Meet the mentor: Jacqueline Rowe (2016)
Jesus College has an innovative Careers and Mentoring Programme matching current students and recent alumni with experienced alumni and leaders in their fields. One of our mentors, Jacqueline Rowe (2016), tells us more about her career, her mentoring experience, and her advice for others about to embark on the mentoring process.
Can you tell us more about why you chose your degree and your career path so far?
I chose to study Linguistics because of a keen interest in language policy developed during my time travelling prior to my degree. It was this interest in policy that led me to my first “proper” job at a think tank called Chatham House, also known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs. As Administrator and then Coordinator of the Institute’s International Law Programme, I supported an excellent team of researchers and strategists working on cutting-edge issues of international law and policy like human rights in the digital environment, multilateralism in the 21st century and building new structures for corporate accountability in an age of massive tech platforms. While in this role – and during the COVID-19 pandemic – I pursued a Masters in Human Rights at the University of Birkbeck, which allowed me to study while continuing to work full time.
I leveraged my new Masters and my Chatham House experience to land a policy role for a social purpose company called Global Partners Digital in 2021; we work to embed human rights standards and principles into digital and technology policy and policy processes. We collaborate with NGO partners across a range of countries on laws and policies relating to topics like disinformation, online safety, cybersecurity, cybercrime, internet shutdowns and artificial intelligence, advocating for those laws and policies for be more aligned with human rights norms and standards; for example, by removing legal loopholes which would facilitate intrusive state surveillance of private communications, or by establishing safeguards around the independence of internet regulators from government interference with free expression. Global Partners Digital also serves as the secretariat for the Freedom Online Coalition, and regularly engages in multilateral and multistakeholder initiatives developing norms and guidance on the digital environment, such as the UN’s Ad hoc Committee on Cybercrime, UNESCO’s guidance for regulating digital platforms, and the Global Network Initiative.
The last four years in these two demanding and fascinating roles have given me a lot of insight and knowledge into legal and policy processes and structures at the national and international level, as well as substantive knowledge about the digital policy domain. I have especially enjoyed the opportunities within my current role to do in-depth comparative legal research, draft and publish analysis and reports, work closely with international partners in a range of democratic contexts and travel and speak publicly about our projects and partnerships. Now and in the next few years, I’m hoping to return more to my undergraduate studies in computational linguistics by focusing my research and advocacy on large language models and chatbots, which pose new and exciting challenges for national and international policy and the protection of human rights in our digital world.
Why do you think mentoring is so important?
Still in the early stages of my career, I may not have as many years to draw upon to offer to undergraduates as my more distinguished peer mentors…! However, I do think it’s really important that young graduates and young professionals share our insights and learnings with those just a few years behind; we have a unique perspective to offer, and our early-career experiences and the opportunities we’ve benefited from will often be more similar or more relevant for current students than those who entered the workforce a longer time ago. Through meeting with current Jesuans to discuss their aspirations and goals, I’ve also been able to reflect on my own journey and progress and think critically about what my own next steps might be. It’s been rewarding to see the little that I have learned benefitting someone else and turning into concrete steps along their path.
For those searching for a mentor, what advice would you offer?
1. Think about what sort of mentorship support you’d like. Do you want a one-off call to chat through someone’s relevant experience? Do you want to be introduced to new people, ideas or networks? Do you want – and have time for – a longer term career coaching arrangement? I really appreciated one of my mentees, Harman, being very clear about what he hoped to gain and what he wanted me to provide – we settled on a virtual call focusing on some specific questions that he felt would be helpful.
2. Think not only about the experiences or titles or a prospective mentor, but also about who they are as a person. What I loved about Deborah’s mentorship request was that she specified certain character traits that she felt were important to her in a mentorship relationship – she was very intentional about the sort of person she wanted to work with and that helped me understand what she was looking for and what was important to her.
3. Never be afraid to ask questions – and in fact, always think of some questions in advance that you’d like to talk about. Could you ask your mentor what they found most challenging about a role or situation? Where they learned the most? Whether there were pivotal decision points in their career that they look back to? How they dealt with challenging colleagues or managers? As a mentor, it’s really helpful for the mentee to direct the conversation as much as possible with questions they want to know the answers to.
Jacqueline can be contacted on Jesus Connect the College's mentoring and networking platform.
The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to Jacqueline Rowe (2016).
