EDITOR INTERVIEW
In conversation with...
Trevor Gauntlett, CEO & Principal Consultant, Trevor Gauntlett Consulting
Where were you born and where did you spend your early years? I was born in Workington, Cumberland. I met two criteria for “Workington Man” (the target demographic profile of the Conservative party in the 2019 General Election) by dint of my age and place of birth. However, we moved away in the late 1960s, and I went on to higher education, which meant that I didn’t meet the other two criteria.
What did you want to be growing up? I always wanted to be a chemist. I was inspired by the BBC TV series “Tomorrow’s World.” I was 7 years old or younger when I asked my dad what an epoxy resin was. I recall it as the first question my dad couldn’t answer. Growing up with Harold Wilson’s “white heat of technology” and the space race, technology always inspired me.
Education – where did you go, what subjects did you choose and why?
My dad was a civil servant, so had to move to get promotion. My primary schools were in Workington; Bootle, Merseyside; and Washington, Tyne & Wear. My secondary school was the first purpose-bult comprehensive school in the country. It burned down in one of the biggest school fires of the 1970s when I was in what is now year 8. We had months of being bussed to part-time learning in church halls. I often tell kids whose education was messed up by COVID that I know exactly what it was like.
What was your path to higher education? I had two great chemistry teachers up to the age of 16, who empowered and challenged me. I am convinced I got 100% on one paper of my Chemistry O Level. My teachers at A Level were less wonderful and I cruised, comfortably gaining the entrance requirements for four of my five university choices, but not feeling sufficiently enthused to chase the stretching requirements of Cambridge, instead going
64 LUBE MAGAZINE NO.187 JUNE 2025
Sheffield University. Somehow, despite renewing my passion for football, continuing my passion for basketball and taking up an editorial role with the University’s award-winning newspaper, I found enough time to complete my bachelor’s degree.
First job – where and when, what did you like about it and what did you not? My first salaried job was my postdoctoral research at Southampton University, which was a shock. I’d shared a lab at Sheffield with my PhD supervisor, who is only 4 years older and wasn’t even in a permanent role when I started my PhD. I was his only postgraduate student for a year and had always been able to ask his advice. Suddenly I was expected to be the font of all knowledge in a large research group. I felt a lot of pressure from that.
My postdoc collaborator, John Evans, became Dean of Faculty while I was there, but that allowed me to develop the role of Project Manager. Every couple of months we would decamp from Southampton to the UK’s national synchrotron (then at Daresbury, around 200 miles away) and fire X-rays at samples. Daresbury was a multi-user facility. We worked in allocated time slots of 24, 48 or 72 hours, the laboratories were not equipped for chemistry. So, we needed contingencies against the synchrotron under-performing and extra experiments just in case it worked better than expected. You didn’t want to waste a single photon!
How has career mapping led to where you are now?
I never had a career map. I think I always wanted to work in industry, but my first private sector role was at ICI. About a year before I took the job, we came upon ICI’s Winnington works in Northwich, while we were avoiding a closure on the M6. I said to my wife “If I ever think of applying for a job here, stop me.” She didn’t.
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