Thursday 20 April saw our latest HymersCAN! event with an insight into careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Maths (STEAM). The evening was open to all aspiring students and their families in the area and it was an opportunity to hear from local experts in their field, along with recent leavers from Hymers about their journey so far. We were delighted to see the room packed with families and students. 

As well as our guest speakers, Piers Smyth (OH 2013-2020), who is in his final year as a STEM Undergraduate at Durham University, spoke to the students. He shared his experiences with them about his time at University, along with useful insights about the process of applying for their course. Recent leaver, Gaurav Achawal (OH 2012-2022) also spoke about his internship as a Placement Software Engineer at Hawk-Eye Innovations Ltd.

Thank you to all our guest speakers for their time speaking to our current students.  We are extremely grateful to them for coming back to school to speak to the students. 

Guest speakers for the event included:

Calum is the R&D Site Lead for Reckitt Hull, a leading health and consumer goods company famous for global brands such as Dettol, Durex, Nurofen, Gaviscon, Strepsils, and Mucinex. He qualified in 1993 with a BSc (Hons) in Pure Chemistry from the University of Strathclyde before joining the Wellcome Foundation on their graduate recruitment programme. Working in GlaxoSmithKline’s Chemical Development Division, Calum held increasingly senior roles developing and launching new pharmaceutical treatments across pain, cancer, and asthma indications. He joined Reckitt in 2010, helping to establish their growing OTC Healthcare business and led the technical specification of their new £100m Science & Innovation Centre in Hull.
	Tom Kitching graduated with first class honours from the University of Manchester in Chemical Engineering. He worked for an engineering consultancy firm focusing on power generation from energy from waste, biomass and anaerobic digestion. He then worked at an engineering project management firm on greenfield and brownfield projects for various industries. More recently, he moved to ERM, one of the world's largest sustainability consultancy firms. He now works as a senior consultant on due diligence projects of various infrastructure assets for private equity and corporate clients.
Jessica is an actor, writer and director, and is Co-Artistic Director of She Productions Theatre Company. After gaining a First Class French and Drama degree, she trained at Drama Studio London, where she was nominated for the BBC Carleton Hobbs Bursary Award for Radio. As an actor, she has worked predominantly in theatre, locally and nationally. Work includes; Beryl (Arcola Theatre and East Riding Theatre), Goodnight Mister Tom (East Riding Theatre), My Big Little Sister (National Tour including The Lyric Hammersmith, The Yvonne Arnaud and Nottingham Playhouse) and Top Girls (Tristan Bates Theatre). She co-founded She Productions in 2015 and has written or co-written many of the company’s shows, and over the past few years, has been directing increasingly. Jessica is also a qualified Modern Languages and Drama Teacher and has taught in secondary and primary schools, as well as directing and facilitating for the Shakespeare Schools Festival.
	Rich left Hymers in 2008 with A Levels in Maths, IT and Physics. When he was deciding on his next steps, he was focused on a university course that would, as much as possible, guarantee him a job out of University. As such, he landed the Ernst and Young Degree in Accounting, Auditing, and Finance at Lancaster University. Four years later, he completed the course, which included 18 months of work experience in EY's London Office and joined EY full-time in September 2012. He completed his exams in 2013 and qualified as a Chartered Accountant (ICAS) in 2014. In late 2014, he decided he wanted to try something different. He joined BT's Consumer division (now EE) and worked as a finance manager on the launch of BT Mobile and the acquisition of EE before moving on to look after the finances for their early life customer call centres. Immediately regretting the move to Customer Care, he left London with his wife and two dogs to move back to Hull to take over his family's accounting practice. Here, he practically fell into an acquisition of a telecoms engineering firm. After a long, often painful journey, it has become Bauer Engineering Limited, a full 'turnkey' fibre engineering firm installing the next generation of one Gigabit capable broadband nationally.