Career Progression Stories: Puegee Lam

At 1625, we are passionately dedicated to fostering the growth and development of our colleagues, empowering them to excel in their careers. Explore Pugee Lam’s journey in our latest instalment of ‘Career Progression Stories.’

“I first heard about 1625 during a multi-agency meeting in my past role supporting adults into recovery from alcohol and substance misuse. The meeting was for my youngest client aged 21 who was accompanied by his 1625 Future 4 Me worker, and I noticed the strong connection and trust they had – something I wasn’t able to develop with this particular young person no matter how much I tried. I decided that I wanted to get a job at 1625 – that was in 2013 – almost 12 years ago!

My first role was a Cash Pointers Worker – it was a newly funded project with a new team supporting young people to manage money better. I learnt a lot in this role – working with young people, how to manage debts and how to help them through those difficult times. We were encouraged to be creative, and I felt valued to be able to lead a side-project recruiting interior designers to work with young people to decorate a room in their home on a budget.

When the funding ended for the Cash Pointers Project, I interviewed for two new part-time roles within 1625 – the Money Tree Project, and Cash Pointers Legacy. With Money Tree, I worked one-to-one with young people and recruited volunteers to help young people to learn more about financial capability. This role was a nice challenge for me, as I felt fulfilled in my love for working directly with young people, but also a new challenge of recruiting, training and coordinating volunteers – it was also my first supervisory role. From a young age, I have always volunteered my time, so volunteers’ having a meaningful experience is important to me.  The Legacy role was very different for me – delivering financial capability training direct to professionals supporting young people and developing an extensive (72 page!) toolkit to support professionals in this work – it was a consolidation of all my learning over the first five years at 1625. I have never had much confidence speaking in front of groups of people, so these roles really helped my personal development.

After the end of those projects, the role of Volunteer Coordinator became available which aligned with my newly developed skillset of coordination of volunteers. This did take me away from the direct working with young people, which over time did test my motivation as I did not always feel fulfilled. However, soon with the added responsibility of Community Mentors, meant I had some direct working with young people again, this role became a lovely challenging and fulfilling role for me. Later I had further responsibility to line-manage two colleagues – this presented a different challenge of becoming a supervisor to peers I previously worked alongside and at first, I felt uncomfortable, but with some time we adapted, and I became confident in my style of leadership and enjoyed it.

Later, I went on maternity leave and returned to a job-share. The adjustment to becoming a parent, going part-time and juggling childcare was tough, but with time, support and benefits of flexible-working – I have been able to have the “I got this” feeling again.

I’ve had ups and downs, and a zig-zag journey at 1625 but it is truly a great organisation to be part of because of the opportunities and the support – especially being able to work alongside colleagues who are some of the best people who care so much for the young people and each other.”

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