Sea Your Future supporting the next generation

With a youth takeover of September’s Marine Professional magazine and this initiative, IMarEST are helping nurture talent.

With the marine sector in a period of rapid transformation, there are both exciting opportunities and challenges for those navigating their careers within it.

Sea Your Future (SYF) aims to help students, graduates, apprentices, cadets, and career movers navigate their way. “This initiative isn’t just about providing resources, it’s about creating a supportive community where young professionals can grow, innovate, and thrive,” says Ashleigh Kitchiner, Co-Chair of SYF.

As Evan Cheok, a member of the Sea Your Future Steering Group, notes, the Initiative is led by young members, for young members. “As a group of youthful volunteers ourselves, we are in good stead to relate to the opportunities and challenges presented to our group,” he states.

The journey so far

Since the first SYF Steering Group meeting last September, “[There] has been a whirlwind of activity and progress,” enthuses Kitchiner.

In April, SYF Co-Chair Conor Savage spoke at the Future Leaders Forum about developing a career around interests and skills and he also travelled to the 2024 Ocean Decade Conference with IMarEST to talk about capacity development. The team has also attended several careers-related events at universities and careers fairs.

SYF and IMarEST are in the process of pulling together a comprehensive toolkit for volunteers. These presentations are designed to be delivered by volunteers on IMarEST's behalf to students and early career professionals across all sectors of the marine industry. They focus on the benefits of becoming a student member or volunteering as a student, and further membership opportunities such as registration and chartership.

“We’ve also started developing our website, populating it with a calendar of events for young members. The website also links to career matrices from various Special Interest Groups (SIGs), which provide detailed descriptions of exciting prospects within the industry,” Cheok says, noting there are plans for a more general career matrix.

Looking forward

“The past few months have been about laying a solid foundation, and the momentum we've built is truly exciting,” says Kitchiner. With the foundation laid, SYF is expanding its offering.

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“We’re focusing on creating more resources to provide early career searchers with insights into the marine sector and all it has to offer,” explains Kitchiner. SYF is exploring several types of resources, including mentoring opportunities and partnering with institutions and organisations that deliver academic and apprenticeship programmes to provide more career talks and grow the community.

Shaping a community

Kitchiner, Savage and Cheok are just three of many volunteers driving SYF forward. “We’re always looking for [more] enthusiastic individuals to get involved with SYF. The success of our programmes hinge on the collective effort of our community,” says Kitchiner.

Alongside assisting with event planning, running, and even presenting, “We’re particularly [keen to hear from] student and graduate members who are eager to participate in our programmes and bring fresh perspectives and ideas to the table and to advise us what they think would be useful to their cohort and the others that follow them,” explains Kitchiner.

“SYF welcomes diversity and perspectives across fields of expertise and generations. After all, the challenges faced by our sector today are interdisciplinary in nature and require synergy across multiple stakeholders,” concludes Cheok.