It Pays to be Educated

[michaela]

I was asked to do a career outreach presentation at Durango High School for a student who I know through Go Code Colorado. Georgia is the student and during her freshman year she started a Computer Science/Coding Club. She reached out to me at Vantiv to present to two groups of 50 students. One group was her computer science club the other was the engineering club.

Paul Stewart, Katharine Unsworth and I took the Oculus Rift, HoloLens, Double Robot and the Samsung VR headset to have an interactive demonstration. Our objective was to demonstrate innovative technology and how Vantiv works to integrate bleeding edge technology with payments.

The students were energetic with a lot of questions and ideas to share.  Each got to test out the HoloLens, run the robot, and test out the virtual reality gear. We ended up logging into the Robot with my phone and touring the high school and surprising the classrooms, the teachers and students enjoyed the impromptu visit.

Payments are complex, but can be exciting especially with new technology rapidly evolving the market. To our surprise, we ended up with a lot of students asking about internships with Vantiv and more wanted to visit our Developer Lounge located at our Durango campus. Several students immediately took interest in developing their own payment solution and a few eagerly wanted to developer to the VR equipment. One idea that grabbed our attention from a student is to create an app that links the Double Robot to the HoloLens, add a 360 degree camera, and then you can use the HoloLens to be in the exact space the robot is in.

Overall our time spent with the students was a success! We captured a lot of great feedback and valuable time with the kids in the community. Education is important and it doesn't always need

to be taught in the classroom, so knowing more about payments, technology, and of course Vantiv puts these kids one step closer to becoming successful in their adult careers. And if nothing else, we at least got kids excited about technology and software development.

Thank you, Durango High School students, their parents, teachers and administrators for allowing us to explore payments and technology with our future leaders.  It was a great opportunity to represent on behalf of Vantiv.

katharine.unsworth​ paul​ nsuess​ mozvat​