PEOPLE
PROFESSIONAL REGISTRATION
My Professional Registration journey: Alison Bulbeck
In the latest edition of our Professional Registration Stories, Alison Bulbeck, KM Fellow, talks about her journey to Professional Registration which began three years ago.
I BEGAN my career on the IT Graduate scheme of a global pharmaceutical company where I was fortu- nate to gain sponsorship for my MSc Knowledge and Information Management. The scheme gave me a range of options for advancement and I embarked on a business analysis career that lasted 10 years, working between digital system users and software developers ensure specified requirements met business need. I discovered how rewarding it was for me to build rapport and trust with my service users and gain deep insights into the important work they did to deliver complex pharmaceutical R&D programmes that would save lives and increase quality of life to patients around the world. I became immersed in a suite of digital projects that harnessed R&D knowledge for wider reuse in the Healthcare community, which became the foundation for my Knowledge Management career. For the past eight years I have enjoyed a varied career as senior knowledge manager leading the KM Centre of Expertise and latterly business change lead for a range of improvement ini- tiatives in DE&S, part of UK MOD. Learning and professional development have always been a big part of my life. I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t either immersed in a learning activity or doing an audit of my digital skills to keep pace with evolving organisational trends. I attended this year’s CILIP Conference and I found the debate around Artificial Intelligence to be thought-pro- voking, particularly the implications on my profession and the ethical considerations in our use of AI both for ourselves in our career and for wider society. My moral compass has been swinging like a pendulum ever since, grappling with these concepts, however I reconcile this as a function of me being curious, open to exploring new ideas, the positive and negative dimensions of an argument and being receptive towards being ‘comfortable with the uncomfortable’ so I can continue to evolve and grow. Having been a regular CILIP member for several years through the MoD partnership scheme, I decided to work towards CILIP Knowledge Management Fellowship, as I felt it would increase my professional identity and boost opportunities for me to advocate more credibly for KM think- ing and practices in my organisation and wider Defence. Whilst I have academic qualifications to post-graduate level in Computer Science and KM plus various professional credentials including IIBA and British Computer Society Business Analysis International Diplomas, I had not previ- ously considered Registration, so it was a leap of faith for me.
56 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
Alison Bulbeck, Business Change Leader and Knowledge Management Professional at Defence Equipment & Support.
Motivations I started to think about becoming professionally regis- tered about three years ago when I was leading a team of six staff in the DE&S (MOD) Knowledge Management Cen- tre of Expertise. I felt the need at that time to refresh the knowledge I gained from my MSc in 2007 and gain more formal professional status, so I shortlisted my options to the KM module at the University of West of England (UWE) and CILIP KM Fellowship.
Winter 2025
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