Nadia Kimm

I started my working life at TWA, Trans World Airlines, way back in 1978... At the time TWA was one of the four major airlines on the trans-Atlantic route. I worked in the reservations, ticket office and sales departments based in central London. Fourteen years later, and a very different industry, TWA made cut- backs and I was one of 40 that were made redundant. I stayed in the airline industry for another 12 years, firstly at Garuda Indonesian Airlines and finally at the Finnish airline – Finnair. Throughout my career my duties have been mainly administrative and sales orientated. I ended my time in the travel industry as a Reservations and Ticket Office Supervisor.

When I wanted to stop the long daily commute and work locally Kumon came to the rescue. I've been here since November 2007 and I work as part of the Data Operations Team. There are four of us, a close-knit team of three plus a manager. We have many varied tasks, all of which have to be done in a very short time frame each month. We manually enter the monthly reports from Instructors, updating new student details, cross checking students who do dual subjects, adding the student's grades, sending out reminders for homework folders, checking that the correct royalty payments are made and then updating new student Registration Forms. This is done every month for almost 600 Instructors with over 58,000 students between them. Twice a year each Instructor presents their advanced students with certificates of achievement. We are responsible for sending these out, working out how many of each is required by each Instructor. This can take two whole days as we send out approx 30,000. It's a lot of work, so speed and accuracy are important, but it's an interesting job and the office atmosphere makes for a good working environment. Everyone is friendly and willing to help, right from the start I felt like I'd been here for years.

Kumon not only encourages its students to develop, it also wants its Associates to grow. I've already started doing Kumon Maths, trying very hard not to use my fingers and toes when working out the sums. I've also made several visits to local classes to observe and help the students. It's important to know why we do what we do in our department and when you can see the students blossom and achieve so much it's especially fulfilling.