I’m Tathia

Tathia Wells brings her passion for education into everything she does at Transport because she knows it has the power to improve lives and help the community.

I always want to work where I’m serving the community and education has long been part of what I do. Initially as a high school teacher and then later as a university lecturer and tutor, I really saw the power of education to change and improve lives.

Then I joined Sydney Metro as an Education Officer in 2017. The project was literally going into people’s backyards to build this big piece of infrastructure, so we looked for ways to involve the community, particularly young people and to connect them with what Transport was doing.

We created the Metro Minds competition, where school students had to use design thinking to come up with a real life challenge at Sydney Metro. At the judging of the event I was amazed to see all these future engineers and scientists pull together a prototype and pitch their ideas and I felt like it connected my passion for education and the Sydney Metro project in a really exciting way.

Now I’m working for the Point to Point Transport Commissioner as Manager, Education and Engagement - and I’m still in education. There are legal responsibilities for taxi, hire vehicles and ride share providers and drivers, so I’m taking these laws and putting them into plain English so they can understand their safety obligations to ensure the safety of everyone using or providing point to point transport in NSW.

It’s such a diverse industry and it has been challenging to listen to what the industry needs and design something that is relevant, accessible and that they would engage with, while also staying within the law. We've already created webcasts, online tools and our first podcast series is due soon, but drivers and service providers spend a lot of time near their phones, so we’re building online learning courses delivered through an App with videos, interactive information and quizzes, that can be accessed easily whenever they like, wherever they like.

So even though I’m not in the classroom anymore, I’m still listening and educating people in a different way.