Continuing our “Meet the Team” series – it’s the turn of Mary France Jardiel AKA Mez.
Mez – our self confessed ‘nerd’, super organiser, IG expert, social prescribing champ, fancy stationery loving, dog Mum! Mez joined Care City on the Skills for Care graduate programme and when you dig a little deeper, a role in health and social care appears to be her destiny.
Mez’s mum and grandparents were teachers in the Philippines where Mez was born. Majority of her godparents are all teachers, so Mez fondly recalls a childhood surrounded by teachers and students who had the pleasure of either answering or dodging the countless ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions she seemed to ask endlessly. That is until the STEM classes end, and a history lesson begins – she’s usually seen bolting out the door ready to cause mischief elsewhere! Her interest in learning has been supported by her family since Day 1 and as a result, she skipped a year at a private school and advanced quicker through her studies than many of her peers.
Mez and her family arrived in England in 2009. At the age of 13, Mez experienced quite a culture shock, having been a city girl growing up in Manila, to finding herself in Stowmarket in Suffolk, asking why shops shut at 5pm! Her mum who would have had to re-qualify to continue her teaching journey, became a senior nursing assistant in a Care Home where she worked alongside Mez’s dad and aunt. Mez’s sister and cousin have since become nurses, so it’s unsurprising to hear that Mez followed the family movement and landed her first ever job working in the Care Home, holding roles including Receptionist, Administrator and Kitchen Assistant. In fact, Mez says it is easier to list the roles she hasn’t held in the Care Home – Carer and Maintenance – the latter due to the fact she is lousy with anything that involves using a ladder, “which is almost everything given my height”!
However, the bright lights of the city were calling her and the first chance she could, she got her driving licence, bought a car, “found her freedom” and moved to London to start her uni life at Queen Mary, University of London.
Mez graduated with First Class Honours in Biomedical Science, then returned to Stowmarket to continue her work in the care home while she figured out what to do next. She always knew she wanted to work in the health and social care sector, believing it to be “in her blood”. However, as a young adult and with limited access to good careers advice she thought the only jobs available in the sector were Doctors and Nurses (something our work on the NELHCP Careers project is trying to fix!). She claims that if you’d told her 15-year-old self that she’d be a Project Lead, working for a Community Interest Company, doing meaningful work to support improvements to the care sector, whilst not actually delivering front line care, her response would be “are you mad?” But here we are today – a successful Project Lead, working for a Community Interest Company, doing meaningful work to support improvements to the care sector, whilst not actually delivering front line care!
Mez’s S4C placement started with us in January 2018. She recalls her first project being our work alongside HealthUnlocked rolling out social prescribing across Barking and Redbridge. She’s a strong believer in embracing holistic care rather than just a reliance on medical intervention so this project was perfect for her. She reflects fondly on her role in the project, which started as part of the NHS/OLS Innovation Test Bed, and how she subsequently helped to oversee its expansion and adoption further across LBBD. Following her successful placement, we decided we simply had to keep her and she’s been part of the furniture ever since. In fact, talking of furniture, Mez is quite the interior designer. I remember one very animated, deep discussion about the merits of egg-chairs and the feng shui benefits it would bring to her bedroom!
One role Mez certainly didn’t expect to find herself in was as our Information Governance expert. But as she says, “I am a nerd, I love learning new stuff and being organised (and organising others)” so she happily slipped into the role. She’s self-taught, researching the IG requirements and rules to follow and is quick to commend the team for the massive support it’s given her – this is partly because we’re relieved we don’t have to do it!
And then the pandemic hit. Many of Mez’s projects were paused as stakeholders were redeployed and Mez found herself desperate to get on the frontline and support alongside them. Speaking to Hannah, our Deputy CEO, they identified an opportunity for Mez to train as a vaccinator and then promptly, following her own secondment to the Nightingale, Hannah identified an opportunity for Mez to join her as a Bedside Learning Coordinator reporting into the Quality Improvement team. As Mez says, her only experience of working life up until this point was Care City, so the BLC role gave her a welcome opportunity to experience working in a hospital alongside new teams and having new work experiences and challenges.
Mez is now back project managing our Living With Long Covid project alongside UCLPartners and supporting the AF pathway roll out across BHR. Much of this done from her home in Colchester, surrounded by the loves of her life, Nala (CockerJack), Rocco (technically a Labrador, but is built like a horse), Theo (Cocker Spaniel) and Zooty the cat! The second love of her life is fancy stationery. The rest of the team are always so jealous of the pens and colourful notebooks that decorate Mez’s desk!
So, as we look to the future for Mez and she talks about her ambition to continue to lead projects that improve population health, many of us wouldn’t be surprised to see her running a kennel (in fact she has discussed owning a farm with her BFF surrounded by alpacas) or owning a franchise of Paperchase. As long as it satisfies her self-confessed nerdy streak!
