The future of work with Tony Ryan, Education Futurist

Andy How has extensive technical leadership experience in SaaS startups and scaleups as well as corporate environments. In this episode, Nicola Steel, Founder of JJP Talent Solutions and Andy How talk about the start of his career in the late 1990s as the world moved from analog to digital. 

Andy provides advice to people starting out in their tech careers. He talks about the important lessons he has learnt along the way.  Andy also explains what he thinks makes a great leader which includes:

👀 Vision 

❤️ Compassion 

👄 Communication

He provides some critical advice on work/life balance together with his book recommendations: 

📖 Atomic Habits by James Clear 

📖 Mindset by Carol Dweck 

📖 Dare to Lead by Brene Brown 

Scott Lawry is a Senior Leader with extensive expertise in Digital Transformation and Programme Management.  He has worked in a variety of sectors including over 10 years at Rio Tinto.

In this episode, Scott talks to Nicola Steel, Founding Director of JJP Talent Solutions. He explains how he secured his first role in IT back in 1999 - the year the world faced the Millennium Bug!  He provides advice to graduates and emerging professionals who are looking for their first tech role and also for those aspiring to be tech leaders.

The biggest challenge for Scott over the last 25 years has been the pure velocity of change in technology.  It is next to impossible to remain qualified across everything!  Instead, he believes that it is important for leaders to have enough knowledge of the technical changes and impacts to provide the business with informed advice.

We also discuss how flexible working has been an incredible opportunity for everyone. It is a great way to retain valuable employees.  He believes that making it work for both employers and employees is crucial although he does believe that employees can become disconnected from the business. 

Nicola Steel, Founder of JJP Talent Solutions, speaks to Luke Vear, the CTO of YQueue, a startup which is tackling the challenges faced by the Food and Beverage industry.

Luke begins by explaining how he was drawn to tech and how he secured his first role in software development.  His advice to aspiring leaders is to make sure taking on a leadership role is something that you 100% want to do and to grab every opportunity that presents itself.  

Luke explains that his biggest challenge is the non-engineering elements of being a CTO including managing  relationships between individual team members.  Retaining people in a small team and ensuring that you've got buy-in from everyone within the company, not just direct team members and colleagues, are the things that really keep him up at night.

What he loves about working in a startup environment:

• Freedom to experiment  
• Can get feedback quickly so can iterate very quickly 
• Intimate knowledge of how the business working  

 What frustrates him about startups:

• The rush to get something out of the door so solutions can sometimes be band-aided together 

 His top productivity hack is to avoid tacking shortcuts!

Highlights from The Spotlight Series - Don't Just Survive, Thrive podcast in 2023. Guests include:

• Dinesh Palipana
• Tony Schirmer
• Henry Boulton
• Christin Marshall
• Ben Shapira
• Kody Cook
• Charlie Wood
• Yas Grigaliunas
• Rithik Illankovan

Nicola Steel speaks to Rithik Illankovan, a highly experienced Delivery Lead/ Project Manager. Rithik is also the Founder of a startup called Gezzin. Gezzin's mission is to promote peace in the world by connecting and uniting families.

Rithik tells his personal and professional story migrating from India to Australia as a young student in the early 2000s. He describes his achievements and challenges over the last 20 years.  

Rithik's idea for the Gezzin app started when he was living alone and missing his family back home. This made him consider how he could bring families together on a daily basis sharing their moments. It was this thought that led to him creating a free app with a family tree where users can upload photos, videos, host parties and be involved in group chats.

The word Gezzin means Cousin in African and Family in Dutch which Rithik believes is a perfect word to describe how his app is uniting families with their extended families from around the world.

Download the free Gezzin app from the AppStore and PlayStore.

Yas Grigaliunas is an Impact Entrepreneur and the Founder of Circonomy.  She has many accolades including Global 100 Inspirational Leader of 2022 alongside the likes of Jacinda Ardern, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Sheryl Sandberg, Sara Blakeley and Oprah.

Yas tells her story from pizza delivery driver to her first startup followed by the World's Biggest Garage Sale and now the CEO of Circonomy.  She talks about being an impact entrepreneur and how Circonomy is creating a world without waste and that includes human potential. She is passionate about the global Sustainable Development Goals and building a business that is bigger than just sales and metrics.

Yas always brings her authentic self and is proud that she shows up every day as herself regardless of what is going on in her life.  She believes that one of her greatest strengths is being coachable and being able to have real conversations. The secret to her success is being comfortable in the uncomfortable.

Yas is very values driven and her core values are:

• Love 
• Optimism 
• Empathy 
• Growth 
• Integrity 
• Resilience 
• Transparency

To help Yas on her mission, go to Circonomy- renewed furniture, tech, apparel, toys at affordable prices

Charlie Wood is the CEO of Wiise, the fastest-growing cloud ERP platform. He has over 25 years of tech experience.  Charlie is a successful Sydney-based entrepreneur and business leader, who formerly headed up Dropbox ANZ, held leadership roles at Microsoft and Salesforce, and has built and mentored several startups.

In this episode, Nicola and Charlie discuss his main career highlights and challenges.  They discuss what qualities he looks for in new team members when building high performing teams.  They talk about what factors drive successful business transformations and the traps that cause businesses to fail.

Charlie describes his plans for Wiise over the next 12 months as well as what he looks for when assessing aspiring entrepreneurs.  

They finish the podcast discussing Charlie's main business lessons he has learnt over the course of his career and what habits really drive his success.

Kody Cook is the Head of Software at Gilmour Space Technologies.  Kody has extensive experience of space and aerospace technologies working at the Australian Space Agency, Fleet Space Technologies and Boeing.  His experience encompasses mechatronics, software and systems engineering.  Gilmour and Kody's team are working towards launching Australia's first sovereign made orbital launch vehicle.

Kody demonstrated his engineering credentials from an early age when he started building computers out of junk shop parts from his pocket money around Grade 2. He then progressed to setting his parents' house on fire and electrocuting himself! It is Kody's innate sense of wanting to understand how things work and to solve problems that attracted him to space technology.

In this episode, Kody and Nicola talk about the importance of aerospace technology in Australia.  They discuss how many people don't see or understand the benefits of space technology as well as the lack of government support in the development of future space technologies.

Ben Shapira has extensive experience in the digital advertising and marketing industry. More recently, he has become a tech founder, solving problems in the financial services industry with his innovative tech solutions.  His newest venture is dineiro - a mobile app focusing on the interactions between consumers, mortgage brokers and financial advisors.

Ben and Nicola discuss a variety of topics including:

💲 the future of tech in financial services

💲 the democratisation of financial data 

💲 the importance of financial literacy, particularly for young people

💲 how young people get can get on the housing ladder

Christin Marshall is the Founder of Sol & Sonder.  Sol means sun and Sonder is the realization that each person has a life as vivid and as complex as their own.  Sol + Sonder is a lifestyle brand which is looking to integrate renewable energy into everyday accessories which use solar energy so that people can have access to the power of the sun at any time.  Her first product is a solar travel wallet which combines solar power banks wrapped in leather with beautiful colours.

Christin talks about her career and personal background.  Her experience of investing and equity crowdfunding.  She explains the challenges of not getting as much capital as her male counterparts.

Christin's words to her 16 year old self - “You should be so incredibly proud of the resilient woman that you’ve become...you should be extremely proud, and you'll come across a few roadblocks, hard things to get across, but you’ll make it out the other side and you’re gonna do well”