30 Apr 2025
The Plumpton High School Corporate Mentoring Program, in terms of the life cycle of a project, is now in the monitoring and control phase. Project life cycle phases are typically initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and control, and closure.
After years of planning and a year of trialling the Corporate Mentoring Program is starting to shape up as a key and unique offering to our high potential and gifted education (HPGE) senior students.
Our Year 12 2025 cohort of Mentees (Bernadine Aba, Nadira Ali, Jiya Barot, Caiden Bond, Logan Dartnell, Lochlan Falzon, Elaine Garces, Mariyam Malik, Maxene Marasigan and Chantelle Tabone) have been supported by their Mentors (Rob Tawaf - AXA, Joyce Low - NSW Nurses & Midwives Association, Kathrine Sahagun - Commonwealth Bank, Barbara Allwright - formerly United Way, Hannah Duong and Shoaib Bahkt - John Holland and Susana do Vale - Shakeup Architecture) over the past year. Mentees and Mentors have engaged in 3 Mentoring sessions per term, either face to face or digitally (depending upon Mentor commitments and availability.
Last term, Mariyam, along with sister, Fatima, were invited to a site visit "The Hive" (a community hub) by Mariyam's Mentor, Barbara Allwright. The connection being Mariyam's interest in studying Psychology beyond school and "The Hive's" relationship with United Way.
We are looking forward in Term 2 to taking a group of interested students to John Holland to experience firsthand major infrastructure projects.
Also during Term 1, we inducted 8 new Corporate Mentors (Vasikaran Naganathan - University of Sydney, Justin Woodcock - CBRE, Raza Rizwan - ARCH Artifex, Steve Smith - Business Services Contracting, Nicole Concepcion - United Way, Fionan McDonnell and Darren Lowe - Macquarie Telcom Group and Athena Carfax-Foster - Medtronic) for our 12 new Year 11 Mentees (Melcam Aberu, Zain Al-Shible, Lilith Dartnell, Jarmain David, Shiarna Holland, Dennis Jose, Shivani Joshi, Annacemone Nashid, Ewen Neoh, Ashton Quizon, Carissa Tagra and Josephine Telea).
The Year 11 cohort had their first meeting at the end of Term 1. We were thrilled to welcome most of the Mentors for face-to-face meeting but in a great show of commitment and a testament to the power of technology, our Mentor, Justine Woodcock, attended session in the wee hours of the morning from Abu Dhabi.
In Term 2, Mentees have already been offered an opportunity, by Medtronic, to attend a University of Sydney PERIscope Commercialisation Award program. They are hosting a group of standout students and early-stage researchers at their ANZ headquarters in Macquarie Park where they will share insights in health economics.
Embracing the framework for the stages of team development (forming, storming, norming and performing), we have been able to see our Year 12 Mentees and Mentors transition to performing teams whilst our Year 11 Mentees and Mentors are enthusiastically forming their new relationships.
To sum up, we now have 15 actively participating Corporate Mentors and 22 Mentees all working toward building our community and our student capacity and networks.
Tim Lloyd, Principal
