Presenters/Panelists: Jason Brown, Vanessa Burgar, John Nunn, Ian Nussey, Duncan Robson & Mark Warner
Panel Chair: Rich Bishop
Topic: A careers event for schools and students, aiming to inspire them to consider a STEM based career
Date: Wednesday 17th November 2021
Time: 19:00
Location: webinar: a recording of the event is available from here
Coventry Branch presents an event aimed at school children and students, inspiring them to consider a career in STEM or IT.
Each panelist will take about 5 minutes to describe their career and how they got to where they are today. As you can see our panelists offer a wide range of ages, experience and subjects. As they will invite questions, attendees will have the opportunity to learn from their experience.
Jason Brown : Jason is 23 and has been working with National Grid for one year, and has completed various internships and freelance work during university, worked in schools for a year (on an apprenticeship scheme) before university and spoke at TEDX in 2016 about technology in education. During his time working in schools, as a university student and now a graduate employee at National Grid he has worked with and spoken to students about career-building, CV writing, interview tips and spoken openly about the differences between apprenticeships and degrees and the benefits of each. Jason is now a User Experience (UX) Designer.
Vanessa Burgar : Vanessa works as a User Experience (UX) Researcher in industry, following experience as a school Head of Computing and postgraduate researcher. She has experience working on large projects in business, education, public and regulated sectors. Leading the delivery of high-quality research to inform UX design and digital strategy.
John Nunn : John is a senior security architect working for Capgemini, he has over 25 years of professional experience working in I.T., working as both a software developer and solutions architect. He has spent the majority of his time ensuring applications are designed and developed with security in mind, and now works with Capgemini’s clients to ensure security is at the forefront of every deliverable. John has a particular focus on cloud security and securing the software development lifecycle. Prior to joining Capgemini 4 years ago, John ran his own small business, designing and delivering bespoke solutions for a range of clients. He is a member of OWASP and a contributor to several projects as well as a keep amateur photographer.
Dr. Ian Nussey OBE : Ian’s engineering career began with Lucas in 1958, successively as a graduate apprentice and a research scholar investigating pressure diecasting flow. Moving to IBM in 1963 to become a systems engineer, he also created and long-time ran an elite pre-university employment programme and founded and for seventeen years led a group turning good ideas into marketable software products. Formally retiring in 1997, he then worked part-time for the company until 2016, initially as IBM Academy of Technology EMEA vice-president and subsequently on university relations.
Duncan Robson : Duncan has nearly 40 years of computing experience, starting with programming his trusty ZX80 from the age of 12, and his career has spanned many areas from IT Operations, IT Infrastructure, IT Automation, IT Sales, and Enterprise Architecture. He is now the Client Technical Leader for the Distribution Industry for IBM UK, a Fellow of the BCS and a Distinguished Enterprise Architect with the Open Group. In his current role he represents all of IBM to global retail and consumer packaged goods clients, and his current projects include Sustainability, AI Ops, Data Strategy, IBM Research and Hybrid Cloud Enablement. He is also an IBM Quantum Ambassador and leads the IBM Distribution Quantum team.
Mark Warner : Mark went from nearly failing everything at school, through a BTEC course at Tile Hill College to studying at Coventry University. He used a placement year to work for a local company -Savant- as a developer. That then lead to his first job after university, where he continued studying part time and got a Masters in Business Administration(MBA) and a few other things along the way. He has been with his current company over 20 years moving from software development, database & data warehouse specialism into Business Administration then Project Management, roles before becoming Head of Project & Portfolio Management and later focusing more on people as an Agile Coach.
At the end, attendees will be invited to ask further questions on both the careers described and any other STEM careers they may be interested in. Branch Secretary John will encourage the attendees to think about what has been presented and to email him any further questions they may subsequently think of, on the Coventry Secretary coventry_secretary@bcs.org.uk.email address. (I’ve tried to obfuscate that to stop web crawlers harvesting it!)