Elise is a passionate science communicator whose career has taken her to South Africa & the Maldives as well along Australia’s southern coast. After growing up in the UK, she completed university in Australia & graduated with an honours science degree majoring in marine biology & a bachelor’s degree in English & creative writing. She is now working as a Senior Programs & Operations Officer with the Australian Space Agency at the Australian Space Discovery Centre where she gets to flex her creative muscles & develop new ways to engage & excite others in space.

As students who are about to complete your secondary education, one of the main questions to ask is 'What’s next?'. In this session, Vicki will talk about her journey into IT, how she became a successful IT professional & share some of her experiences, tips & tricks which might be helpful for you to choose your own career path. Vicki holds a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science and has worked as an IT professional in Venezuela, Argentina, America & Australia. She started her journey with Avanade 5 years ago & is now a Software Engineering Manager. She is involved in software design & development using Microsoft technologies & has a passion for delivering quality end products.

Dan is a technology strategist at Microsoft. He works with customers to get the most out of all technology & help them look beyond the horizon. So they can plan for the future around areas such as Artificial Intelligence, Mixed Reality, Security, the Azure cloud and more. In this presentation, he will look at the current trends in skilling as well as the cool innovations that are happening now.

In this presentation, Tim will outline the true meaning of STEM and that it is not necessarily being passionate or good at science, coding, engineering and mathematics. There are a set of well-established skills that every student should be developing to thrive in the STEM (or any other) industry. Dr Kitchen will outline these skills and share how working with Adobe tools like the new Adobe Express can help.

Val has extensive cross-functional experience in Media and government communication including Internal, External and Strategic communication. As a researcher at ABC’s Press Gallery for over 16 years, she has seen 7 Prime Ministers, 5 Federal elections, and too many Budget lock-ups to count, including producing many stories for 730. She pivoted mid-career and has found her home at ASD where the variety of roles and careers inspires her every day.

Tim graduated from UNSW in 2021, having studied Mechatronic Engineering & Computer Science & loves all things to do with automation. He started at Westpac as a grad in 2022, before recently rolling off the grad program as a Robotics developer, creating all kinds of software automations for the bank. Ashley is an Information Security Consultant working in Westpac’s Cyber Strategy & Awareness team. She graduated from UTS in 2019 with a Bachelor of Science in IT & a Bachelor of Creative Intelligence & Innovation, before joining Westpac's Technology Graduate Program in 2020. Robyn is a Senior Consultant in Westpac’s Cyber Culture team working with cybersecurity experts to develop a variety of education approaches to keep everyone, both personally & professionally cyber safe. Robyn has a Masters of Organisational Development & Training from Southern Cross University. Tanya is currently in her 2nd year of the Technology Graduate program at Westpac. She is currently working in the Customer Analytics & Insights team as a data analyst. She previously graduated with a Bachelor in Data Science & Decisions at UNSW in 2021. Kanu is a 2022 Data Graduate at Westpac, now working as an Associate Data Scientist. She graduated with a Bachelor of Mathematics (Honours) / Information Technology from QUT.