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Annual Performance & Achievements Report: Bright Futures Society UniSA – Adelaide, South Australia, 5000 Australia.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

President’s Note___________________________________________________________________________________________1

Journey Reinstates________________________________________________________________________________________2

Management Team________________________________________________________________________________________8

Bright Futures UniSA Team_____________________________________________________________________________10

Appendix 1 – Marketing / Advertising – Launch Event 2014_________________________________________11

Appendix 2 – Advertising positions at Bright Futures Society 2015_________________________________12

Appendix 3 – Felicitation / Certificate giving ceremony______________________________________________15

Appendix 4 – Thank You gifts & Certificate____________________________________________________________18

Appendix 5 – Orientation stall 2015____________________________________________________________________19

President’s Note

Bright Futures Society at University of South Australia, re-launching on 21st

October 2014, has covered a long journey in a short span of time, with an aim to be the fastest growing student-led professional society in South Australia by 2016. The society had a very successful launch event by getting management and executive level industry representatives to network with the students at University of South Australia and increase their employability. CPA Australia as our first corporate partner, we are negotiating with various other multinational companies like PwC, KPMG, HP, GHD, Australian Marketing Institute (AMI), BHP Billiton and so forth to become our corporate partners and event sponsors. Run by 7 enthusiastic, motivated and hardworking students, Bright Futures Society has already made a mark at University of South Australia as the only society to be purely focused on professional networking, by affiliating with UniSA Career Services and Career Shop. The society is becoming the ‘Talk of the town’ amongst employers and other universities. I hope we keep getting the same support from University staff and can also expand to different universities by 2016. I invite you to read below the achievements and performance journey of Bright Futures for 2014-15.

Deep Kishor Thacker

President / Co-Founder

27-03-15

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Journey Reinstates

INITIAL SPARK OF BRIGHT FUTURES SOCIETY AT UNISAFirst of all, I’d like to extend my gratitude to Catherine Klimes, Manager at UniSA Career Services for bringing up this idea on table, and has been super-supportive at all the phases of society from Day 1. Secondly, Tom-Woods Kerruish, who brought us all to this project as the Project-Lead in August 2014. Jimmy Zamani, Project Officer, later took over Tom’s role in our society as an affiliate from Career Services after Tom resigned in October 2014. Events and Communications Officer, John Gartland has also been very supportive in guiding us with the launch event. Other staff from Career Services such as Frida Svensson, Matthew Swift, Demi Kastanos – UniSA Career Shop Manager, Matt Purdy – Career Shop coordinator, all have been very supportive and friendly at all the times. Student Engagement Officers – Shoaib Gill, Olexij Straschko, and Peter Andrinopoulos have been very supportive as well. Other supporting staff list is too big to cover. The progress of the society would not be possible without all these staff members. They act like a backbone for us.

SOWING THE SEEDSMy degree at UniSA was quite a sudden decision. I am a credit-transferred student from Deakin University in Melbourne, VIC, who had come to University of South Australia, Adelaide SA in March 2014 to continue my degree in Bachelor of Applied Finance. It was August 19, 2014 when I got an email from Tom, ex-Careers Information Officer, asking to meet up to establish a professional society. Myself along with 6 other international and domestic students gathered for a round-table conference on August 21, 2014 to discuss the base of the society and name the society as ‘Bright Futures Society’. Back then, none of us had an idea about this highly esteemed society since 1977 in Europe. We all agreed upon this catchy name and started planning for the events, what faculty students & employers to target, what marketing strategies to use, and how to raise finance.

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Soon, we decided to start-off by targeting School of Commerce students. Meanwhile, we got registered as a club with UniSA Student Association (USASA) to get all the benefits and financial support from UniSA. In a month’s time, I was elected as the President by voluntary call. Alongside, I was involved in various professional institutes in the Business sector, due to which I felt confident in contacting individuals on LinkedIn.

LAUNCH EVENT – OCTOBER 21, 2014A month after our elections, we decided to launch the society on October 21, 2014, just a month before the semester exams. The date happens to be exactly 2 months after our initial meeting (Aug 21) to establish the society, which was a big achievement for all of us. For our launch event, we managed to get 2 CEOs from Accounting / Finance background. Attendees were:

Chris Hooper, CEO at Startup Adelaide; Partner at Cirillo Hooper & Co; Accounting Tutor at UniSA; current MBA student and past graduate from UniSA. He is an award winning individual for his performance and being one of the ‘Top Entrepreneurs under 30 in Australia’.

David Dahm, CEO at Health & Life, since 23 years, his company and he are multi-award winners. David is an award-winning speaker in Australia, having done 1000 plus seminars, conferences and public speaking across the country.

Peter Cox, Owner and MD at Gelista, since 2009. His company since then, is one of the rapidly growing and leading brands in the luxury gelatos in Australia, having featured on national newspapers and blogs various times. Company specializes in making hand-made gelato. Gelista was our event sponsor by giving out free Gelatos to every participant.

