Helene Crutzen

What colleagues said about Helene: Authentic leadership, encouraging an open and honest culture. 

Overview of current position and main responsibilities   

As Institute Manager I work closely, in partnership, with the Institute Director and input into and ensure the delivery of our mission and strategic plan. We are a very large Institute, £85M annual turnover, over 700 staff and450 students, all organised over a complex and wide spread estate. I have delegated responsibility for all the operational aspects of the Institute, from budget and financial management, business continuity planning, HR, teaching delivery, administration support through to laboratory operations, H&S, and our Queen Square Library. I head the Professional Services teams of the Institute, both those embedded in our eight research departments and those within our central support teams. I am also closely involved with ad hoc special projects or the delivery of major capital programmes, such as the new Translational Research Centre IoN/DRI wet lab building on Gray’s Inn Road. 

As part of my role I also work closely with the Faculty, in particular our Director of Operations and our Dean, Faculty of Brain Sciences. 

 What was your career path to this position and subject area?   

Having grown up in Italy and the Netherlands, I moved to London for my university education at 17, not knowing anyone in the UK or the city, as a non-native English speaker, and I always consider that to be the first significant stepping stone in my career path. I started off with scientific training BSc through to PhD. I did my PhD part-time, being the lab manager for the functional genomics lab at UCL, in the Cruciform Building. My PhD was very much bench based, involving lots of cell culture and also work with animal models, as I focused on the transcriptional regulation of a master regulator of fate for skeletal muscle development, during embryonic development. As a PhD student, I realised that after 5 years working in a lab, I enjoyed scientific research but not so much the bench work- input didn’t always equal output and that generated some frustration! 

Therefore, I decided to apply my scientific education and transferable skills to science administration.  

Straight after my PhD I got a job working for the Wellcome Trust as a Grants Advisor in the Molecules, Genes and Cells funding area, which I enjoyed a lot, and subsequently moved around the charity sector working for the British Heart Foundation (BHF) as Research Advisor to the Medical Directors. I wanted to further my career, building on my programme management skills, and acquire additional operational and business management skills. I successfully applied for a Divisional Manager role at King’s. When my current role at IoN was advertised, five years ago, I applied for it - this represented a promotion and a significant scaling up, and meant I had the opportunity to work within an organisation of international standing and competitiveness, encompassing research excellence and translational delivery.. I have retained a connection to the charity sector, by being a member of the finance board, on a voluntary basis, for a medium-sized biomedical charity. In all my roles to date, I have stayed within the biomedical research sector, and, it appears, never straying too far both geographically and thematically, from my starting point!  

Do you feel you have a good work / life balance? Why?   

This is a difficult question, ask me again on a good day! On the whole I think I am managing things in order to have a fairly good work/life balance. I am quite protective of my time and I think I am very focused, organised and efficient at work, which means I can turnaround fairly large volumes of work in a short space of time. I do not believe in “face time”- less is more - being focused and efficient is much more productive than procrastinating and consistently working long hours, on a regular basis. I am less organised at home though... I try to adhere to reasonable working hours, and try to avoid checking emails or working at weekends - of course there are exceptions, especially during busy times, it is inevitable; It comes in peaks and troughs, that’s what I always tell the team, I am flexible with my team, they manage their own time, all I ask is that they are flexible with me and my expectations in return. 

I have to attend many meetings during the working week, which really adds to my workload and the working hours. Prior to the pandemic I would do my best to keep one a day week meetings free, as much as possible, and work from home that day: it provided a lot of invaluable time to get things done on my never-ending to do list, and also time for self-reflection and processing of information and ideas. This process also helped me mentally separate work and home life. Unfortunately, this has dissipated with the pandemic, but I try to step away from the laptop come dinner time and not return until the next morning. I am also very lucky to have the space in my house to be able to shut the spare bedroom door, where I work, and try to forget work until the next day. Another positive side-effect of working remotely is that the time saved not commuting on the tube means I can exercise more than usual during the week and I highly recommend this - staying active helps with motivation and to cope with stress and anxiety, especially during these difficult times when we cannot be surrounded by our friends and family. I also really enjoy having my cat, Phoebe, sleep next to me “at the office” during the day. 

Who has inspired your career?   

No one person or experience stands out in my mind. Rather I believe my schooling and work experience allowed me to explore the areas and types of work that I enjoyed and was good at. For me this has been professional administration and management within a scientific setting. Throughout I have felt it is important to try to push yourself and avail of opportunities as they arise - be it training courses or applying for new jobs - in order to continue to grow, take on and tackle new challenges, meet new people, and on a personal level feel that you are continuing to contribute to a shared important goal or mission.  

What advice would you give to your younger self? 

Work less, play more! Be more confident, don’t be afraid to say no and take risks. 

What is the best thing about working at IoN? 

The people. This is an incredibly “people rich” institution – it is international and cosmopolitan, bringing together so many different people from so many different backgrounds, ethnicities, nationalities, expertise, all working together in partnership towards a common goal, to better the health of patients, cure disease, and translate research advances into patient benefit.  I have made some great friends and colleagues at ION. In fact, I regret that I still have not had the opportunity to meet everyone at least once, face to face - we are too big!