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Finance manager Martin Wilkins celebrated his fortieth anniversary as a Dunn School employee on 19 August 2020. Here he recounts his trajectory from finance assistant to finance manager, and reflects on the disruptive change of technology and the colleagues who supported his career in the early years and today: 

“When I started as a finance assistant at the Dunn school in 1980, I had intended to give it six months to see what it was like. I nearly didn’t last a week as my first workplace was a trolley in the administrator’s office and it wasn’t exactly ergonomic. In the 1980’s all of the orders, cheques and accounts were handwritten. Happy days and no e-mails. June Clark was the administrator who first employed me, but it was under the wing of Dennis McMiken (administrator from 1983 to 1994) that my role developed significantly. During the late 90’s spreadsheets and computer systems took over from the old ledger books and then in 2004 along came Oracle and everything turned upside down.  The initial years of Oracle were very difficult, but it was eventually made to work for the University although it still regularly provides us with challenges. During these years I received fantastic support from Herman, William and Shona and in more recent times from Matthew. The Dunn school has always been a very pleasant place to work and this is entirely due to the people here especially my excellent colleagues in the finance team Audra, Joanne, Rita and Mark.”