Rosie Dawson has danced ever since she could walk. After high school, she taught ballroom for four years and dreamt of starting her own studio – which is why she enrolled in a business degree at UTS.
To combine her creative passion with a curiosity about design thinking, she joined the first cohort of The Navigator at the Sydney School of Entrepreneurship.
“Creativity and entrepreneurship had collided in my mind and I wanted to find other people who came from diverse backgrounds,” Rosie says. “I needed to widen my experience.”
At SSE, she met student entrepreneurs who were already running companies and others who had ideas for startups. Everyone had huge dreams. “I was so excited to part of it; a new institution and a pilot unit, feeling that I could have some input.”
After the Navigator, Rosie secured an internship at SSE and launched the Activator program to encourage SSE alumni to develop entrepreneurial initiatives and networks at their home institutions.
Since then, she’s worked with three fellow Navigator graduates. She helped Vanessa McDonald from the University of Newcastle to host a hands-on, experiential, career-mapping evening at the University of Newcastle campus.
At the University of New England, she supported Miles Archibald to launch a Regional Venture Student Society in Armidale.
And working with Kris Christou at the University of Wollongong, she helped organise a panel discussion that investigated how failing can generate ideas and innovation.
“With all the Activator projects, we tried to develop the student’s community, character and career,” she says.
Now, with two years left in her combined Law and Business degree, Rosie has shelved her dance studio dream and instead wants to combine her talents for a social enterprise.
“I’m interested in exploring the intersection of tech, law, justice, ethics, and the future of work. But I am not exactly sure just yet how it will end up!”