Greg Dorban has awarded third year students Zofia Orlowska and Michaela Condell with the bursary and will offer them help, advice and mentoring throughout the final stage of their degrees. 

Greg, who graduated with a Marketing BA from Bedfordshire in 2011 and is a previous recipient of the Steel Charitable Trust Bursary, created the Studentship Award in 2019.

This year he is offering the award to two students from the University’s Business School, and plans to extend this to three in 2021.

Marketing student Zofia said: “I’m so happy. I feel honoured to be awarded the Studentship. I would love to do a language course. English is my second language so I would like to continue this amazing journey.

“It has also helped my confidence. I didn’t think I deserved the award, but then I realised maybe I can do more than I think. Now I have this amazing mentor and I will be more confident making my future decisions.”

Public Relations student Michaela expressed her delight: “I was so shocked to win this Studentship, I wasn’t expecting it.

“It’s going to help me a lot because having mentoring from an experienced person will be hugely beneficial. The money is just an added bonus.”

Greg said of his motivations behind the award: “I’m a big believer in people bettering themselves with better options, better choices and better education. However, one of the things I’ve seen through working and employing people is, graduates and young professionals often struggle to understand what the expectations of them are.

“Graduates have lots of knowledge of how their subject works in theory, but that transition of putting those into practice can be challenging. I wanted to launch the Studentship Award to help with that transition.”

Simple #productivity #hack. List the 3 things energize you the most, and list the 3 things that most exhaust you. List ways to reduce the latter and do more of the former. Execute. #business

— Greg Dorban (@gregdorban) February 15, 2018

Greg is offering two parts to the Studentship Award. One is financial support in the form of £1000 to each student, and the second is mentoring support to ensure the students are prepared for going in to employment.

During Greg’s own final year at Bedfordshire, he spoke with his tutor about potential work who then put Greg in contact another person. Greg explains, “The person I was introduced to is the owner of the business I am now partner at”.

Greg is now Chief Strategy Officer at Ledger Bennett.

He continued: “Putting yourself in the right positions and seeing who you know, and who you are being introduced to, and not just worrying about what you look like on paper, will help you discover opportunities you may not originally see.

“If you don’t put your best foot forward and play the game, then you’ll always be the person watching and wondering why other people are so lucky.”

“I want someone to have the best opportunity they can, and then hopefully in turn, they will learn valuable things they can pass on and share.”