“Participating in Academia Cerebra was not only an incredible learning experience but also a true privilege. It gave me the unique opportunity to meet and network with inspiring industry leaders and connect with them in person during our time in Milan. Being able to engage with professionals at the heart of the fashion world made the experience even more impactful and motivating”

I was thirteen when I moved to the UK, and I remember feeling like everyone around me already knew something I didn’t. The way people dressed, the brands they carried, the stores they chose to walk into – it all felt like a language with rules I hadn’t been taught yet. I wanted to understand it.

At school, Psychology and Art at A-Level weren’t just subjects I enjoyed; looking back, they were the beginning of something. e curiosity about why people behave the way they do, what draws them to certain things, what makes something feel worth wanting it was all there, just unnamed.

Sephora is where it finally started to make sense. I was watching people, noticing patterns, asking questions I didn’t yet have the vocabulary to answer. What I kept coming back to was this: beauty had very little to do with beauty, and everything to do with belonging.

Finding Academia Cerebra in my first year at Durham felt like stumbling onto something I hadn’t known I was looking for. For the first time, the things I’d been quietly observing, the way desire works, the way brands make people feel had names, frameworks, a whole field of study behind them. The endowment effect. e psychology of ownership. The way a brand can make something feel like it already belongs to you before you’ve even bought it. It clicked in a way that very little had before. I developed real fluency in strategic brand thinking, visual storytelling, and cross-cultural consumer analysis – skills that felt immediately alive, not academic.
And then Milan.

The Immersive Learning Week was the moment everything became tangible, walking through designer showrooms, sitting in on trade fairs, and being in the actual rooms where the industry operates. I remember thinking: this is it. This is the world I want to work in.

Right now, I’m a Visual Merchandise Intern in L’Oréal’s Luxe Division as part of my placement year at Durham, and honestly, it still catches me o guard sometimes – that the curiosity I had as a thirteen-year-old has led me here. Ultimately, I want to be someone who shapes the way luxury brands are built from the inside, not just how they communicate, but who they are.

City:
London, UK

Education:
Marketing and Management at Durham University

Mentor:
Mirko Giuri, Legal Director, Dolce & Gabbana

Role:
L’Oreal Luxe Division Intern, Sephora in-store consultant, Marketing assistant for Durham University