Meet the Scholarship Judges: Samantha Gibbs
The Millennium Point Scholarship is an annual competition in partnership with Birmingham City University which awards a fully funded undergraduate degree at the faculty of Computing, Engineering, and the Built Environment. Now in its seventh year, we look at the STEM leaders behind this year’s judging panel.
Samantha is the founder of 81G Blue, which has provided IT services to Millennium Point for the last three years.
The ethos behind 81G, which she started in 2007 is, she says: “to take IT tech from a corporate level background and distil it down for SMEs, and allow them to grow while using corporate level people, process and tech, to take them forwards.”
“STEM is really important to the region right now,” she adds. “In the West Midlands, the investment for STEM is huge; there’s so much coming into our region, and the more we can get our girls and guys into STEM – scholarships and otherwise – all the better for it.
“The scholarship is really important because, sadly today still, the doors are only open to the privileged. We want to give other opportunities to people who are deprived of them and should be able to kick down those doors and get the same opportunities as those privileged guys.”
She adds: “I think it’s really important to say that to get this far, all these girls and guys are awesome; they have done so well and wherever they go from here, whether they succeed with the scholarship or not, they’re going to have doors that open to them.
“What am I looking for from a candidate? Someone with a NERF gun of positivity; somebody that has got a glint in their eye and a plan in their back pocket, and they know where they’re going to go, and take this and not waste the opportunity – that’s important.
“I want to see positivity, because the hurdles, barriers and challenges which I’ve had to go through haven’t stopped me and it’s not going to stop them.”
“My message to the finalists is this: all is possible – you can have it all. The steppingstones that you’ve taken with your education have led you to this bridge. Once you go over this bridge, you’re on a pathway to success. It might not be in the way you think it is today, but trust me, it will ultimately go the places you want it. The only thing I will say is, on occasion, stop and look up at the sun – you need to do this, it’s important.”
The winner of the competition will be announced at the end of May 2021 online and on our social media channels. For more information on the scholarship competition, or how to apply, please visit www.millenniumpoint.org.uk/scholarship.
Find more interesting content from Millennium Point over at our news section, or follow us for daily updates on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn with @MillenniumPoint. Millennium Point is a landmark public building and multi-award-winning events venue in the Eastside of Birmingham City centre. Profits from our commercial activity are invested by the Millennium Point Charitable Trust into projects, events and initiatives which support the growth of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) and education in the West Midlands.
