Profile: Bo Ruan, Phil, Database and Projects Administrator

I am now a Database and Projects Administrator in the Office of Development and Alumni Relations(ODAR) at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). ODAR keeps alumni of the School in touch through events and mailings as well as raise money from alumni, trusts & foundations, private corporations and other rich individuals for the School. My job is to maintain the large database so that the rest of the office can successfully contact alumni. I started first as a temp at the tail end of the first August after my graduation and was lucky enough to be offered a contract by LSE.

What’s great about what I’m doing now is that almost everything I do is new each day. I rarely have repetitive tasks and I get to learn new skills all the time whether it’s of a technical database nature or about project management.

If I could change something about the past then it’s that I would have tried harder to obtain valuable summer job experience opportunities because employers are looking for experience on top of a good degree. If I could change something about the present then I would like to have more time to devote to my hobbies football and Wing Chun Kung Fu!

People always ask me, ‘How could philosophy possibly help you in a professional sense?’ I always tell them that professionally, it’s not the knowledge I gained from philosophy that helps but the intense logical training and highly analytical skills developed during the course that provides me to excel at what I do. Thinking clearly is, in my opinion, the most important skill at work. Another part of the course that helped me was the tight deadlines of one essay a week for every teaching week of the three years I was at King’s.