CUBO Member Diversity Spotlight: Carley Owen

What is your name, and what are your pronouns?

Carley Owen 
she/her/hers 

Can you tell us about your career path, current role, and what attracted you to work in higher education? 

I have worked across the UK in many HE institutions and for charities since graduating from UCLAN in 2012. Whilst at university, I worked supporting the Students’ Union and sports centre on campus with community and student events.  Luckily, after I graduated, there was a Student Activities Assistant role at The Union, Manchester Metropolitan University, where I supported societies and sports clubs with all their events, fixtures and planning day to day. I then became the Societies Coordinator at Huddersfield Students’ Union (from Lancashire to Yorkshire, I had explaining to my Mum to do – if you know, you know).   

I’d always been drawn to London, so when an opportunity at Queen Mary Students Union arose, I jumped at the chance to move to the Big Smoke. Here, I managed over 300 student groups and delivered welcome fairs and freshers’ week. To do this in London was a dream come true. After three years at QMSU, I then moved over to the University of East London Students’ Union, where after a year I was ‘poached’ to join the external relations department as their events manager, delivering graduation ceremonies, festivals and royal visits. Alongside my full-time career at this point I was also supporting Enhance the UK; a user led disability charity who I booked to come and train some of our staff; and fell in love with what they stood for. I am now trustee for the charity and have travelled to places like Serbia to present and deliver workshops around disability awareness. 

My next and current destination was University of the Arts London, somewhere I had always strived to work as a young northerner. Working with likeminded creatives in London, I’d finally made it. This role has really highlighted at points why I love what I do. Through some tough times in the role, one thing has always remained the same – my passion and dedication for enhancing the student experience and ensuring students have the most inclusive and welcoming start or end to their higher education.   

You can’t quantify in data creating a memory for a student that will hopefully last a lifetime (I can see my boss now twitching at this sentence), but the positive comments made to you and your team after each event and seeing all the planning unfold in real life, can. Whether they are an international student arriving to the UK knowing absolutely no one and they join your team to support students and then progress to being a full-time member of staff.  Or an introverted queer student who has always wanted to perform on stage, attending your drag workshop classes and gaining confidence right in front of you. These are the moments as any events/experience team you strive to create, and I can’t wait to keep on  creating these opportunities for students in the years to come. 

Why is diversity and inclusion in the workplace important to you?

When I was studying at university this is where I finally realised, I was queer. I’d always wondered why I wasn’t like my high school friends, meeting the boys at the park (very stereotypical) and instead wanted to play football and rugby with the boys (even more stereotypical). As for many students, university is a time of self-discovery and luckily for me I had friends and family who were accepting of this, they even knew before I did! 

I didn’t realise the importance of speaking up about my identity until later in my career. It was when I reached London and had an interaction with a senior staff member who proceeded to say that because I was ‘northern, a lesbian and chubby’ that I would need to try harder to succeed in London. I never realised my accent, sexual orientation or weight could impact how I sent an email or delivered an event, who would have thought it?! Suffice to say, I didn’t hang around in that role for much longer after that. It did, however, light a fire in me to change this rhetoric and to ensure that all these aspects that were being used as a negativity against me I could turn into a positive and support others in similar situations. 

I became the LGBTQ+ Staff network chair and spokesperson in many of my roles after this encounter. I also gained a voluntary role with Pride in London as their Head of Events supporting the delivery of the largest Pride in the world and fostering community relationships. Ensuring we provide platforms for LGBTQ+ individuals is key to stopping the ignorance that faces us daily and allows for more open discussions to take place. I feel incredibly lucky I get to do this and combine both my external and internal work to better the community I’m so proud to be a part of. 

Since being openly queer in my workplace, I have faced backlash and negativity at times but have mainly been allowed the freedom and trust to support students and staff in this community, which I am grateful for. I am also immensely proud to have picked up many nominations and award wins for my team and students in this area along the way. Alongside this, being openly queer in my work has led to collaborations with key LGBTQ+ organisations such as DIVA, Trans in the City and Queer Student Awards. 

