Navigating the jungle gym and managing your career

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How can you navigate the jungle gym and manage your career to achieve successful outcomes?

The Women in Eng&IT Alumni Network would like to invite alumni, students and friends of the University to hear from a panel of industry experts about how they managed setbacks and achieved career success.

Did you know that your career is a business, and you are the product?

Depending on the statistic, it’s estimated that the average person will change careers 5–7 times during their working life. It’s likely that you will have several careers during your lifetime. Since professional development is no longer linear, it’s more important than ever to take charge of your future and lean in.

The panel will discuss:

  • Top tips for career success and progression
  • Career obstacles and setbacks in the workplace and how to overcome them
  • Saying yes or no to new opportunities
  • How to ‘re-launch’ your career
  • Is entrepreneurship a career path for you?
  • Importance of diversity in the workplace
  • The value of male champions of change
  • Finding and getting the most our of your mentor.

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Panel

Nicole Brown (Master of Ceremonies )

Structural Engineer, AECOM Melbourne At the age of 20, Nicole became the Global CEO of Robogals, leading an international not-for-profit to inspire, engage and empower young women to pursue engineering as a career; expanding impact to 13 countries and 33 cities across 5 continents and inspiring over 50,000 young girls through engineering-based workshops. For her work with Robogals, Nicole was recognised in the Queens Young Leaders Programme. Through this program, she grew as a leader, connected with young leaders from across the Commonwealth and supporting their development virtually and in person. Nicole was even invited to meet Her Majesty the Queen at Buckingham Palace! Currently Nicole volunteers with Engineers Australia at a local, national and international level; is the Co-Chair of the Women in Eng&IT Alumni Committee at the University of Melbourne and regularly presents to a variety of organisations around diversity, graduate development and volunteering. And this is all in her spare time! Nicole’s full-time job is as a Structural Engineer at AECOM in Melbourne in the Buildings and Places team; currently working with the team to design an underground train station in Auckland.

Rod Jackson

Urban Development Lead, Calibre Rod’s engineering journey started in 1985, graduating with a degree in Civil Engineering from RMIT and commencing work in a rural shire, designing and building roads, culverts and bridges. Hearing of opportunities in urban development he found a position in 1987 with small consultancy, designing and managing residential subdivision projects in Melbourne and SE Qld, and established a passion for urban development engineering. Four years later Rod had the opportunity to buy out his employer and managed that business until selling the practice to Coomes Consulting Group and becoming a Director of that business in 1999. With Coomes, Rod worked extensively with multi-disciplinary urban development teams and his passion for Urban Development broadened with that experience. In 2008 Rod changed career direction and moved to the client side of urban development working for developers as a Development Manager for the next 11 years. Finally, 3 years ago he accepted an opportunity to return to consulting in urban development and now manages the Melbourne office of engineers and other professionals with Calibre Group. Rod is constantly inspired by his two adult sons and CEO wife and has a strong passion for diversity and gender equality in business and life.

Malin Lindblad

Technical Director – Built Environment, Mott MacDonald Communicating and coordinating complex design solutions is what gets me out of bed every day. I enjoy working with clients and stakeholders to ensure our engineering building solutions aligns with their wider drivers and ultimate goals; be it a new commercial building, a fitout, an educational facility, a future museum or a complex heritage refurbishment. I have a background in a range of commercial and educational projects – as well as experience in the arts and culture sector. I continuously aim to use my technical background and passion for sustainability in combination with my wider project delivery experience to get the best outcome. My work is focused on true design coordination acting as the key client and architectural interface identifying and implementing the suitable engineering solutions and meeting sustainability aspirations. I have a passion for living and working sustainably, recently having taken on a role leading the Built Environment Sustainability Team at Mott MacDonald, continually pushing the environmental agenda. As part of declaring to Engineers Australia ‘Engineers declare’ initiative (https://engineersdeclare.org.au/) I always aim to challenge myself to further build on this agenda and helping others in the industry to do the same. Being a female in a male dominated industry with three young girls of my own, it goes without saying that I on a daily basis try to create and progress a world where diversity is a plus and equality is a must.

Karen Shamieh

Software Engineering Manager, Telstra Karen has worked with Telstra for over 20 years with a career break of 8 years to focus on her family. A professional with experience in team leadership, stakeholder management, program delivery, scaled agile, and technical roles across telecommunications and contact centres. Karen is passionate about working with people, bridging the gap between business and technology and developing our next generation of talent.

Amy Yu

Co-founder of Ventora Medical

Amy is a co-founder and CTO at Ventora Medical, a Melbourne-based medical device start-up with a mission to help premature babies breathe. She is a biomedical engineer with a passion for innovation and engineering and its potential to improve health outcomes for patients. Ventora Medical is developing a device that will provide minimally invasive real-time monitoring of the airway pressure for preterm infants on non-invasive respiratory support. The device will provide accurate clinical information to enable clinicians to be proactive in their treatment and provide evidence-based respiratory care, reducing the incidence and impact of further breathing complications. Ventora Medical is a venture-backed company and its achievements have recognised by awards from the Melbourne Business School, the Wade Institute of Entrepreneurship, the Graeme Clark Institute and the MedTech Actuator’s MedTech’s Got Talent (now Origin).