Chris Bellamy

It’s fair to say that the Arkwright Scholarships completely changed my life. The further I go down my Engineering career, the more I realise I am achieving things that I could not have even dreamed of before. Without the Arkwright Scholarship I would never have known what engineers did and, with my family background, by now I would probably be entering my last year of training as a Veterinary Surgeon.

"Chris has been a key member of the Customer Focused Innovation team at Jaguar Land Rover. His passion for engineering, enthusiasm and his drive to make positive change have been a huge benefit to JLR and ultimately its customers. Chris will continually challenge his own performance and takes every opportunity to improve and develop new skills in order to become a more accomplished engineer. It has been a privilege to be a part of that development and I am excited to see what Chris will achieve in the future."

Chris Brown CEng MIMechE , Senior Manager PQ & Engineering Excellence

The greatest benefit from the Arkwright Scholarships was being able to go and complete work experience with my sponsor – Worcester Bosch. This showed me the huge amount of fascinating design and engineering that goes into something as 'everyday' as a heating boilers. I was able to apply my classroom maths and physics (and common sense) to be able to solve problems and create something physical and useful. You can’t get much more inspiring than that. Being able to see how an international company operates was extremely enlightening, even if most of it probably went straight over my head at that age. It was this first-hand insight, together with networking with engineers through Arkwright, that was instrumental in my decision to follow engineering as a career.

I attended the University of Cambridge and studied Engineering. In my final years, I found I had a real passion for the broader Engineering impacts and so specialised in Manufacturing Engineering. My favourite topics were design, innovation and technology management. It all went amazingly well - I graduated with First Class Honours with Distinction and managed to win the prize for the most outstanding performance on my course in the process.

I was very fortunate to be able to complete work experience at a number of businesses during my university summer holidays. The most inspirational place I completed a placement was a company who manufacture Climbing Equipment (Carabiners, Harnesses, Ropes etc.) in North Wales called DMM Engineering. They showed me just how much of an impact an Engineering brain could have, and how fun, challenging and rewarding it could be in the process.

I am now working for Jaguar Land Rover. I am completing the company's Graduate Scheme which allows me to complete placements in various parts of the business, including areas outside of Product Development like Marketing, Finance or PR. Being able to experience all aspects of the business is absolutely vital, and I have learnt a huge amount as well as building a great network of contacts around the business. We also get some fantastic training programmes as part of the Graduate Scheme, whether this is technical training such as completing University courses, or softer skills such as team skills or financial acumen.

There are so many opportunities available for me on the Jaguar Land Rover Graduate Scheme - I intend to stay here and continue to grab as many of them as possible for the foreseeable future.

In the long term, I have many dreams and big ideas for how I could make the world a better place. When the right one comes along, I intend to pursue that idea and follow my dream. I do not know exactly what this will be yet, so in the meantime, I intend to learn as much as possible and arm myself with as many skills and contacts as possible.

The Arkwright Scholarship was a launch pad for what is now hopefully going to be an incredible rocket ride!