The Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) / Te Amorangi Mātauranga Matua is a crown agency that leads the government’s relationship with the tertiary education sector and provides career services from education to employment.
I initially joined the TEC as a Senior Marketing Executive, seconded to the Inspiring the Future project, before being promoted to the DCE’s Principal Advisor of Performance.
Inspiring the Future aims to breakdown gender and unconscious bias, and broaden young people’s career aspirations by connecting them with volunteers from the world of work.
It does this through an online platform. Teachers use the platform to find role models and invite them to attend events.
Drawing the Future
My first responsibility in the role was to own a market research project to understand young people’s career aspirations.
Children were asked to draw what they’d like to do when they were older.
- I prepared and distributed research packs to over 7,000 schools.
- Prepared a RFP to source a market research agency.
- Managed the market research agency.
- Edited and proofread the Drawing the Future research report.
- Played a leading role to launch the research report at a parliamentary event attended by the media and the Minister of Education.
- Drawing the Future research report.
- Footage from Seven Shap of the Drawing the Future research launch event.
Inspiring the Future
I then led the Inspiring the Future project, understanding what the event format needed to look like and helping to shape the online platform.
- I visited schools and prospective volunteers around the country to understand how we should adapt the UK ItF programme for the New Zealand context.
- I conducted synthesis and analysis of findings, working alongside service designers to understand what our learnings meant for the event format and online platform.
- I identified what should go into the Inspiring the Future packs to help volunteers and schools prepare and host events, and wrote the materials.
- I organised the Inspiring the Future pilot event. The purpose of the event was to test the event format and content and collect media assets. I worked with a marketing agency to create a video asset (see above) to show what happens at events.
- I led the campaign to launch Inspiring the Future to volunteer role models. A campaign video designed to capture hearts and minds was nominated for a TVNZ marketing award and received more than 8 million views and 1,000 sign-ups in 12 months.