Show ten people the same film and you'll get ten different opinions, half of them contradicting the other half. That's largely what pushed me towards marketing rather than the film career I'd always pictured, first at college and then at university. Marketing isn't like that. Something either performs or it doesn't and there's a reason or a bit of data you can go looking for, rather than an argument that shifts depending on whose creative opinion happens to be loudest in the room.

Back in June, watches weren't on my radar at all. My dad got into them properly during his time in the Air Force and never really stopped. I'd grown up around them without knowing much about them at all. I could have told you he had one drawer stuffed with them, but nothing about the story behind any single piece.

A few weeks in, I was working through TWCC's own social posts, trying to see what had landed with people, and to brainstorm ideas for what might come next. A handful about Mr Jones Watches kept catching my eye and I ended up exploring the brand off the back of it. Not long after, I bought one, the Continuum, designed by Jacqueline Colley. My dad bought one soon after that too. The bright colours and illustrations caught me first along with the fact it didn't look like every other watch on someone's wrist. It's an entry-level piece, and I still wear it most days, at work, at meetups, wherever I happen to be. That's probably the point watches stopped being my dad's thing and started being mine too. The two of us can properly talk watches together now, and he's even dug out a couple of his old Swatches from the 80s for me to wear.

Every meetup since has looked much the same. The room's mostly men, and that's just where the numbers happen to sit right now. Everyone's made me feel welcome regardless, new as I am and one of the only women in the room. Someone will bring a watch I've never heard of and just talk me through it, the story behind it and terminology I don't know yet without making it feel like I should already have known. That kind of patience matters more than people probably realise when you're starting from nothing.

I'd like to see more women in the room all the same. Deloitte published a report on this with Watch Femme in 2024, a non-profit set up to strengthen women's voices across the watch world. Women make up 43% of the Swiss watchmaking workforce at bench level, though boardroom representation is close to nothing, and on the buying side, a Christie's specialist has put the split at around nine male buyers to every one woman, a ratio that's barely moved in five years. None of that is a UK figure or a TWCC figure. This is Swiss manufacturing and high-end auction rooms, a fairly narrow slice of the industry, and a meetup in a pub is a different world. But the shape of it feels familiar even so.

Four months in, the thing that's actually caught me off guard is just how many watches there are once you start looking properly. Every brand seems to specialise in something slightly different, and it's hard not to keep noticing that once you do. I've fallen for a handful of brands I hadn't come across before this job, and my own collection is already outgrowing that first Mr Jones piece. Work has moved at a similar pace. Back in the summer I was still learning what half the terminology meant. Now I'm learning to speak to more than one audience at once, Watches in Focus blends two, watch collectors and photographers, and getting the campaign and the posts around it right meant taking both seriously rather than favouring one. Marketing for Manchester Watch Show 2026 taught me something else entirely, how a much bigger event actually comes together and gets marketed, something I'd never had a hand in before this year. There's more of that coming, with a few bigger events already taking shape for next year, and I'm hoping to lead more of it myself in the future.

Photography and film came first for me, watches came later. I got into both the same way, through colour rather than anything technical, and I suspect plenty of women would find their own way in too, given the chance to look. Watches in Focus, TWCC's own photography lab at Lumiere Shoreditch on Saturday 10th October, sponsored by Barrington Watch Winders, is built around exactly that. My own love of visual media has ended up somewhere I didn't expect, on a wrist rather than a screen, and I'm helping run the event that proves it. New to cameras or new to watches, someone there will happily talk you through whichever one you know less about. It's the same reason I ended up here in the first place. Four months in, it's still what keeps me looking.