When a career covers such diverse sectors as energy, supply chain and logistics, optometry, healthcare and professional training and certification, there’s a lesson in change management to be learned. Marta Kalas tells her wide-ranging story.
What brought you to Bayes in the first place?
I arrived in England from my native Hungary in 1990 to be with my husband. By then the wall had come down and Hungarians had started to travel again but I was still very much the only one of my kind at Bayes. The main reasons for coming to study at Bayes were its multicultural nature and the location, plus the specialisations they offered, including the International Business and Export course for which I opted. It was a very open and inclusive place to be, which suited me down to the ground.
How did your career pan out in the early years after Bayes?
I thought that banking was my calling but following a slump in the sector in ‘92 I had to re-think my strategy and was recruited by GE (General Electric), who were expanding significantly in Europe at the time. A lot of my classmates were just expected to head straight into finance in The City, but the recession put paid to that, so I considered myself quite fortunate. That said, I’d gone straight from Hungary and an educational background in English and Scandinavian studies without prior work experience, to academia in a UK business school, so the learning curve at GE was steep. The MBA and the “can-do attitude” it instilled in me were the launch pads to go on to do different things in my career.
What changes have you had to make or adapt to over the years?
Juggling a young family and a career, for starters. After GE I worked as a Supply Chain and Logistics consultant, which enabled me to manage this more easily. However, my husband then took over an ophthalmological clinic in the early 2000s. The surgery had seen very good days but the business side of things needed to be run differently, so I stepped in and was running a Harley Street corrective eye surgery. From previous responsibilities, managing multi-million-dollar warehouse consolidations, I was now in charge of a much smaller operation for 18 months, successfully turning it round for re-sale to a large institutional investor, luckily before the full effects of the 2008 global financial crisis kicked in.
What have you learned from these pivots in your career?
It’s when you’re managing smaller numbers and people that you get to apply the lessons learned from your studies, such as marketing strategies, cashflow and HR. Each change I’ve embraced as a chance to grow. I could have reverted to the corporate trajectory on which I began but chose to remain a consultant. Luckily, I have an ingrained personality that means I have a very high tolerance for uncertainty. The consultant lifestyle that I have consciously opted for means you’re always having to earn your bacon but, on the plus side, everything is an opportunity. Change management has always been a thing, and I can say in all honesty that I grew into it without too much difficulty, because of the kind of person I am and the kind of career I have carved out for myself.
The majority of your career these past 20 years has been focused on the healthcare industry
I consider myself a very hands-on person and partly as a result of that I ended up working on projects for the Department of Health and the Department of Trade and Industry. Over the years I have been tasked with identifying what aspects of the NHS were business-ready, including for potential deployment abroad. Those kinds of interim roles within the health service give you real insight into the underlying problems at structural and systemic levels. It was during this period that I had a chance encounter with the then Chair of Thomson Screening at a pitching event. This eventually morphed into the SchoolScreener® initiative that was the main focus of my attention from 2013 to last year.
Tell us more about SchoolScreener®
SchoolScreener® is a software designed to provide school nursing administration. It has been widely adopted by the NHS to the extent that over a million children have benefitted from the screening service it provides. To date, about 80% of London-based families have had use of the tool. It was developed by Thomson Screening, which was formed by City St George’s. I arrived on the project when it was at prototype stage and helped build it up and commercialise it. It’s more a workflow product than a clinical one, facilitating the admin side of school nursing with an initial focus on hearing and vision. Latterly we added extra components, such as immunisation management. This was especially appreciated when the COVID lockdowns were relaxed and children began returning to school. The poor nurses had more than double the usual amount of screenings to perform and test results to manage, so SchoolScreener® proved a bit of a godsend! I’m really proud of its success.
How have you remained in touch with Bayes through all these defining stages in your career?
Beyond the occasional events I attend, being a mentor has been the best and most gratifying way. My current mentee is from City St George’s and I provide her with as much careers guidance as I can. I like this set-up a lot – it’s a carefully structured personally rewarding programme with objectives but one that only takes up a couple of hours of your time per month, so perfectly feasible to fit in with professional and personal commitments.
Your career has taken another turn since your years in healthcare
Indeed! In 2022 I founded Open CPD, an online CPD accreditation platform that enables training providers to issue globally recognisable certificates. I launched the business primarily for the UK market but we’re already expanding into Africa and the Middle East where there’s also huge demand for lifelong learning. In short, sometimes it’s tricky to obtain evidence of a course you may have taken in areas such as, for example, GDPR compliance, journalism or AI. Our platform cuts out a lot of the red tape in issuing certificates as proof of successfully completing professional training. What I thought at the start would remain a niche product is now answering an ever-increasing need from trainers to be able to recognise active professionals’ training. Whether this will be the last twist and turn in my career remains to be seen but I’m finding it a hugely satisfying endeavour! I’ve welcomed every change in my career to date and this one is no exception.
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