Corporate Social Responsibility

Lumify Work and The Dream Collective

The Dream Collective, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Lumify Work are partnering to provide more women with access to career transition support and opportunities to enter the tech industry.

SheDares is Dream Collective's free online, interactive learning experience that aims to demystify careers in technology for professional women in non-tech industries and equip them for a pivot into the sector. #SheDares has been brought to life in collaboration with AWS.

The Dream Collective Emerging Leaders Program

Empowering the future of leaders and organisations alike.

Inspired by the MBA syllabus of the world’s leading business schools and subject matter experts, the Dream Collective is committed to delivering exceptional learning experiences to equip high-potential teams with the skills, confidence, network and knowledge necessary to advance into leadership positions. They help organisations to improve their diversity and inclusion practises to enable them to take a real hold in the corporate culture.

The Emerging Leaders program and similar projects support organisations to:

Attract
Develop a reputation as a leader in diversity and inclusion practises and an employer of choice through targeted content marketing, media partnerships and event collaborations.
Retain
Develop the resilience and leadership skills of your top talent with our specialised masterclasses, immersive training programs or tailored, in-house training programs.
Advance
Evaluate and develop a long-term vision and strategy to meet your diversity and inclusion objectives, with the full support of practical tools, playbooks and people networks.

The Dream Collective Mission

The drive behind everything Dream Collective do is to see improvements to diversity and inclusivity practises in the workplace and to see more women in leadership.

Dream Collective is determined to drive long-term, sustainable change in female representation in the corporate landscape and work with leading organisations to empower and equip high-calibre, young professionals around the world. We are committed to making the conversation truly inclusive and bringing everyone along on the journey of female advancement.The Dream Collective Story

The Dream Collective was founded in 2012 by Saraha Liu, a passionate advocate for women in leadership and furthering diversity and inclusivity practises in corporate culture to transform the way we work.

What began as a passion project quickly became Australia’s most influential network of high-calibre, young women. The Dream Collective has been instrumental in empowering and equipping thousands of professionals into leadership roles through targeted training and mentoring opportunities.

The AWS Story with Dream Collective

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 200 fully featured services from data centres globally. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—are using AWS to lower costs, become more agile, and innovate faster. AWS’s vision is to help Australia be a global leader in the technology and services economy.

Partnership objectives

Women only represent ~28% of those working in technology in Australia. Yet, there has never been a more important time for women to consider a career transition into the industry. Research from AlphaBeta, commissioned by Amazon Web Services (AWS), shows Australia will require an additional 6.5 million newly-skilled and reskilled digital workers by 2025 to meet future demand for technology skills. That’s 79% more digitally-skilled workers than we have today.

Encouraging women from non-tech backgrounds to consider a career in tech and providing pathways to entry will help to address this challenge. For AWS, encouraging women to consider a career in technology expands the potential candidate pool and makes it easier to increase female representation in their workforce.

The solution

To address this, The Dream Collective and Amazon Web Services came together to co-create SheDares, a free, online learning experience designed to equip women to transition into the tech industry. This self-paced program features four modules focused on expanding participants’ perspectives to the job opportunities that exist in the tech industry, aligning their current skill set with roles in tech, overcoming personal and systemic barriers to entry, and connecting them with job and further skill development opportunities.

The results

25,000 - enrolments from around the world in the first 12 months
10 - new hires made by AWS through the initiative
63 - collaborators joined our mission from across Australia, New Zealand, India and Singapore

#SheDares

Imagine playing a role in the design of the future. Solving the world’s biggest challenges. Creating meaningful change.

Join those who do this every day, the social enterprise leaders, artists, carers, and management consultants who brought their outsider advantage in to make their mark in tech.

Curious about how your unique skill set can strengthen the world of tech? We dare you to take the first step to find out.

There is no cost for participants to complete the SheDares program.

The SheDares program is designed for:

Women seeking to change careers or returning to the workforce
Women not currently working in the tech industry

Program Overview and Learning Outcomes

#SheDares is a 4-part, self-paced digital program, that takes participants on the journey to open their minds to the possibilities that come from a career in tech:

Module 1:
Opening minds
Participants expand their perspective and become excited about new economy roles with greater insight on opportunities that exist (across tech and non-tech roles)

Most common misconceptions surrounding careers in tech
Types of roles available in the industry
Why women are critical to the future of the industry

Module 2:
Aligning skills
Participants learn how their current skills could transition to new roles via skills alignment using a gamified quiz – and explore how they could create their own path into these opportunities.

What the most in-demand skills over the next 5 years are
How their skills today could relate to current roles in the industry
How other women have transitioned into tech from non-tech backgrounds

Module 3:
Overcoming barriers
Participants feel empowered to overcome systemic and personal barriers that have consistently prevented women from pursuing opportunities in tech.

Personal and systemic barriers that may be holding them back
Tactics to overcoming these barriers
How to realise and harness their outsider advantage

Module 4:
Inspiring action
Participants are equipped with a roadmap and pathways to take the next step toward transitioning their careers into opportunities in the new economy

Communicate their unique value
Devise a personalised action roadmap for their next step forward
Gain access to potential career opportunities

Supporting Women Leaders in Tech

Lumify Work has been a long-time partner for training and certification in AWS. We deliver an extensive range of accredited AWS training courses as an Amazon Web Services Authorised Training Courses provider.

As Australia’s largest provider of corporate IT and process training, Lumify Work is collaborating with Dream Collective to provide opportunities for up-skilling in tech. Lumify Work is generously awarding 3 scholarships valued at up to $4,000 AUD to SheDares participants interested in up-skilling in tech. Complete this form to apply.

The eligibility criteria for the scholarships include:

Being enrolled in and reaching gold ambassador status in the SheDares program - if you're not already enrolled, you can do so here.
Being located in Australia

To increase their chances of being selected, students can share about #SheDares on one of your social channels and tag us @The Dream Collective on Facebook, @The Dream Collective on LinkedIn and @_thedreamcollective_ on Instagram.

Some of the ICT course scholarships available are listed below, which vary from entry-level with no experience required to some tech experience required.

Cloud computing courses:

Cyber security courses:

IT Service Management and DevOps courses:

If you are interested in the Dream Collective's emerging leaders program or have questions about the #SheDares interactive experience, feel free to enquire by visiting https://www.thedreamcollective.com.au/contact/ or sending an email to [email protected] to set up a time to speak. For frequently asked questions, you can visit https://www.thedreamcollective.com.au/faqs/.