🚀 Introducing.... the Ambition Series!
Over the past year, we’ve encountered ambition in many forms. In Sarah Tabrizi's decades-long pursuit of progress against Huntington’s disease, it has meant staying with a problem through years of uncertainty. In Victor Glover's journey from naval aviation to the Moon, it has meant repeatedly stepping beyond familiar limits. And in Gina Miller's reflections on success, it has meant holding onto the purpose behind an ambition even when the path changes and other people’s measures of achievement begin to crowd in.
Yet ambition itself still has a mixed reputation. It can suggest status, self-promotion or the pressure to keep reaching for the next achievement. These stories point towards something broader. Ambition can give direction to curiosity, sustain us through difficult work, bring people together around a shared purpose and push us to imagine possibilities beyond what already exists. Perhaps the more interesting question, then, is not simply how ambitious we are, but what we choose to be ambitious for, how we pursue it and how our ambitions change as we learn.
This broader view of ambition sits at the heart of this year’s Laidlaw Scholars Conferences, and ahead of them, we’re turning to our own Scholars through two connected series:
In Scholars on Ambition, Scholars from across the Laidlaw community will reflect on the ambitions that have shaped their research, leadership and wider journeys. Their perspectives will explore ambition as curiosity, persistence, collective purpose and adaptability, while asking some of the harder questions too. What keeps us moving when progress stalls? When does ambition require us to persist, and when does it ask us to change course? And how might our own ambitions evolve as we move through university, our careers and into leadership?
Ambition in Action takes those questions into Leadership-in-Action experiences around the world. Through projects with different organisations and communities, Scholars will share what they set out to contribute, what challenged or changed their thinking and how their understanding of ambition developed along the way. For Scholars preparing for their own LiA, these stories offer a glimpse of the many forms that experience can take. For the wider community, they offer practical examples of what ambition looks like when it has to respond to people, place and purpose.
We can’t wait to share the first Scholar feature later this week, so keep an eye out! 👀
Hi! I'm Amanda, a third year Neuroscience student and Laidlaw alum from UCL. I'm Swedish-Persian and grew up in Sweden before moving to London for uni. These days, alongside my studies, I work for the Foundation as a Marketing Assistant.
For my first year research project, I worked on optimising alginate hydrogels for 3D astrocyte culture systems. In simpler terms, I was figuring out the best way to prepare a jelly-like scaffolds so that star-shaped brain cells called astrocytes could grow in three dimensions rather than flat on a dish. This matters because 3D environments mimic the brain more realistically, which could help researchers develop better treatments for neurological disorders!
For my Leadership-in-Action project, I co-created Beyond the Books, a resource designed to help students from underrepresented backgrounds navigate the unwritten rules of university life, from internships and networking to professional opportunities that aren't always obvious if you're the first in your family to go to uni.
Always happy to connect, whether you want to chat about neuroscience, widening access, the Laidlaw experience, or just say hello! One of my favourite things about this community is getting to meet people from different universities and backgrounds, so please do reach out! 🌟
