Wednesday 22 February 2023 GSAL welcomed two alumni back into the classroom for Primary Tech Week to inspire the next generation of innovators and disruptors. Michael Lifford (OL04), Chief Financial Officer at fintech company Landbay, and Adrian Inman (OL98), founder of IT services provider aFinite, spoke to students about their routes into the computing and tech industry and the huge range of opportunities available. Tech is “constantly evolving”, Michael told a rapt audience of year 5 pupils – and it’s the variety and the pace of change that makes it an exciting sector to work in. Michael also spoke with GCSE and A-level Computer Science students, providing valuable real life insights to the coders, systems analysts and data scientists of the future. Adrian (pictured at the top of the article) spoke to Year 4 students about how his company aFinite supports business, charities and educational institutions across the UK – and how he worked on the very first iteration of the GSAL website! He listened as children shared their coding experiences from their IT classes and explored big questions around how and why we use technology in everyday life. Adrian, who is a current parent to Alice (year 5) and Tom (year 7), even spent time with the year 5 IT after school club, getting involved with Scratch and micro:bit exercises. Meanwhile, Michael took the opportunity to catch up with a familiar face: Mr Spivey, the former head of Thoresby House, who recently retired after 39 years of teaching at LGS and GSAL. Huge thanks to Michael and Adrian – we expect there’ll be some GSAL students knocking on your door for work experience very soon! Would you like to share your career experiences with our students? We’d love to hear from you. Please get in touch with Donna Woodman, our Director of Development, at alumni@gsal.org.uk to arrange a conversation. Alumni
