About Toni - Challenging University with Toni Kent

meet your host

a tiny bit of toni kent!

Toni Kent is a professional speaker, writer, podcast host and all-round creative character who loves nothing more than a good story.

She did not go to university.

an unexpected career arc

Despite her lack of a degree, Toni has managed to create a career which has seen her operate in spaces that are not usually known for accepting council estate kids who crashed and burned their way through their teens…

going bananas

Toni’s dad died when she was 14 which (with a few other things) sent her merrily off the rails.

On her 16th birthday she started working at a fruit & veg shop before realising it was a terrible mistake and going back to college to re-sit her maths GCSE and take A-levels.

role models

From A-levels she was told it would be good to apply to uni. But she couldn’t afford to, instead taking a secretarial course which led to her first ‘real’ job at Reed Employment and the female role models she desperately needed to see.

freight fright

Toni goes to work for a freight forwarding company. She travels on business for the first time and witnesses a mass brawl on a boat during the middle of their Christmas do.

She resolves to leave (but not before being introduced to the man who would become her husband).

tech tenacity

A door into the world of tech is opened as a sales administrator role comes up at a local firm.

Toni’s turned down at interview but her tenacity in seeking feedback gets her in.

She loves the money and the opportunity to draw network diagrams.

sexy software

From hardware sales Toni heads off to the land of software where she gets her first glimpse of marketing (and gets told off for singing “London’s Burning” in a round with a group of young colleagues).

She goes to America “for work” for the first time and is hooked.

microsoft madness

The software company gets bought by a bigger one which is eventually consumed by the corporate beast that is Microsoft.

It’s like Club Tropicana – the drinks are all free! And there is more money than she can believe.

She spends years trying to get the “job of her dreams” only to discover that she hates it.

freelance freedom

Thanks to wise counsel from some former colleagues, Toni positions herself as a freelance alliance manager. At the same time she starts writing a blog about her experiences which leads to her first paid ghost-writing work and the creation of the first of her four books: Reasons to be Cheerful, Part One.

standing up

Off the back of some comedic poetry being well received, Toni has a go at stand up (well, what else is a middle-aged mother to do?).

This sparks a whole new career branch encompassing professional speaking, comedy for corporates and podcast hosting which brings us to today!

lessons learned

things you need to know

University admission rates are important to schools – that doesn’t mean they have to be important to you
Most teachers will have been to university – and will not have had jobs outside of the education system – bear this in mind when you’re asking for advice
Gaining a degree is not a “one shot” that you have to take straight after school / college
Degree apprenticeships allow you to ‘earn while you learn’ so you can still gain a degree whilst working and being paid. This will put you years ahead of university peers in terms of work experience (and without the debt)
Many UK-based companies operate blind-screening on CVs which means they do not take educational achievement into account
It is discriminatory for a UK-based organisation to state that a degree is “necessary” unless it is an actual requirement of the job. For more information see the Employers: preventing discrimination on the gov.uk website.