Profile

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Laura Lagares Ballantine

    • About Me:

      Hi, I’m Laura! I live in London with my cat and some very cool housemates, I moved down from Liverpool around 4 years ago for a job in a big hospital after my degree in Genetics.

      I love going for walks to explore on the weekend, cooking new recipes and I am trying (and failing) to learn Spanish.

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      I grew up in a small town near Liverpool.

    • My pronouns are:

      She/her

    • My Work:

      I work as a technical lead for a genetics lab, this means that I supervise our lab team to do tests on our samples and find out if somebody has a genetic abnormality. A lot of our samples come from babies that haven’t been born yet, so that we can make sure that they have the right care and support when they are born.

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      My work day is super varied, I carry out some tests myself, analyse results to see if someone has a disease and I am also some peoples’ manager, which means a lot of my day can be dealing with my staff, helping them with issues and finding ways to encourage them to grow in their careers. The most stressful part of my job is dealing with issues when things go wrong – some of our most important tests use a machine and when this breaks down we have to think of other ways to get our results, as our patients still need their results quickly!

    • My Typical Day:

      On a typical day I get the bus to work and grab a coffee on the way to work for 9:30. I eat breakfast at my desk whilst I read through any urgent emails. I then have a morning meeting with my teams where we talk about what needs doing for the day or any issues. My day varies but there are a lot of questions from other labs I need to answer, talking to scientists about our work in the lab and managing people to make sure all our work is done to the deadlines we have.

    Candidate CV questions (extra)

    • Qualifications:

      9 GCSEs – A*-B

      AS level – Dance

      A-levels – Biology, English Literature and Law

      Degree – BSc in Genetics

    • Current Job:

      Technical Lead in Prenatal and Reproductive Genetics

    • Employer:

      Synnovis

    • My Interview

      • What did you want to be after you left school?

        I wanted to be a dancer!

        Were you ever in trouble at school?

        I was actually a very good student, I had detention once as I didn't realise we had homework to complete, never again!

        If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?

        If I didn't do this job I would want to be a doctor.

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