Daniela Lesley Evans

Online Community and Projects Manager for Adoption UK

Education

Daniela Evans received her First Class BA Hons in English from Aberystwyth University in 2000. Since then she has pursued her career in English Literature, absolving an MA at the University of Warwick and now researching her PhD at the University of Roehampton.

Career Path

After doing her MA, Daniela decided to go into journalism. She worked for a local newspaper for three years, during which she spent five months training in a college to receive her qualification in journalism. After 3 months of voluntary work in an orphanage in Nepal, she returned to England and found her current job at Adoption UK. This enabled her to combine her journalism training with her interest in helping children separated from their parents. However, her fascination for literature still abounds. After two years of full-time work Daniela decided to do a PhD: researching orphans in mid-Victorian literature.

Now she works three days a week, managing the charity’s Online Community, which aims to provide 24-7 support to adopters and helps with prospective issues before, during and after adoption. This involves writing and editing features for the website, overseeing moderation of Message Boards, managing projects relating to the development of the site, ensuring the site’s content is fresh, accurate and up to date.

Why English and Creative Writing?

The writing element of her job requires a high level of creativity in generating new ideas for articles and features. During her studies in English, Daniela developed those writing and research skills which helped her both in finding a job in journalism and in adapting relatively easy to the demands of her current job. Studying English also gave her the self-discipline that on needs to be able to manage one’s own workload effectively.