OIU news Thanks for making time to chat with OIU News about your journey through University and into the workforce. Can we start with some background about your year, your house, favorite teacher ? 

Matt: I graduated review in 2016. I was the vice captain of Claver house. One of my favorite teachers was Denise Gibbs, who was our head of house. She was very supportive and she was a great mentor to have. 

OIU News:  Did School nudge you any particular direction in terms of science or stem or was it something that you that came from within? 

Matt:   You don't need to know exactly what you need you what you want to do post year 12. Do something that you enjoy, do something that you like doing, and things will fall into place. I think having that confidence from a senior staff or senior teacher probably helped shape where I went. 

OIU news:   Did you find yourself in the degree that you thought you'd always do? Was it your number one pick, or did you have misgivings? 

Matt: I actually started off at UTS doing a double degree of bachelor in business and bachelor in medical science. That's because I was unsure in terms of what I wanted to do, whether I really liked the business side of things, but I'd always enjoyed science and I always enjoyed, sort of like, the medicine side of things. Coming out of year 12, I knew I always wanted to do a business degree. I only did the medical science degree for about a year, maybe a year and a half or so. After doing it, I sort of realized that it wasn't for me.I finished up doing the business degree after a couple more years, and graduated with a Bachelor of Business at UTS. 

OIU News: Did some of your old school buddies have that mid degree, fork in the road type moment? Did you see that quite often? 

Matt: I would say 50% of my friends either changed degrees halfway through or decided to do something different. I did see a lot of that. there's a bit of a stigma around University after graduating high school, that you need to find a degree, do that degree, stick to it, and then go on from there. It is almost like you need to know what you want to do before even trying it. It's very difficult to actually understand or actually know what you're in for without doing it. 

OIU News: Your advice to a younger you would be don't get bogged down, but also don't feel as if you know changing horses midstream should be regarded as a fail. Is "try before you buy" part of the learning process? 

Matt: Absolutely. I think making sure that some of that pressure is alleviated around both having to make the right choice around the right degree and then whilst doing the degree, not feeling like changing degree or course, is a failure. What do you enjoy? What do you like doing day to day and what's going to give you fulfillment? But also at the same time, like you're young. even in your 20s, you're still incredibly young. You can change things all the time, and make sure to make the most of the opportunity to try things out. 

OIU News: Was the iterative approach to your early career seen as a strength, not a weakness? 

Matt:   Just having that opportunity and understanding what the new opportunity was for me, I think, definitely helped guide sort of those early postgraduate years. 

OIU News:   Fast forward to 2025, thinking of the guys in year 12, heading into year 13 ? This intrinsic fear of AI and the fractionation of an increasing number of traditional jobs in the workplace. What advice would you give to a younger you? 

Matt: I think more broadly, on the AI side of things, it definitely is still in an unknown, and a lot of people can draw a lot of fear from that, especially from a career and workspace perspective. AI is being integrated into stuff that I do every single day, and there's jobs being replaced. I think Compaq just replaced a bunch of jobs with with AI chat bots, for example. there is always going to be a place for it. And as it grows, I think it's just a matter about understanding sort of the role that AI plays within the workplace, and how it can obviously assist roles, and then you're having that confidence in knowing like You're like a young person's skill set and what will translate into potentially something that AI doesn't do. So first things that come to mind is obviously people personal skills, being able to have really good speech and conversation, commercial skills, sales and management skills and so on … The AI is not going to be able to take a client out for a lunch on a Thursday and spend time and build rapport with them and develop that commercial acumen. I think it's not something that's often spoken about in high school or university, how can you develop your interpersonal skills, how can you work on sales skills, how can you work on conversational skills, will hard proof your skills as you grow your career. AI is never really going to fully understand another human's emotions, feelings, consciousness.? ensuring that you're continuing to have those connections with your peers, with your colleagues, with your family, with your friends, is something that's never going to be taken over and something that's incredibly important for both personal life and for career. 

OIU News: Can you give us your world view from Square's perspective, the company your are currently with… 

Matt: Our mission is about economic empowerment. what that means is, how do we create tools for businesses of all sizes to be able to efficiently, effectively and cheaply, operate and run a business. 20 years ago, if somebody wanted to open up a store, they wanted to take a payment, they have to submit the payment check, go to the bank, etc. It takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, and then some people were in positions that they weren't able to to afford it, they didn't have the time to do it. Square's mission Is how we can create empowerment, economic empowerment, for everyone and being able to provide flexible payment options for consumers. Even think about regional Australia, if you have to go into a branch or you have to go through all these hoops and steps to sort of get yourself set up, like setting up a business is difficult enough as it is, you know, you want all the other parts of it to be as easy. It's as easy as you know, hopping onto a website and applying and getting things delivered to your address, that takes the pressure off a lot of a lot of other things. Working in the Fintech industry saw me trying and experimenting with other types of businesses that aren't just specifically big corporates, because you get exposed to legal team to run through contracts. You get to sit in with the finance team to run through modeling and return on investment. You get to sit with the marketing team. You get to sit with everyone, and you get to understand how business fully operates. I think it's about ensuring that, you stay sort of flexible, open minded, and focusing on sort of experience and sort of passion, versus siloing or doing what they think is right to do, or what they're told to do. 

OIU news: We need to reach out the years 13 to 15 amongst our membership, and to give them the vicarious support that they I know they need. Your insights are extremely valuable and timely. So thanks for taking the time. 

Matt: Not a problem at all