended up being, I think my parents didn't really know what to do with me.

So I went to secretarial college. And yeah, so my first couple of jobs were secretarial jobs which actually I loved doing I still write shorthand and I still obviously type everyone has to type these days but I can do it properly

and and then I just kind of embarked on a journey where I just I loved working and I seemed to be kind of quite good at it.

I just, I just kind of thought, oh, this looks interesting, I'll do this.

And so, yeah, so I ended up with a, my first sort of proper job was marketing executive slash

secretary for an entrepreneurial biotech company.

...