Charlene is based in our Head Office in Liverpool and joined us in 2022. She has extensive experience managing our numerous artwork and technical packaging projects. Charlene is also on our Social Mobility CRG which is committed to ensuring that everyone, regardless of their background, has the chance to realise their full potential. She says:

 I had a difficult upbringing where there wasn’t much money, and I was brought up by a single parent.

At high school I had a great group of friends and one in particular, Louise, really supported me.

I wanted to go to university but had no idea how to achieve it. I really looked up to Louise’s parents and they took me under their wing, helped me to choose which university to go to and took me to a number of open days.

Their help and support was invaluable and also showed me how big a difference someone can make to your life.

I worked really hard for my A’Levels and won a place at Aston University in Birmingham to study Business Management.

I was very lucky that my friend’s parents took the time to help me. Noel Bradley, who even walked me down the aisle when I got married, was a real father figure to me.

I’m ambitious and I can see what you can achieve if you put hard work into something. What happened to me has made me want help and support others with their aspirations and goals. It’s why I joined the Social Mobility CRG at Princes.

A key focus of the CRG activity is mentoring and supporting young people in communities across the UK to gain the skills, knowledge and networks to achieve their aspirations.

Princes recently launched a mentoring programme in partnership with One Million Mentors at two Merseyside schools and I’m part of a group providing mentoring to Year 12 students at The Oldershaw School in Wallasey in Wirral.

Each student receives one-to-one mentoring from a different member of the Princes team over the next 12 months.

I’m mentoring an 18-year-old with autism and helping him with his life plan. I have a younger brother and a sister with special needs which has made it easier for me to build a rapport with him.

As well as my mentoring, I’m also doing an Associate Project management course to help develop my skills and enhance my career opportunities at Princes.

I love my job. I work collaboratively with a number of teams including technical, customer strategy and planning and sales to pull together all the legal, imagery and brand design information to create the packaging that ultimately ends up in the hands of our customers. This artwork contains key pieces of information and also has to showcase the product and brand.

One of my first projects was being involved with the redesign of Princes Italian food brand, Napolina. There were a hundred SKUs to design from oils and pasta to tomatoes, pulses and pizza bases in different shapes and sizes. They all needed a consistent brand image that worked across the portfolio and looked good on shelf.

I’m really proud of the work we did and it’s exciting to see the redesigned products all now for sale. The artwork really pops on the shelf of retailers, which is what we wanted to achieve.

As a team we process over 1,200 different pieces of digital artwork for the company a year. Great packaging helps to drive sales so we’re an integral part of the business.