Youth get a real-life taste of future careers

A new internet platform allows students to get a ­real-life experience of what happens in the business world.

Rick Geritz, chief executive of LifeJourney. Picture: Aaron Francis

Australia Post, Telstra and AMP are among a raft of top companies backing a new cloud-based internet platform allowing students to get a ­­ ­real-life experience of Australia in the year 2020 through the eyes of top corporate executives.

The initiative is the second part of the Day of STEM program run by a US-based company called LifeJourney, which links mentors from industry directly with students in an online environment allowing them to get a real-life appreciation of what happens in the business world.

LifeJourney’s technology allows a single mentor to guide 10,000 or more students on its cloud-based platform and the group has ambitions to target millions of students across the country after launching its initial program last November.

That program allowed students to join a cloud-based internet platform letting students live a day in the life of the nation’s STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) leaders.

LifeJourney chief executive Rick Geritz said the new program, known as Australia 2020, which will be launched in Sydney this week, allowed students to get a “tour down the future of Australia”.

“So we start with Telstra — they were the ones that embedded their network in the Tesla (electric vehicle). And we talk about how telecommunications are being used in the whole development of autonomous vehicles.

“We also have a section where an Australia Post drone is landing a package. It allows a student to go on an interactive tour of the way the economy is going to be,’’ Mr Geritz said.

“We have taken the iconic brands of corporate Australia, broken them into these programs. When they are done they will have touched every part of the Australian economy from a science, technology, engineering and maths perspective.’’

LifeJourney Australian managing director Frazer Hughes said Australia 2020 was about “taking that future digital economy of Australia and making it real for students”.

“Adapting what they are doing now to a future job or career,” he said.

This comes after LifeJourney partnered with the Collingwood Football Club in July to launch the STEM Cup challenge, which allows school students to use analytics and problem solving skills to estimate the football club player salaries for the 2017 season based on performance statistics.

Last year, LifeJourney launched the National Security Agency National Day of Cyber that allows students across the US to test drive their future “online” by living a day in the life of six NSA cyber professionals.

With the support of the director of the NSA, Admiral Michael Rogers, who is also the head of US Cyber Command, the NSA also entered into a longer-term partnership with LifeJourney.

“Once we finish the 2020 in Australia we move heavily into cyber security. There will be two back-to-back sessions: one with a large government customer, the other with the cyber risk officers of the likes of Optus, Deloitte. At Optus we have re-created the cyber threat centre inside Optus’s building,’’ Mr Geritz said. LifeJourney is also expected to focus a future program on autonomous and electric vehicles.

Other companies in the Australia 2020 program include Deloitte, Twitter, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems and SAS, while it is also backed by Australia’s chief scientist Alan Finkel.

LifeJourney International chairman and Australian American Leadership Dialogue founder Phil Scanlan said: “There has been an enormous amount of discussion regarding the importance of STEM and mentorship. This is another step along the way of the practical applications that will develop the momentum even further.’’