Life beyond Radford

After finishing at Radford in 2008 I took a gap year for holidays and then moved over the road to study a Bachelor of Information Technology at the University of Canberra.

Graduating in 2013 I worked at ACT Health for a couple of years before being accepted into an ICT Graduate Program in the Public Service within the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (called the CrimTrac Agency before a recent merger). You may know of our work if you have ever had to get a Background Police Check which forms our core business.

Learning the ropes as a Business Analyst I am now a System Analyst which involves working in a team designing IT systems that all 9 Police jurisdictions around Australia use on a daily basis.

I now work at the Australian Taxation Office as a Systems Integration Specialist which works to tie all the discrete IT systems together to talk and function together.

I'm now a Team Leader at Telstra Purple (the managed services division of Telstra) managing a group of other consultants including some other Radford Alumni.

Being a house captain for Wandoo in year 12 was a definite highlight. Coming up with themes, chants and costumes for each of the carnivals was so much fun. My personal favourite was Wandoo @ the Zoo which required wearing a gorilla suit all day in the rather warm summer heat (only taken off for the first race of the day, 50m butterfly, for those sweet, sweet participation points)

I always looked up to Mr Leyshon while he was head of Senior School. He always had good advice for your future and also rocked a killer mo while running a vineyard. Big lesson learnt there is the teachers can tell you so much more than the subject that they’re teaching.

Actually really easy to decide I wanted a career in IT. I was a bit misguided in my early years of aspiring to be a pilot but after a few years in the ICT courses taught by none other than my father Mr Demery and of course Mr Scoltock, I realised IT was my future. I was pretty good at it and enjoyed that sort of thing so combined with the bonus of a shortage in the current employment marketplace with plenty of work going around I made sure to get the required marks to get a choice of a couple universities.

I knew that I wanted to stay in Canberra so the options were really UC and ANU so after looking at both and going to some information sessions I decided on UC since their IT course was much more oriented to practical applications rather than the theoretical nature ANU offered.

Working through my degree, I heard about an ICT specific Graduate program the Public Service was starting up and thought would be a great entry level step. So I applied for that and was accepted halfway through my final year to start in 2014.

In a general sense it did but during my post school years I figured out IT isn’t just coding and programming, there is massive world of business and system analysis that suits me much better. I can still write code when required but I think I’ve found my niche in the area between these worlds.

Try all different subjects at school! I did Hospitality through all the years (if only I could remember some of those recipes now), and tried my hand at woodworking and even textiles. You only get out what you put in (thanks nutri-grain) so try your hardest in everything you do and you will see results.

Also hold onto the friends you meet at school, make sure you keep in touch and have catch-ups because the people you meet at Radford are some of the best people you will ever meet.