3 Recent Graduates from PwC and Ernst and Young. Professors from Bachelor & Master degree teaching Entrepreneurship and

other Business subjects. UniSA Career Services & Student Experience staff members.

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The event starting at 5:30pm, lasted for 2.5 hours as there was a great response from students who kept the speakers and graduates very engaged till the last moment. There was enough food to cater 75-80 people, and 50 attending students had filled their stomach enough to skip their dinner. 5 different platters were ordered from a local caterers. Veg and Non-veg options were available. Gluten-Free option was also taken care off.

The idea of this event was to launch the society to the students, getting CEO Guest speakers to come & talk about their journey from ‘Student-to-Award winning CEO’. Photos of this event are available here. See Appendix 1 for the marketing photos.

In following weeks, I contacted the speakers and staff members for their feedback on the launch event, and the speakers were quite astonished to see how quickly we had grown and pulled-off the launch event in just 2 months from Day 1. I got some positive verbal feedback in the meetings on how we could perform better in future events. It was amazing to see approx. 50 students attending, given that there were other Certificate-ceremony held on the same day on campus by another student-led society; exams in a month’s time, assignment due dates around the corner, etc. Overall, we were much happy to see the event lasted more than what we were expecting.

Finance was raised by the committee who had started Bright Futures at UniSA in 2013, however society demolished after the launch event due to internal disputes for Leadership roles. Previous committee had charged $10 p.a. per student, due to which we had about $1200 in account with Catherine as carry-forwarded. Besides that, we got $500 in sponsorships in 2014 by UniSA to perform our activities. Overall cost of the event was $725, including the catering, water bottles, marketing, premium chocolate gifts for speakers and other sundry expenses.

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OUTCOME OF THE LAUNCH EVENT2 of our attendees managed to secure work placements (and currently paid job) with Gelista in their Accounting stream. I also managed to get work with a Finance company locally by networking with industry professionals for Bright Futures.

After getting selected as the President of the society, I created my own business cards to hand out to every professionals I meet. Due to this, many individuals and industry representatives have come to know about who we are and what we do. There is a great imagine of Bright Futures being created in the market today due to its well-reputed background in UK since 1977. Besides, UniSA have posted our society on their website. I have also asked my committee members to mention about this project as their experience on their résumé and LinkedIn, and I will be posting recommendation there once they resign from their titles.

CURRENT POSITIONAfter the launch event in October 2014, we had semester exams in November and 3-months summer break between Dec-Feb 2015 when half of our team flew back to their home countries, others worked full time. Yet, we all came up in January to discuss our future plans to expand the society to different campus, focusing on different faculties.

Our 1st Study Period of 2015 has begun in March and we are organizing our next event for IT / Engineering students at the Mawson Lakes campus of UniSA, which serves to Faculty of IT, Engineering, Civil Aviation, Applied Science, Sports science, and Environmental studies. The event is expected to be held between 28 April (Tues) and 1 May (Fri). Career Services at the Mawson Lakes campus is very helpful in helping us organize the event on their campus. For company selection, we have involved few Engineering and IT students from that campus, and conducted survey with approximately 30 students, asking them what companies they want to network with. Society has also affiliated with another campus-based

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‘Mawson Student Network’ (MSN), having 400 plus students. Therefore, we are getting quite impressive response from the campus and support from the MSN society. ‘Mawson Student Network’ basically holds monthly social gatherings, social and sports events for students studying at the Mawson Lakes campus. The campus really lacks professional events relating to their field or jobs or career guidance. Therefore this is a golden opportunity for us to shine out to another 500 students.

IT and Engineering companies targeted for our next event are HP, FMG, GHD, and Adelaide Interim. These companies are some of the Australia’s best and biggest to create grad opportunities to domestic and international students. About a fortnight ago, more than 30 companies from all faculties had come to 2015 Career Expo UniSA, and I managed to meet most of them to talk about the society and get them on board as partners or sponsors. We have also contacted Engineers Australia to help us with the search of Executives or top-level managers who would be happy to speak about their company and the industry in general. I am in the middle of meeting with State Managers and People Managers of some of these MNCs. And everything is expected get confirmed by next fortnight.

CORPORATE PARTNERSHIPOver the last few weeks, the society has managed to get CPA Australia as our corporate partners for 2015. Further negotiations for Partnership are going on with

IAEC Education & Migration Agents - Melbourne VIC. Highly reputed and very well established visa and education agents for over 40 years.

HP, GHD and FMG in South Australia.

Benefits the employers get are saving costs on HR, Marketing & Advertising, where most of the budget lies around. Partner company’s logos are used in our marketing (on all platforms), cross promoting the brand, companies get to meet

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some of our bright students in the class with high GPA scores, which makes them direct eligible for Grad programs and Internships.

Partners will be given the space to put their own stall in our events. They also have an option to speak for 5min in all our events. We get the benefit of guaranteed number of seats in their events for students, along with a chance to talk about who we are.

