Shilpi joined the Care City family in 2019 as Project Lead and since then has led on a number of diverse projects. She’s had a whirlwind year, starting it as Shilpi Begum and finishing it as Shilpi Shobowale. But more about that later. Let’s start at the beginning.
Shilpi is from a large family, growing up with seven brothers and sisters! She humbly states that she believes she was the most academic, but she’s quick to explain that does not mean she was the smartest, she just didn’t feel as creative as her siblings. Her Sister is Head of Art for a school in Hertfordshire, her brothers studied film at the University for the Creative Arts and another channels his creative brilliance into Graphic Design. Shilpi makes me chuckle as she simply states “…and me? Well I just like maths”!
Her Mum used to say she was destined to be a Doctor and although Shilpi’s grades did not enable that she went on to study A-Level Chemistry, Biology and Maths, keen to still get a role in health. The need to repeat a year to get her grades up, gave Shilpi the wake up call she said she needed to “knuckle down and do her work”! And that is exactly what she did.
She went on to study Biomedical Science at Coventry University and graduated with a 2:1, despite the distraction of a young man by the name of Emmanuel, who on Day One at Uni was found knocking on Halls of Residence doors, trying to find friends to go for a drink with, little knowing that nine years later, the lady behind one of the doors – our Shilpi – would turn out to be his wife!
Shilpi loved lectures and she loved the subject matter, but realised quite early on that she could not see herself in a lab based career. “Way too isolated for me”, she claims, “I’m too much of a Chatty Patty!” (and apparently quite a distraction to her mates). Graduating in the Summer of 2015, content in the knowledge that she didn’t want to work as a Biomedical Scientist, she moved back home to St Albans back to her retail job in BHS to ponder what her next career move would be. A mate told her about a scholarship for a Masters at Coventry University and a couple of months later, she was back, studying a Masters in Health Care Management.
Graduating a year later, she entered a frustrating period of applying for jobs, only to receive feedback that she was either overqualified or lacking in experience! However a role at Guys and St Thomas as an Associate Medical Secretary, saw her quickly progress to a Patient Pathway Coordinator, where she feels she really learnt about “the ins and outs of the NHS”, noticing flaws in systems and pathways and realising that she needed to be in a role where she could have more influence and make a bigger impact.
A role as a Service Support Manager at Kings followed, which truly reinforced that “health is my calling”, however a daily four hour commute made the role unsustainable, so she moved to North West London CCG and “fell” into Digital Health as Programme Coordinator for the WSIC dashboard and has not looked back.
Having had knock backs for job roles previously due to lack of experience she didn’t hold out much hope of getting on to the Digital Pioneer Fellowship as a Band 5. But Shilpi is not one to walk away from a challenge and thank goodness she didn’t as she was successful, It catapulted her confidence, helped her develop new Project Management skills and it’s what led her to us!
Motivated by the work we had done on the Innovation Test Bed and seeing that as an opportunity to make the bigger impact that she craved, she applied for our Project Lead role. She remembers the interview and recalls it being less like a torturous grilling and more like a conversation. When she asked what the recruiting panel liked about Care City, apparently they all just looked at each other and in unison responded “the people”! Shilpi became one of “the people” and has been a whirlwind of action from Day One.
Since joining, Shilpi has led on our Apprentice Nurse Associate Programme, working with local care homes to introduce a new pathway for care staff to become Nursing Associates, our Healthy Air project, looking at how we can improve indoor air quality in the homes of our Barking and Dagenham community and works closely with our Data Analysts on using the Care City Cohort, our linked dataset, to draw insights about population health across Barking & Dagenham.
However the project she speaks of most fondly is the work that she did with Feebris, introducing remote monitoring into care homes across East London. And it was the Feebris team that Shilpi says really made it an enjoyable experience.
When asked if she thinks she’s making the impact she yearns to, a wry smile appears as she talks about how she’s reflected on this during the “lockdown years”. “I wondered how I could possibly make a difference working from my bedroom, but when you realise that from your laptop and phone you can direct remote monitoring to happen over here, analytical work to happen over there, then yes, I’m making an impact”
And she’s made a huge impact on the team – not just her dedication and tenacity to lead on these diverse projects, but a baking brilliance, grabbing joint first prize with Ben Williams on the Care City Bake Off challenge for her rainbow cake and winning hands down (or feet down) the Care City Step Challenge, with many of us wondering how it’s possible to walk 20,000 steps before breakfast!
When asked what the future holds, she reveals with pride that she has been contacted by Digital Health London to be part of the interviewing and recruitment panel for it’s Accelerator Programme, helping to recruit digital talent and speed up adoption of their digital health innovations in the NHS. We’re very proud too. It turns out that this girl that “likes maths” is actually better at so much more!
