High-Tech Heroes
UWA has many graduates making their mark in the tech world and we’ve continued their success stories here in a series of ‘Web Special’ stories for Digital Uniview.
Rob Shilkin
Vice-President, Global Communications and Public Affairs, Google Inc
He leads Google’s team working on corporate communications globally but Silicon Valley was probably the last place on former Hale School student Rob Shilkin’s mind as a law and economics student at UWA. He was working as a competition lawyer at Clayton Utz in Sydney when he saw an ad for Google’s head of communications in Australia.
Ross Warren
Marketing Manager, YouTube Originals
His first job at YouTube’s parent company Google was as a senior designer in the cooler-than-cool Creative Lab, the small and selective team responsible for marketing, expected to be ‘humble but with epic amounts of ambition’.
Enrico Palermo
Executive Vice-President and General Manager, The Spaceship Company
Enrico Palermo’s business card not only spells out his work address in California’s Mojave Desert but also includes the specification ‘USA, EARTH’, which is appropriate given his job. After joining Virgin Galactic in 2006, the Perth native has been a key player in helping Virgin founder Richard Branson realise his dream of creating the world’s first spaceline to enable many to travel ‘where no man has gone before’.
Brett Meyers
Co-founder and Director, CurrencyFair
“I think the most important thing to learn is to be able to look at a problem, in whatever field, think through different possible solutions, then come up with the best and most practical answer and deliver on that.” And that’s exactly what then 35-year-old UWA grad Brett Meyers did when, during a stint working in Ireland, he was struck by the “horrendous” bank exchange rates as he tried to send money home to Australia.
Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht
Canva Co-founders
They head one of the hottest start-ups in Australia and count Google Maps’ Lars Rasmussen and legendary kiteboarder Bill Tai among their backers, along with stars Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson. However Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht’s road to success begins back in 2007, midway through their Bachelor of Arts and Commerce degrees, as Melanie helped fellow students using online graphic design platforms.
Jad Osseiran
Software Engineer, Apple
When self-confessed travel fanatic Jad Osseiran started at UWA he tried a number of different double degrees but eventually settled on a single degree in software engineering. Osseiran had found his natural home. “I was always following extra tutorials and courses online in iOS development but I was only able to get the most out of them by leveraging the skills I was learning at UWA,” he says.
Jadanne Dare
Head of Enterprise Marketing, ADOBE Australia and New Zealand
Surprisingly, for someone with “intense and constant curiosity” for anything to do with technology, it was a person and not an amazing whizz-bang gizmo responsible for igniting Jadanne (Heuchan) Dare’s passion for high tech.