Your background and where you come from doesn’t matter, according to Imperial College Professor Anne Dell.
She told Years 9 and 10 pupils at Lealands High School what was important was that “you can aspire to be something great.”
And she said she herself was a fine example – she grew up on a farm in the Australian Outback with no electricity and didn’t attend school until she was 11.
But she went on to study chemistry at university and won a scholarship to Cambridge to do a PhD.
She is now a professor of carbo-hydrate biochemistry and specialises in the role sugars play in the body,
Professor Dell was at Lealands as part of the Speakers for Schools programme.