Uni Genius 2024

Both our year 12s and year 13s have now all completed their work experience programmes from our Generating Genius partners. It was a pleasure last week to receive some brilliant feedback from GHO Capital, HSBC and IRI on how wonderful and knowledgeable they were. Likewise, the feedback from the students has been the best to date and they have all valued the chance to be in the office and work on projects in person.

Our university students have continued to work hard at their summer internships and have been learning how to navigate the workplace. It has been great to receive such brilliant feedback from our partners who have Generating Genius students on how they are doing. 

We are looking forward to supporting our university students to prepare to apply for graduate jobs and summer internships this coming September, ahead of applications opening in Winter 2022 for Summer 2023, via our application preparation programmes. Thanks to Google, HSBC, National Grid and Legal & General for running these exclusive programmes for Generating Genius students, in partnership with us.

Finally, I would like to congratulate all of our STEM Future Leaders students who submitted an entry for the STEM Future Leaders Category Awards. This was the final programme activity on the STEM Future Leaders Programme. Thank you to the AKO Foundation for sponsoring the STEM Future Leaders Uni Genius programme, over the last 2 years. We had a wonderful evening listening to the speeches of the winners followed by networking with AKO Capital, Salesforce and BAI Communications. All the submissions were of an extremely high standard.  The students worked on a one-month project in either Engineering, Technology or Medicine. I would like to say a special congratulations to our winners in each category. 

Uni Genius Network Update

Work Experience with IRI Worldwide

Last week some of our Year 12 students embarked on a week-long work experience with IRI Worldwide, one of the original innovators in Big Data.

We kicked off the week at their brand-new offices in Bracknell which gave the students a taste of what working at IRI is like. The rest of our week was virtual with a full agenda of interactive insight workshops into the work of IRI as well as a group project for the students to get stuck into.  A staggering 23 IRI Volunteers shared their time and knowledge with the students throughout the week providing them a broader perspective on the company and what life is like working in Big Data. As well as sessions on Marketing and Media, the students gained invaluable soft skills which helped them with their final group project presentations at the end of the week. 

Thank you again to IRI Worldwide for an incredible week full of valuable content and unforgettable experiences - we are already looking forward to next year!

Work Experience with HSBC

The HSBC Future Genius summer work experience weeks were brilliant. We had 44 students from the programme participate over the two weeks. The students had a combination of employability skills workshops, networking and real work experience via a week-long project they were set. The HSBC teams were so impressed with the standard of the group projects on both the weeks that they are inviting the students back, in October half-term, to present to the HSBC senior leadership. Well done to our brilliant Future Genius Year 12s. Thank you to HSBC for this incredible work experience programme full of valuable content and unforgettable experiences. The students will return to HSBC’s offices in October and then again next summer for another summer work experience

Work experience with GHO Capital 

Our second year of doing work experience with GHO Capital is now complete. Our students had a wonderful time at this two-week, office-based, work experience. The students were working in both the Finance and Investments teams and did a combination of their own tasks and projects, some shadowing of meetings, and lots of networking. We look forward to a third year, next summer, of this wonderful work experience programme. 

Work experience with Coller Capital 

Coller Capital provided a very hands-on work experience where students were provided insight through a group project supported by the teams at Coller Capital into how you decide on making an investment in a private company. The students also had a wonderful networking lunch with Coller Capital employees and the feedback on the questions asked by them from Coller Capital representatives was great. They were impressed with the inquisitiveness of the questions asked around private equity. 

These are all students from the lowest income bracket in the UK.  Yet we continue to give them the best platform to succeed.  GlobalGiving has enabled us to work with these fantastic partners through funding our Uni-Genius programme.