January Apprentice of the Month
Lucy Trotter
Publishing Professional
We are back with Apprentice of the Month for 2026 and pleased to announce Lucy Trotter at Bloomsbury as our LDN Apprentice of the Month for January!
Nominated by Skills Coach Helen Bugler, Lucy’s desire to succeed and grow in her role has been extraordinary, with colleagues saying, ‘She has been absolutely brilliant to work with. In every task I have assigned her, she has demonstrated incredible efficiency, turning things around so quickly.’
Check out all of our brilliant nominations for January LDN Apprentice of the Month, along with Lucy’s winning nomination and fantastic feedback from her line manager, Brenna Akerman, below! 👇
Lucy’s Skills Coach:
Lucy is blowing away her line manager and me in both her desire to learn and the success in what she does. Praise has been extraordinary. A busy colleague took time out to say: ‘She has been absolutely brilliant to work with. In every task I have assigned her, she has demonstrated incredible efficiency, turning things around so quickly. Her communication is clear and thoughtful and she carries herself with such professionalism while still being approachable and friendly. We’re so lucky to have her on the team.’ Lucy has sought out extra learning opportunities, including volunteering to support the dyslexia books initiative at work, as well as joining a charity which encourages local children to do creative writing.
Lucy’s line manager:
How have they improved/impacted the business and the team since they started their apprenticeship?
Lucy has gone from strength to strength since joining us a little over 6 months ago. In her short time with us, she’s gotten stuck into a wide variety of tasks, from crafting emails to putting together design briefs, compiling detailed research to working on major marketing campaigns. She’s approached each task with the same level of enthusiasm and willingness to learn, which has really endeared her to her colleagues. The team can rely on her to produce timely, high-quality work and her communication is always clear, friendly and thoughtful. In short, she’s fantastic.
What three words best describe them? (Please give an example/expand on each)
Reliable: Lucy gives every task she does 100%, often going above and beyond what’s expected of her. She steps in to help when we have gaps in the team or if a colleague’s workload is looking particularly heavy. She can be trusted to hit deadlines without compromising on quality.
Driven: Lucy stays focused on her long-term and short-term goals and is always looking for ways to improve. She’s especially adept at asking for and applying detailed feedback, and using her own initiative to seek extra training and further opportunities (e.g. volunteering with Ministry of Stories). Her growth so far has been so impressive, especially for someone so new to this industry.
Organised: Lucy has the kind of organisational skills that put some of us to shame! She manages her workload and time really effectively, while always keeping her team in the loop.
An example of an outstanding piece of work, project or task they have worked on.
A real highlight of Lucy’s apprenticeship so far has been the work she’s done on a marketing campaign for the book, The Secret Life of the Hotel. This has included collaborating with our design team to craft assets for social media promotion, as well as print and digital ads, carrying out detailed competitor analysis, researching review outlets and putting together promotional email campaigns. She’s also worked collaboratively with Sales and Publicity. It’s so impressive that Lucy is working at this level so early on in her apprenticeship (we typically save projects like this for End Point Assessment…) so a testament to how well she’s developing.
Here’s what was said about the other brilliant nominees:
Claire Greenwood at South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
Claire has consistently produced excellent portfolio work, which is a pleasure to read. She has fully engaged with every aspect of the digital learning design of the course and is clearly improving her skills and using these in her work.
Ana has received glowing feedback consistently in Progress Reviews. Her portfolio pieces are always submitted on time and are of fantastic quality, as she shows incredible motivation to go above and beyond. In her last Progress Review, her manager gave the following example of an outstanding piece of work:
"Ana's recent presentation of the ABM Marketing Community at the London Marketing Basecamp exemplifies her growth and capabilities. Despite initially having fears about presenting in front of such a big audience of 200 corporate professionals, she overcame this challenge and prepared her talking points in the limited time available, delivering her speech with engagement and creating a natural connection with the audience. She then followed up from the in-person Basecamp, working intensively on keeping an active network of ABMers by posting regularly on the Slack Community Channel, helping the ABM Centre of Excellence (CoE) update the Resource Hub pages on Highspot, collating ideas to streamline operations and proposing formats and templates to keep the communications with the community engaging and dynamic."
Adam Walker at WAES
Adam has stood out tremendously in recent months. Notably his digital design expertise and quality of learning has progressed so much so, that he is inundated with requests from peers to make digital learning for their curriculums. Adam is constantly showing his enthusiasm and persistence to keep trying to improve his craft. I’ve seen his confidence and quality of digital learning excel in recent months and he’s a pleasure to work with during the apprenticeship
Elaine Green at South Western Ambulance Service
Elaine made a fantastic start, flying with her early portfolio pieces and a great contributor to our academy. Within a busy emergency control room environment, she has managed new initiatives including switching off lights and pcs when not in use. She has responded extremely well to feedback from more senior colleagues and helped with decision making about what is possible. She is also building great relationships with a range of organisations to co-ordinate sustainability activities including crisp packet recycling, and reusable PPE. Despite being completely new to project management, she created her first gantt chart this week.