We value all of our employees, past and present, and have built up a strong network of alumni. These long-lasting relationships mean we can continue to exchange views on economic regulation and customer engagement, and to learn from the insights of those who are working in other sectors and jurisdictions. It’s good to know our alumni can call us for a catch up, to share their experiences or to gain another perspective on a particular issue.
This network spans from Australia to Uganda, with former employees taking up their next roles at organisations as diverse as the World Bank, IATA, Amazon, and the CMA.
We are also proud to say that a number of former employees have come back to us after a few years of working elsewhere. We appreciate the different perspectives they’ve gained, and we enjoy welcoming them back to the WICS fold!
We hear below from one of our network, Lucy Pryde, a former graduate analyst who went on to work at the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
“I joined WICS on a summer internship in July 2012. During my internship I got great experience of working in an economic regulator and applying my analytical skills from my economics degree to real life problems. I then returned to WICS as a graduate analyst in August 2013 where I worked on the Strategic Review of Charges 2015-2021, setting the prices for water for the next 6 years.
I gained invaluable experience in my time at WICS where my work involved working on the efficiency analysis of Scottish Water's costs as well as analysing their proposed capital expenditure.
While at WICS, I had the opportunity to go on secondment to the Scottish Government's Consumer and Competition Policy Unit where I worked on the devolution of certain consumer and competition powers to the Scottish Parliament. This was extremely interesting and good experience in policy making and in understanding competition policy. I then moved to Ofcom where I worked within their Competition Policy Team, looking at how competition worked within the mobile, broadband and broadcasting markets.
At WICS I was really encouraged to get involved in all aspects of the regulatory process and always felt that everyone's views were welcomed – it was a very creative and empowering environment.
These days I am an Assistant Director at the Competition and Markets Authority. In this role I have worked predominantly on merger investigations, assessing the competitive effects of specific mergers and acquisitions. I have also had the opportunity to work on the PR19 water regulatory appeals, using my experience from WICS, and am currently working as part of the Office for the Internal Market within the CMA, advising, monitoring and reporting on the effective operation of the UK internal market.
The experience I got at WICS of economic analysis and regulatory analysis has been invaluable in my career and in my current role. WICS was a great place to start my career especially because, as a relatively small economic regulator, I got a lot more hands on substantive experience of economic regulation than would have been possible in a bigger organisation.
I’m still in contact with the colleagues I worked with and, of course, come across them for work purposes as well from time to time!”