20 | March | 2025 | Dr Tim Kitchen's Journal (CTL

About 1,200 high school students from all over Sydney visited UTS on March 18 & 19 for the Big Day In event.

Day 1 featured an inspiring speech from Zali Steggall OAM (independent federal member for Warringah). She shared her experience as a lawyer, former Winter Olympic athlete and current ultra-marathon athlete. Zali encouraged the students to follow their passions and consider a career in a STEM industry.

A highlight for me was sharing the stage with Vishal Repaka. I recently met Vishal in one of the lunch rooms at the Adobe Sydney office where he asked if I was the Tim Kitchen who spoke at the Big Day In events. He reflected that in 2015 he attended the Big Day In event at UTS as a Year 12 student at Fort Street High School. After hearing me and other presenters do our session on stage, he was inspired to consider a career in the IT industry. He was accepted into the WiseTech Global scholarship program, which helped him completed an IT degree at UTS.

In 2019, while studying at UTS, Vishal was asked to be one of the UTS Big Day In hosts for the Sydney events. During his studies and after he graduated he has contracts as a Software Engineer with a number of companies including IBM iX, Aten Systems, 2DataFish, Sail Business Loans, Venntifact and earlier this year he started working as a Data Architect with Adobe’s Professional Services team.

Vishal’s story captured the attention of the Australian Computer Society Foundation who run the Big Day In events and they interviewed him on camera so that other students can be inspired by his journey.

Here is the Adobe presentation …

Both Vishal and Jerry Wong from the Adobe Edu Team helped as we met with hundred of students and encouraged them to scan a QR code that linked to a number of short tutorials that I have created to help students and teachers get to know Adobe Express better.

The tutorials

Day 2 commenced with a great message from Professor Andrew Parfitt, Vice-Chancellor and President of UTS sharing how he started his career as an IT Engineer before the Internet was around and prior to mobile phone technology. He inspired the students to consider IT as a career because of all the good that it can bring to the world and how it is an ever dynamic industry.

Molly Turner from the Adobe Edu team helped support me on this day and a highlight for us was meeting Isabella Hogan who shared that she was a big Adobe fan after using many of the applications at her High School. She now works with an wonderful organistion called Girls Programming Network that runs free programing workshops focused on learning together, making new friends and having fun with tech.