30/01/2026
Time to meet our next committee member. This month we caught up with Amanda Kelly, Locally Commissioned Contracts Technician for Rowlands Pharmacy UK . Over to you Amanda!
โI fell into pharmacy relatively late in life but Iโm so glad I did. When I left school, I planned to be a graphic designer but ending up working for Coats Viyella for several years until, one day, I was made redundant.
โAt this point Iโd had my second child, who is now 24 years old. One day I was walking him to school when I passed Rowlands Pharmacy in Warsop and spotted a job ad for a part-time counter assistant. That was back in 2002.
As the children grew up, I did the pharmacy technician course in 2014 and completed ACT in 2018. Whilst I loved working in the pharmacy, dispensing and supporting customers โ I wish Iโd got into it sooner โ I was eager for a change.
โAn opportunity to work at head office within the transformation team came up and it sounded great, so I applied and was successful. I go to work on the pill pouch, implementing robot dispensing and training the team to do this. Then COVID struck. At this point I was asked if I could do a project with patient services team about where we could be best utilised and thatโs when I rolled out a Covid vaccination services in nine of our pharmacies. It was a huge achievement for me, and it helped to secure a me a full-time position in the patient services team and thatโs what Iโve been doing ever since.
โIn my role today, I deal with all the locally commissioned services for the Rowlands estate and Iโm also the Covid lead which has led to me being nicknamed the โCovid Queenโ. Iโm work directly alongside 157 managers and also develop our internal training and webinars all of which keep me very busy!โ
P.S. For those who don't know Amanda, she's the glamorous lady on the right of this photo!
