10 Questions with...Kate Corry

1. Hello! Tell us a little bit about yourself, and what you do at UCL.

I’m a Media Relations Manager with over ten years of experience in PR and comms. I joined UCL in 2018 and covered Engineering and The Bartlett, adding Innovation & Enterprise in 2022. Recently I swapped to Arts & Humanities and the IOE.

2. What are you most looking forward to working on over the coming months?

I think Arts & Humanities has some stories that would make great feature pieces – these are long reads for UCL News that we can also pitch to media and cross promote on UCL social channels and podcasts.

3. What would you do (for a career) if you weren’t doing this?

I’d be a TV presenter. Or a film/TV director. I worked in film production in a previous life and was fascinated by the direction process. I had no idea at school that it could be a career opportunity.

4. What are your main interests outside work?

I’ll pretend you’re asking me before I had children – I love running and have also got into triathlons. I’ve done a few sprint distance ones and my goal in the next few years is to complete an Olympic length one. I also love travelling when I can, music festivals (more Bestival than Glastonbury these days) and eating out.

5. What are you reading at the moment?

I’ve just finished Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez. I’ll be discussing it with my book group soon – I haven’t read a novel like it before and really enjoyed it.

6. Which famous person in history would you want to spend the day with?

Maya Angelou. She had such an incredible life, I’d love to just sit and listen to her.

7. If you could develop a new skill - and reach an advanced level within a week - what would it be?

Either singing or a musical instrument. I play the piano and I’ve always liked the idea of playing the drums – there’s no such thing as an uncool drummer is there?

8. What is the most recent app you have downloaded?

The Peppa Pig games app to my iPad, as a last resort for my three-year-old when we flew to Italy recently. I also downloaded some highbrow CBeebies educational games apps for her but once she’d spotted Peppa Pig it was game over.

9. What did you learn about yourself from lockdown?

Like most people, I realised how important human interaction and being outside in nature is to me. My daughter was three months old when the first lockdown happened and I stayed sane thanks to very long daily walks with her in the pram, often on the phone to a family member. That, and that I can make a mean banana bread.

10. Tell us a joke!

Did you know, grammatically speaking, you can’t ‘run through a campsite’? You can only ‘ran through a campsite’….

Because it’s past tents