In Mid-2018, the Alumni Office ran a nationwide reconnection campaign looking for our CCAE alumni in the lead up to the 50 Years of Education celebration. We searched high and low for our alumni, asking them to reconnect and share their favourite memory of their time at CCAE or UC. In return, we offered a whopping $5000 travel gift card for one lucky winner. The lucky Bryan Henshaw claimed the prize, he shares his story below.
It’s not every day you get to go behind the scenes of the wonderful world of Disney. For many of us, Disney is a childhood fantasy that belongs behind our television screens. It’s not until you take a peek behind the curtain that you are able to grasp the reality of Disney as a business - with employees, organisational culture, targets and dreams of its own.
Ian Wishart has spent most of his life as a passionate champion of international development and aid. Now, he has set his sights on eradicating avoidable blindness around the world.
Yvonne was able to leverage her executive position to transform the organisation’s employment practices to better represent the country’s demographics. Yvonne was instrumental in driving both organisations’ corporate social investment programs and expenditure to benefit disadvantaged people and communities.
David’s PhD research at UC focuses on developing robots that can efficiently recycle clothing – as this is one of the largest contributors to landfill. Globally we produce about 80 billion new pieces of clothing annually. In Australia, we currently send 85% of the textiles we buy to landfill every year. Alarmingly, clothes with synthetic fibres are essentially made from plastics based on petroleum, meaning they could take up to a thousand years to biodegrade. If that wasn’t bad enough, they also release micro plastic fibres when washed.
Linzi has achieved a profound impact to establish and implement systems and policies in forensic science. And whilst policies may seem mundane to the everyday person, it is through that work that we now have established national processes to collect DNA samples for example, which has had a massive impact on cold case reviews, crime scene analysis and major incidences.
I go home every day knowing I’ve done something useful, in some small way, for someone. I get to walk alongside and support women and their new families on their pregnancy, childbirth and postnatal journeys.
Karel has led an impressive career in improving health outcomes for Aboriginal women and their babies as both a midwife and as a leader in Indigenous policy development. Throughout Karel’s career, she has played a key role in coordinating Aboriginal dialogue from across Australia which led to the 2017 National Constitutional Convention and the ‘Uluru Statement From the Heart’. The statement calls for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.
Throughout her teaching career, Tabatha has worked with students with diverse backgrounds including refugees and students with a disability, endeavouring to create a school community where all members feel a sense of belonging, identity and purpose.
Korean Corner’s Green Project commits to promoting eco-friendly, environmentally awareness and sustainable practices through working with other companies including several well-known international corporations. Their key focus is to encourage people from all walks of life to understand the importance of eco-friendly and environmentally sustainable practices to better serve society.
During a conversation with one of his favourite Professor’s at CalPoly, he asked for advice about the next step in his career, his wise old Professor told him that it was obvious…you had to start at the end and work your way back from there.
