Industry Engagement

Susan Cullen, Senior Partnership Manager, Medibank

My name is Susan Cullen, and I'm a senior partnership manager working at Medibank.

So, Medibank is a private health insurer. We operate within Australia, and we have around 3.7 million members.

We're probably most well-known for our health insurance, but actually we're evolving into a health company, and we have a wide remit looking after the health and wellbeing of people that live in Australia.

So the business problem that we've set this semester is all around the cost of living, because we know that this is a real concern for people everywhere across Australia at the moment.

So the business problem that we've proposed is how do we help our customers understand the extra value within their product, and see the value of partnering with Medibank for their health and wellbeing.

Benjamin Parker, Bachelor of Business Student

So I actually thought it was really beneficial being able to work one-on-one directly with an industry partner, in this case, Medibank.

I think the most transferable skill is definitely critical thinking, being able to analyse and interpret different problems in a different way, and just kind of being able to get creative with your different solution that you've come forward with, and it really fostered the creativity.

So being able to apply that further down the line when I start getting more work experience in similar sort of fields, is going to prove very beneficial.

Susan Cullen, Senior Partnership Manager, Medibank

I think one thing I've really noticed about the RMIT students is how considered they are, and how invested they are, and it's obvious that they're just really keen to understand and to learn.

Dr Konrad Peszynski, Undergraduate Business Program Manager, RMIT

It's a really good experience full stop as part of any form of learning. It's learning by doing, and so by being able to create more work opportunities, it presents students the

ability to work, negotiate, interact with real life clients, and it's really helping prepare students for their career and their journey once they finish their studies.

Susan Cullen, Senior Partnership Manager, Medibank

Students are at the heart of what we do. So to be able to work with them in a different way that's not talking about their insurance product but actually understanding what's important to them, understanding how they think, how they work, and how they go about solving problems gives us real insights into, you know, how we should develop how we work.

Maria Race, Bachelor of Business Student

Well I found it to be really engaging, and it's also shown me that I will enjoy my career once I leave RMIT and I'm on the right path.

Adelide Mutinda – Innovation Program Manager, Australian Red Cross (Humanitech)

Australian Red Cross is built on the power of people helping their communities and each other in times of need.

Humanitech is an initiative of Australian Red Cross that explores how technology can help us meet humanitarian needs.

Working with students provides us with an opportunity to uncover fresh ideas to think about solutions for the problems that face Australians into the future.

We've just commenced a new business challenge with Stud exploring marketing strategies around how to engage students as research volunteers for Australian Red Cross.

We're super excited about this because volunteers are at the core of the work that Australian Red Cross does, and volunteering is a great way for students to help and support communities in need while also building their professional skills and portfolios.

Jonathon Gourvelos – Bachelor of Business Student

Working with Australian Red Cross has really helped my learning this semester as it's helped me to really gain practical experiences and hands-on learning which I really enjoy, especially for my first year to be able to work with an industry partner has been a valuable experience that will really help me in my future studies.

Ashley Seah – Bachelor of Business Student

RMIT has more of a hands-on learning experience. It's a lot more practical skills that I feel like I could use that a lot in a professional setting .

Adelide Mutinda – Innovation Program Manager, Australian Red Cross (Humanitech)

Working directly with students helped us to refine how we talk about our work the students were genuinely curious and interested in understanding the complexity of our work.

Dr Jessica Helmi – Senior Lecturer Business Administration, RMIT University

It opens up their perspectives on how it feels like to work in a professional setting so I believe that it will provide a smoother transition when they transition from the academic into the professional world.

Adelide Mutinda – Innovation Program Manager, Australian Red Cross (Humanitech)

I was very impressed by how quickly the students built their understanding of the problem and just their genuine interest in trying to find solutions. So, they had a strong bias to actions, and some of these solutions have genuinely been useful and we've continued to implement them at Australian Red Cross.

Samantha Louey – Bachelor of Business Student

RMIT gave me an insightful experience of how to think of those problems, and how to overcome them. Especially working with Australian Red Cross, it really gave us that kind of part partnership aspect.

Associate Professor Konrad Peszynski – Undergraduate Business Program Director, RMIT University

Presentations that I've seen students deliver in the past to these Executives: well the term that I keep hearing is ‘blown away’.

The students have come up with this really niche idea that is still cost effective but really impactful in terms of what they're trying to achieve, so that seeing these organisations and the executives as part of those presentations really shows that these are the calibre quality of students coming through with the knowledge skills and capabilities that would fit right into those organisations.

Adelide Mutinda – Innovation Program Manager, Australian Red Cross (Humanitech)

I definitely recommend engaging with students to work on projects like this, because it offers such a great opportunity to inject some fresh ideas and out of the box thinking, and Red Cross is really proud to have partnered with RMIT on this to share expertise in humanitarian and social impact and we encourage other organisations to do so.

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