I love this city. I love Melbourne so much I'm here in the city not to take
photos to shoot a vlog obviously but for a very important reason I'm down here
for a meeting and that's we're off to to today.
Hello friends, yeah welcome down to the center of Melbourne. We're right here in the
city here on the Yarra River. Now if you watched my recent Q & A video you'll
know that I work in the technology industry but I also like to fill my
spare time with travel and general aviation.
And when those two worlds of
Technology and travel and aviation actually come together and I get an
opportunity to help especially young people get into either of those or both
of those industries that really excites me and that's why we're here in Melbourne today.
You see I think the air travel and the general aviation industry really needs
some new thinking these days I mean we're still burning fossil fuels to
generate power. How do we continue to reduce travel times between destinations
as well I mean I know Boeing's coming out with their hypersonic technology
which is looking to make travel from New York to Shanghai in less than two hours
which is phenomenal but how do we push ideas like that even more and how do we
drive that kind of thinking in science and technology and engineering even further forwards?
Well I'm a big believer in something here in Australia and maybe
elsewhere in the world that we call STEM. And STEM in education stands for science
technology engineering and mathematics. Now I recently found out that here in
Australia one third of graduates from STEM related courses are female
66% of people graduating in STEM subjects are males. When you look at
degrees like physics and engineering the numbers are even lower than that and
when it comes to the actual workforce it's even lower women make up just 16%
of all the employed people in science tech engineering and mathematics related fields.
And so based on those numbers it seems like we're missing out on some of the
very best candidates in those STEM subjects and women just aren't pursuing
careers in STEM disciplines and I want to find out why.
I was expecting there to be a helicopter but... So my meeting in town today is to chat
with a group of people who I might be able to start doing some work with maybe
do some talks at some conferences that are coming up and shoot some content
around how do we address that gender inequality in aviation and in those STEM
subjects. But also what could be done you know I'm not going to change the world
here one middle-aged man who's got a YouTube channel isn't going to change
the future for women. I know that but what can I do in my kind of small way to
help this course something that I feel really strongly about.
Just as we're leaving...
Never gets old
Another crocodile in the Yarra.
Now a company close to home who I think he's doing some great work in addressing
this imbalance of genders and before I say this I'm not sponsored by this
company I I shouldn't have to say this but this is just a company who I want to
use to highlight this point and that's Qantas. Now Qantas's Pilot Academy here
in Australia is a new cadet scheme where they're trying to introduce new
pilots because there's a big shortage of pilots coming up in the future and what
they've committed to is an intake of at least 20% of all the candidates who go
into the pilot Academy to be female. I want to just read out a quote actually
that I saw this morning from Alan Joyce about the pilot academies he said: "if
we're leaving out almost 50 percent of the population in our search for the
next generation of 640,000 pilots we're clearly not tapping into all of
the talent that's available as an industry we need to do a much better job
of encouraging women to become pilots and take up what is an exciting career path"
Well that was a really good meeting. Now why is this important to me? Well not
only do I have a young daughter who I want to make sure I'm doing everything I
can for her when she grows up in this world but also
general aviation technology engineering maths air travel these are kind of the
things that they're my thing okay they're the things like care about the
most in this world when it comes to industries. And I want to make sure I'm
doing everything I can through this channel and the platform that I'm
building on this channel to ensure that they don't dwindle that general aviation
doesn't just wither away and die in the next 20 years. That air travel is still
as affordable and economic and environmentally friendly as it can be.
That STEM industries and careers are equally represented irrespective of your
gender race background. Ensuring that everybody has an equal opportunity to
get involved in those areas is really important.
And finally just a word to the women who are watching this right now now I know
my female-to-male split is quite heavily skewed towards male viewers on this
channel but if you're watching this and you think that you could help me tell
the story of how you got involved in the aviation industry or if you're working
in a STEM industry if I can share your story to help encourage others to
overcome the barriers that they think may exist to get into those industries
that we love please reach out to me through a message on this channel
through social media or send me an email. I'll put the links down below I'd love
to hear from you I'd love to tell your story I'd love to see if we can do
whatever we can through this channel just to break those barriers down and
get more brilliant young minds into the industries that we love so much.