Sonia Kumar, one of the newest Labour British Indian members of Parliament, recently graduated from Aston University with a degree in Business and Management.
Kumar, Dudley’s first female MP elected with a majority of 1,900 at the July 4 General Election, has served as a frontline physiotherapist in the National Health Service (NHS). After leaving Cadbury College, she worked at the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital in Northfield, where she is now a foundation trust member. She was awarded her Master’s in Business and Management at a ceremony in Birmingham just two weeks after her election victory.
She said: “I am so happy. The Prime Minister gave me a day off to graduate. I put my request in quite early on as I knew I was graduating and everyone’s really pleased that I’ve graduated from Aston University with a distinction in MSc Business and Management.
“As a new MP, I’ve been doing a lot of networking and getting to understand other people’s perspectives over the last couple of weeks. Aston University has a really rich and diverse student base, so I've already been using some of the skills I’ve picked up and I will hopefully be using some of my strategic and operational business skills in the next few months to come.
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“I want to encourage future students to be a glass ceiling breakers. There is nothing you can't achieve if you put your mind to it. Push boundaries and just keep going.”
Professor Zoe Radnor, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Executive Dean for the College of Business and Social Sciences at Aston University, described Kumar as an inspiration to other students for her work as an NHS physiotherapist treating local patients and now also as an MP serving the community.
Prof. Radnor said: “I look forward to watching her succeed in her new role as an MP, taking the learnings from her time at work and the degree in Business and Management to serve her constituents in Dudley, the wider West Midlands and the country as a whole.”
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Kumar’s newly formed constituency comprises areas of the former Dudley North and Dudley South constituencies and is one of 57 seats in the West Midlands. This week, she made her House of Commons questions debut – asking Cabinet Office ministers what steps they were taking to help ensure that the government gained value for money when contracting services from private companies.