By Gen P, Year 12

Over the summer, Ansley and I applied to the UpSkill Me STEM Mentoring programme, which is a programme that runs across the whole of the UK and provides lectures and connections to industry experts for young women and non-binary people in sixth form. Over 1,200 people applied and only 300 people were selected so this was a really exciting accomplishment.

On the 14th October, we travelled to Amazon headquarters to have our first day where we met our mentors from different companies, such as Dyson, Meta, Citrix and Google, as well as the other mentees selected (some people travelled from Wales!) and completed various challenges, in addition to learning about networking. We were introduced to the Dyson Challenge, where in groups we have to produce a prototype for a device that will solve the problem of air pollution indoors to present to industry specialists at an expo in 6 months’ time.

All in all, it was a really informative and enjoyable day, and it was amazing to meet such a diverse but like-minded group of people.