Gina Vivian-Neal retired as Tutorial Office Manager in May 2026.

On a snowy January morning, student David Cockayne (SE 2000) appeared in the Tutorial Office in his best leather shoes, ready for a full day of civil service interviews in London. Gina Vivian-Neal took one look at him and told him he was not going anywhere until he had found a pair of wellington boots. Which he did, and got the job. Now a successful businessman, he still returns to Selwyn with his children. That story, which David apparently tells frequently, says something about the 26 years Gina has spent at Selwyn.

She arrived on 7 November 1999, walked through the door and, as she puts it, simply knew it was a happy place.

The job she came to do was substantial. Stacks of paper application forms, a new admissions database to manage, processes that needed someone with both rigour and patience to hold them together. She joined a small, close team and got on with it. Over 26 years, more than 6,000 undergraduates and postgraduates have passed through the office. Gina has had a hand in seeing most of them through. “The job is huge in comparison to what it was,” she said. “But you know you are there to do a job for individuals.”

The Tutorial Office has changed its shape several times over the years, including physically. Gina has worked in rooms that never saw the sun, in a portacabin on the front lawn and in offices looking out over the courts. She has seen Fellows, Masters, Porters and Deans of Chapel come and go, watched technology replace paper, and guided students through circumstances that the handbooks do not cover. 

“There is something about Cambridge that keeps people. As Owen Chadwick used to say, you cannot have too much change all at once, or the whole place is in danger of falling over” she said. 

She retired as Tutorial Office Manager in May 2026. What she brought to Selwyn was warmth, efficiency and knowledge. 

The college is richer for 26 years of it.