Bradford University's new vice-chancellor on how family tragedy shaped her career

Victoria was born with a congenital heart defect and was in and out of hospital throughout her life, undergoing a heart transplant at the age of four and finally succumbing to illness aged 13. As a working mother of three, it was only with incredible help from my own mum that we were able to keep functioning as a family and maintain my career development.

This difficult experience made me realise the importance of equality for women in the workplace when we face the everyday challenges of looking after our children, especially those with long-term health problems.

When I look back, there was an assumption that when something happens in a family, it is the woman who must give up work and sacrifice her career. That’s not fair and limits what we can achieve.

Facebook’s addictive ability to cause harm has parallels with Big Tobacco: David RichardsEveryone should have the opportunity to go to university, pursue a vocation of their choosing and be successful in their own right.

As Vice-Chancellor, I want to use my role to promote equality and diversity and challenge the structural issues in society that hold people back. I have my own experience of this.

I started my working life as a nurse and entered academia as a lecturer practitioner, going on to specialise in health and social care studies before holding a number of senior management posts in higher education. Along the way, I came across people who questioned the value of my route into the university sector or brought attention to my County Durham accent.

The University of Bradford can contribute significantly more to improving social mobility in society and will take a solid and consistent approach to this mission. We need more diverse people in more senior roles across the board.

Summer strains on NHS highlight scale of Boris Johnson's challenge: The Yorkshire Post saysThis will lead to a more inclusive approach with more relevant policies and help to shift the inequalities we see across the world. These are encapsulated in our own district: consider the difference in life chances between a child born in the leafy Victorian spa town of Ilkley and a child born in the inner city constituency of Bradford South.

We can’t deliver this on our own. We are working with schools, colleges, employers and other institutions across Bradford through a new civic agreement to help increase the number of students entering university from disadvantaged backgrounds.

There is a lot of excitement in the wider community that we are putting this at the centre of our development strategy and we cannot wait to get started. We want to engage more closely with small, medium and large companies in Bradford, especially in the areas of technology, knowledge transfer and innovation to help them become more productive and create better quality jobs and work experience opportunities.

This will have the knock-on effect of improving social mobility as well as building a more sustainable economy.

After some challenging years, our university’s financial restructuring is nearing completion. We are sowing the seeds for growth and in the next couple of years will be generating cash for new investment to further enhance our student experience and research quality and impact.

Campaign to stop no deal Brexit must get off the backfoot: Ed JacobsWe are backing opportunities in our existing strengths such as health and well-being, healthcare sciences, peace and international development, business, organisations and management, engineering, data science and technology, which support equal, diverse and sustainable societies.

The opening of the Wolfson Centre for Applied Health Care Research in collaboration with the Bradford Institute of Health Research and the University of Leeds signifies our commitment to high quality impactful research and innovation.

Brexit will impact UK universities but we are less exposed than others. Most of our research funding comes from domestic institutions and the majority of our international students come from outside the Europe Union.

We are targeting China, Africa and the subcontinent as key growth areas for our student population, which is currently 11,000 strong. In the meantime, we will of course be working hard to maintain our strong existing partnerships with European universities, come what may.

Ultimately, people – our staff, our students and our neighbours in Bradford and the city region – will be the foundation of our success. If we can get everyone working together we have a huge chance of being successful and increasing the health and prosperity of all people living in our district.

With the support of my loving family, I was able to overcome difficult personal circumstances to develop a successful career and make a difference. Others must have the opportunity to do the same.

Professor Shirley Congdon is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bradford.