In December 2023, I received a diagnosis of ADHD, a mixture of both hyperactivity and inattentiveness, and the penny started to drop. Suddenly realising ‘that’s why this happened’ or ‘that’s why I feel like that’ etc. Strangely, it did feel like ‘coming out’ all over again, but this time with a lot of anxiety around how my diagnosis would affect future job prospects and the role I’m currently in. Which is a wild sentence to say out loud, but something instantly, whether it be my ADHD brain or not, that I wanted to shine more positivity on in the HE world. 

Focusing on key campaigns around neurodiversity and disability is something I have always embedded into my teams and will always continue to do. With now the intersectionality aspect of linking in with LGBTQ+ community this has been instrumental to many of our successes over the last year and our better understanding of it as a whole accommodation department. We are still learning as a team, and I am still steering the conversation and campaigns as I type. The number of students and staff that have disclosed or felt able to talk to me around their own diagnosis or LGBTQ+ journeys has been overwhelming, in a positive way. Through these conversations, we now have a pool of people ready and engaged to join us for our history month campaigns, Pride pushes and much more throughout the year.  

I understand that part of my success in this area has been down to me openly sharing my own journey with colleagues or students which some of you might not want to do, and there is nothing wrong with that. There are so many excellent organisations out there that want to support our institutions and without them as extremely loyal partners over the last few years it could have been a different story entirely. Now more than ever we need to support our students and staff and prepare them for the world they face outside of HE and this is something I feel falls to people in my position to do and do it loudly. Anything you deliver in this area whether it be small or large will have an enormous impact.   

What advice would you give to others in the CUBO community to help them foster an inclusive environment and/or be an effective ally? 

• It sounds quite simple but make staff and student inclusion an everyday talking topic. Although we are all here for students, ensuring our staff team feel safe and have the confidence to be themselves at work will only have a positive impact on the experience the students receive. The more we openly talk about protected characteristics, the more we learn and dispel myths and negativity.   

• Include it in your agenda points for key meetings, sharing a spotlight of success from students or staff in this area. Allow updates or staff/student networks to join and update your teams on their ongoings throughout the year and how you can be involved. Create that space for people to listen and learn without judgement. If you don’t feel confident hosting the session, there will be plenty of people in your organisation that will or those external to you. Contacting your EDI teams and student and staff networks is the first port of call if you have no one in your immediate team already. 

• The dreaded P word – ensure your student/staff policies around equality, diversity and inclusion are updated and are transparent and easily accessible to students and staff. Including a ‘expectations’ and ‘values’ part to this also.  

• Work with local LGBTQ+ organisations to deliver awareness training with your student reps, assistants alongside all staff (if budget allows). This could be pronoun awareness, trans inclusion, cultural awareness, unconscious bias and many more. 

• Creating student roles in this area has been a huge driver to our success also. 

• Inviting students into senior management meetings to share their journeys has been a fantastic eye opener for many and has changed how we support our students across all departments of accommodation.   

• Have flags/bunting present in reception/common areas as this creates an instant ease for any LGBTQ+ person entering your building.  

• Progression flag lanyards/badges for staff and students – this is a great recruitment hack for any interviews or open days you have throughout the year.
  
  
• Have queer events in your September calendar and highlighting key campaigns across your digital platforms all year round will help create a feeling of inclusivity. 

• Create guides and manuals for LGBTQ+ students, showcasing safe venues, barbers, restaurants around the colleges and halls. 

• Ensure that on move-in the students know that identity and pronouns are important to the organisation. Having pronoun badges, stickers as part of welcome gifts, input door hangers with a space for this to be written so they don’t have to say it constantly when meeting new flatmates has been a huge success for us in those initial welcome weeks.   

• Don’t be so afraid to get it wrong, that you just don’t do anything at all. If you are open to learning and trying even just one of the things above, it will make an impact on your students and staff. 

Can you share a diversity and inclusion focused TV/film/book/podcast recommendation? 

• I’d have to share our Queer Peers podcast that myself and the team set up early last year, allowing our students, staff and our external stakeholders to share their own journeys in the hope of supporting others knowledge in the HE sector. 

• A book I’m reading this history month is ‘Thank You For Calling The Lesbian Line’ by Elizabeth Lovatt. This looks back to the 90s when being queer was still very much secretive and taboo for women/non-binary individuals, with those from all backgrounds turning to the lesbian line for help.  A true historical book with real life conversations that took place.