Becoming a refugee from afar to working for Bloomberg: graduate Laura Avetsiyan on her journey to the newsroom

After moving to London from Nagorno-Karabakh to study Politics at UCL, Laura remotely became a refugee when the Armenian population of her region were displaced in 2023.

After graduating, she worked in business intelligence in the City. While in this field, she soon realised the importance of money when it came to talking about politics. Wanting a better understanding of the world of business from corporate structures to tax, she applied to City St George’s, University of London to study a master’s in Global Financial Journalism.

She secured a place on the course and earned a scholarship from the Marjorie Deane Financial Journalism Foundation, which offers internships and studentships to budding financial journalists and made it possible for Laura to pursue her dream career.

“The course is industry-standard,” said Laura. “It’s intense because you’re expected to produce the work of a real journalist.”

While studying at City St George’s, Laura landed a highly sought after summer internship programme at Bloomberg.

I described it to my friends as like being on America’s Next Top Model. It’s a competitive process because there’s a group of you on the same 10-week internship and you’re all going for the same permanent job at the end of it. But there are fewer spots than there are people on the summer programme.

“We were pitching and writing stories from day one. I rotated on two different teams, tech and metals. I knew next to nothing about these topics, but what helped me was hard work. Looking back, I wish I’d been more confident in myself, but I knew I just had to put myself out there anyway. That saying that ‘success is on the other side of cringe’ couldn’t be truer.”

During her internship, she reported on censorship in Russia and how Russian influencers were making their money as major social media platforms were blocked nationally. Laura then found success at the end of her internship when Bloomberg offered her a permanent job and supported her application for indefinite leave to remain in the UK.

“I wanted to scream, I was so happy. I couldn’t believe it when I was offered a permanent role because towards the end, it dawned on me what a big gamble it was. I felt the weight of the decision I made, either I got a job and a visa or I didn’t and I’d have to pack my bag and leave the country.”

She is currently working on the bonds desk and recently covered Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham’s attempt to return to Westminster, still using her political background in her day-to-day work.

Last week, Laura graduated with her peers at a graduation ceremony held at the Barbican Centre. Surrounded by friends from her course who have gone on to achieve equally impressive feats with roles at the Financial Times and AFP, Laura was selected to give a speech at the ceremony. Taking to the podium to address her fellow graduates, she said:

We all began our journeys into journalism for different reasons. Some of us were driven by a desire to investigate and interrogate power. Some came to amplify voices too often ignored. Some - simply for the love of storytelling.

"Yet, despite the different reasons that brought us here, we are all graduating into the same world - that is fast, overwhelming and far too challenging. It is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate the world around us, especially if you follow the news, or like all of us, have no choice but to follow the news. So, as we move into the next chapters of our lives into the fast-paced and unpredictable world of journalism, I hope we pause from time to time to remind ourselves why we chose this path in the first place. I hope those moments of reckoning will provide us guidance when our work feels difficult or uncertain.”