The day has arrived for 2015 Birmingham Young Professional of the Year so, last but not least, here is our final Q&A with the shortlisted candidates. Aspiring talent hopeful Charlotte Watkivs delves deep in the mystery of Stonehenge, takes a siesta and meets the Cadbury family.
Name: Charlotte Watkivs
Job title: Graduate trainee, Birmingham City University
Company: Aspiring Talent
1) If you could go back in time and have one conversation with one person, dead or alive, who would it be and what would you discuss?
I would have to use the opportunity to find out some of history's unanswered questions so would have a conversation with the prehistoric creators of Stonehenge who would be rather hard to track down as there is no written information about them.
Hopefully, they could give me answers about how they managed to build such a structure and the purpose behind it as I really have no idea.
It was a great achievement to organise getting all the blocks to the site never mind feeding all the workers.
I would also tell them about the building advances we have now in the 21st century such as concrete and glass. What would they make of Bullring? I wonder if they would be impressed or think we have over complicated things.
2) Which single element of any city in the world that you have visited would you like to see transplanted into Birmingham?
I love how European cities have siestas after lunch. I would be so much more relaxed and refreshed for the afternoon if I could have a little nap. I think it's really great how everyone takes this time out of their day and the shops shut.
Here, we're really focused on doing things faster and optimising productivity to the point where we often forget about the people behind the projects and how they deserve time to relax too. I would also love it if we adopted the idea of shops shutting on Sundays and public holidays.
Retail workers need family time too. I know that I've become reliant on the convenience stores but it would be great if these closed one day a week and people were encouraged to spend time with family, friends and the community.
3) Which technological innovation would you happily see consigned to history and what would you like to see invented which doesn't yet exist?
Michael Pritchard's LifeSaver bottle is one of the best innovations of our generation. It is a portable water purification devise which can filter out objects as small as 15 nanometres and decontaminate water so it is completely free of bacteria and viruses.
It may seem strange that I am mentioning this as something to be consigned to history but the very fact people have to use devises like this means that we do not have safe, disease-free water in populated areas of the world.
I would like to see water purification happening across the whole world. I know theoretically we have the capacity to do this, however, I'd like a cheaper, yet sustainable system to be invented.
4) Think about who your ideal dinner guests might be but instead you can only invite their relatives. Who would you choose and what would you ask them?
Keeping it local, I would have dinner with the relatives of John Cadbury and put on a chocolate-themed dinner party, though this might be more for my benefit than theirs.
I would ask them whether they thought John Cadbury had any idea of the legacy he was leaving behind, and obviously what their favourite type of chocolate is.
Bournville is such a charming village and I admire the fact that it was built to raise living standards and put the Cadbury workers' needs first.
Cadbury World is such a tourist attraction now so would ask the relatives if they thought the founder realised his company would be such a well-loved product in the UK.
I would also ask if they had any idea what John Cadbury would have done if he hadn't made chocolates and whether they actually liked chocolate or were sick of the sight of it.
5) There are many 'National Days', some more obscure than others, but which one would you like to create that doesn't already exist?
National Bucket List Day. Everyone has to tick at least one thing from their bucket list and the more obscure and wild, the better.
We would all be allowed to travel to where we wanted, learn and perfect a new skill or do a job that was entirely different from the norm.
I would do this to allow people to achieve something which they may have not had the time to do before to avoid people carrying feelings of regret or missed opportunities which they often do.
I would spend it throwing tomatoes in the Spanish festival La Tomatina, learning how to solve a Rubik cube and celebrating the Holi festival of colour in India.
