veski kickstart at the CoE 2019 Imaging Summit

On Monday, 11 November 2019 veski partnered with the ARC Centre for Excellence in Advanced Molecular Imaging, for the second year to deliver our veski kickstart to students in attendance at their annual summit held at Peppers the Sands Resort, Torquay. The veski kickstart program provided a unique opportunity to build connections between students and industry, academia and business sectors to foster conversations, introductions and provide candidates with professional development to assist career progression.

Following feedback from a student consultation process from across the Imaging CoE nodes, veski tailored a professional development workshop for students on how to develop effective pitching skills and have the opportunity to practice those pitches - Pitch Pursuit!

Ms Annette Wittmann, Chief Operating Officer at the ARC CoE, opened the proceedings by welcoming students to the summit.

This was followed by a workshop on ‘The science and art of pitching’ delivered by Ms Michelle Gallaher, CEO ShareRoot. She assisted the students in developing their pitches, guided them through strategies to tailor a pitch for specific audiences in different environments, and provided them the opportunity to draft their personal value proposition statement - as Michelle says - "no one tells your story better than you". 

After which, the students were given the opportunity to practice their pitches with our Sector Specialists divided into the three main categories – Cross-disciplinary science, Industry and Networking & Social Media.

For this part of the session, each student had the opportunity to practice their 30-second pitch, hook the specialist's interest for a deeper conversation and in turn receive feedback on the delivery and content of their pitch. All students had the opportunity to practice with Sector Specialists from all three of the categories.

The opportunity to network with the Sector Specialists continued with dedicated time over the lunch, allowing students to speak with specialists whom they did not have a chance to earlier in the session.

Should your institution or organisation wish to partner with veski to deliver a veski kickstart to your Undergraduate, Masters or PhD student cohort please contact veski on 03 9635 5700 or email admin @ veski.org.au to discuss the possibilities.