Its filings to the charity regulator show it received just over $1 million from the government last financial year. Its digital learning platform remains freely available to students.
WiseTech’s Earn and Learn mentoring program, which pays students the equivalent of $300,000 while they study and work at WiseTech, is also continuing despite the string of allegations of inappropriate behaviour by White. The program is funded by WiseTech.
WiseTech chief executive Richard White resigned last week.Credit: Natalie Boog
Girl Greek Academy’s Lisy Kane says her petition isn’t calling for the closure of either Grok Academy or WiseTech’s Earn and Learn, but instead wants future taxpayer funding for such programs to made with gender as a key consideration.
Girl Geek Academy has a stated goal of bringing 1 million women into Australia’s technology sector and is gearing up for an upcoming AI High education program, funded partly by the Telstra Foundation, to which 2000 high school girls and non-binary students have enrolled.
“Our goal here is diversity more than anything else. We want more education programs for the technology sector, not less,” Kane said. “But this saga underscores the importance of diversifying support across multiple programs. We can’t bury our head in the sand and wait for this to blow over.
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She said the scandals had “much larger consequences for Australia’s ambitions for its technology sector.
“Any smart educated woman would see the current outcome of the Richard White saga as a major deterrent for a career in tech, where the industry folds in on itself to defend his reputation.
“We need to end this boys’ club mentality running technology education in Australia, and we can’t do it without broader support.”
WiseTech Global and Grok Academy were approached for comment.
There are ongoing questions about why the University of Sydney continued to employ Curran for two further years after its 2019 investigation that substantiated allegations of harassment against him.
“We are committed to creating a safe environment for students and staff and our trauma-informed sexual misconduct complaints process is designed to protect the safety, wellbeing and privacy of all involved,” a university spokeswoman said last month.
“I’m incredibly angry at the state of this industry”: Jeanette CheahCredit: Steven Siewert
It’s also unclear why Curran was allowed to continue working with students as Grok Academy’s CEO until last month. Current and former board members did not respond to requests for comment.
Jeanette Cheah is CEO and co-founder of Hex, a start-up that offers entrepreneurship programs to high school and university students.
She said education companies with a history of bad behaviour towards students and women should not receive taxpayer funding unless they can prove a wholesale change of leadership and culture.
“Imagine being a young woman excited to learn about technology, and your first experience is to be harassed by someone you respected, then to see excuses being made for their bad behaviour,” she said.
“I’m incredibly angry at the state of this industry. I would hope that anyone making decisions about philanthropic or government funding is doing due diligence into the culture of the organisation, and asking themselves hard questions about the diversity of the organisations they are funding.”
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