FUTURE PLANSThe society at UniSA aims to partner with 20+ companies from all faculties by October 2020 and arrange a grand networking for all streams on society’s 5th

anniversary. By October 2016, we aim to expand the society to all campuses of UniSA and have events at different universities by partnering with their societies; getting 20 plus students each year, work experience or internship each year with our partner companies. By partnering with 5+ companies each year, we target to get $1500 p.a. for partnership from each company, giving us a figure of $7500 p.a. in sponsorships. For other Small to Medium Enterprises (SME), we will get them to sponsor our events and they get their benefits accordingly. This will help us achieve our target to raise $20,000 in sponsorships by 2017.

Currently and in future, we will be holding all different types of networking events ranging from Keynote presentations, Cocktail style networking; Q&A sessions; Business high tea; Excursion to offices, and workshops for mock-interviews, pre-networking preparation, for all faculties including Commerce, Engineering, Computer Science, Aviation, Health & Science, Social work, and Education.

We are affiliated with ‘Global Experience’, a university-wide extra-curricular program, designed to enhance students' intercultural competence and global employability. We are also in the negotiations with the Divisional staff to get our society in their academic as a co-curricular activity, sending personal invitations to the Golden Key students and Top 15% students to join our society. We also

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plan to get the University Vice Chancellor to promote our society in a short video later this year.

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Management Team

SKILLS SHOWCASEDGenerally, the President and the Client Relationships Officer are the one who look out for building relationships with external stakeholders. When we arrange a meeting with employers or business owners, we both go to negotiate the terms and agreement for partnership or sponsorship.

MANAGEMENT COMMITTEEThe management team comprises of:

President – Deep Thacker Treasurer – Heng Yin Secretary – Madara Premaratne Marketing – Pascal Tolley Ward Events Officer – Shuai Shao (Steven) & Abhishek Mohile. Student Engagement Officer – Krisu Patel Client Relationship Officer – Miranda Li

Basically, 7 out of 8 management team members are international students. Committee members come from India, Sri Lanka, China, Hong Kong, Brazil and Australia

4 out of 8 members are doing Bachelor degree, rest are doing Master degree. We come from areas like Accounting, Finance, Management, Marketing, and Engineering.

Besides us, we have about 10+ volunteers, by our ad on Career Services, from areas like Aviation, Engineering, Computer Science, Health & Science faculty, Commerce, and Arts.

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SOCIETY AS “WE”We run society in a way where we plan an event together, all the managing team members are expected to give their opinions and ideas. Work load gets split accordingly. Even though there are individual students looking after each divisions, although when someone is busy to do the task, we all tend to help each other in achieving the goal. So we have a sense of one-ness and we work as team with “We” attitude instead of “I”. When we market our positions (see Appendix 2), we say “Work with us” instead of “work for us”. This empowers everyone and get themselves valued in the society.

In the end, we give out “Thank You” certificates to all the volunteers who have come to help execute the event by showcasing their talent and giving their precious time to us. If there are positions available, these volunteers will also be invited to join our managing team. Certificates are printed by an affiliate of university for $5 approximately (paid by society), having Manager – Catherine Klimes’ signature along with UniSA and Bright Futures Logo (See Appendix 3 & 4).

To our managing team, society thanks every individual by giving a goodie-gifts, certificates and a personal recommendation by the President on their LinkedIn.

CONCLUSIONSumming it all, Bright Futures Society at UniSA has built a very strong base, networks and reputation in 2014-15 and we hope to keep doing the great work of increasing student’s employability by getting more and more employers on campus, and focus our time in getting and inviting the brightest students to meet the top employers.

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Bright Futures UniSA Team

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Appendix 1 – Marketing / Advertising – Launch Event 2014

UNISA CAREER SERVICES AD: BRIGHT FUTURES LAUNCH EVENT – OCT 2014

DIGITAL MEDIA MARKETING: BRIGHT FUTURES LAUNCH EVENT – OCT 2014

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Appendix 2 – Advertising positions at Bright Futures Society 2015

UNISA CAREER SERVICES AD: BRIGHT FUTURES RECRUITING VOLUNTEERS AND MGM TEAM – 2015

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RECRUITING EMAILS FROM GLOBAL EXPERIENCE COORDINATOR

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RECRUITING EMAILS FROM UNISA STUDENT ENGAGEMENT OFFICER

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Appendix 3 – Felicitation / Certificate giving ceremony

TOM WOOD’S GOODBYE PARTY – OCT 2014

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CERTIFICATE GIVING – JAN 2015Jimmy felicitating graduating students (Heng Yin & Pascal Ward) with Gifts.

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CERTIFICATE GIVING – FEB 2015Catherine felicitating ex-Student Engagement Officer Viviane Junqueira on leaving Bright Futures to pursue full time work.

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Appendix 4 – Thank You gifts & Certificate

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Appendix 5 – Orientation stall 2015

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