When she couldn’t afford to do the Master’s degree she needed to progress her career, Stacie Woolsey took matters into her own hands, developing the tools to gain the equivalent learning through finding mentors – in effect making her own Master’s degree. The programme, which provides a blueprint for others like her, won Woolsey a coveted Yellow Pencil in the Side Hustle category.

Woolsey now has 11 learners on her programme but getting this far has required her to adapt again and again. “It was a long process of trying to find funding, understanding how to present and talk about these things and tell the story of what I’d done over the past couple of years,” she explains.

This unconventional path led Woolsey to define her career strengths early on and she saw how this kind of self-directed apprenticeship could also be a good fit for others. After being asked to speak on a panel by Dezeen on fixing education she realised that her idea had real potential. It also inspired her to enter the D&AD Awards. “My thinking was that if D&AD think this is good with such a high industry standard could that in turn help the reputation of whatever it is I am trying to do here – not in my wildest dreams did I think I would win.”