We launched Arowana.U in 2012 to deliver on one of the pillars of our core purpose: to “grow people, grow companies, and grow value”.
With a mission of growing people, Arowana.
U facilitates relevant lifelong learning for our team members, whether they be support staff or the CEO of one of our companies.
At the helm of Arowana.
U is our Learning and Development Director
Dirk Rossey (we also call him the Dean of Arowana.
U), who specialises in integrating learning into our day-to-day operations.
A unique feature of Arowana.
U is our concept of tri-literacy for the contemporary business leader or entrepreneur. We consider it important for business leaders and entrepreneurs today to be tri-literate across the financial, operational, and technological disciplines, and our programmes are designed with that in mind.
The centerpiece of Arowana.U is the Circle of Leadership (COL) events which are held quarterly each year. At these quarterly COLs, we invite guest speakers from different fields to share their insights and perspectives with our team. For each COL, we have a presentation followed by discussion on practical examples of entrepreneurship, a macroeconomic update from one of our resident advisory board members, and talks that cover financial, operational, and technology literacy.
We have been fortunate to have had world-class speakers from varied areas of expertise: from neuroscience to robotics and automation, machine learning, macroeconomics, restructuring and turnarounds, and digital transformation. A number of these speakers are on Arowana’s advisory board, which include Dr. Tara Swart (prominent neuroscientist), Prof. Hugh Durrant-Whyte (renowned expert in robotics and automation), Dr. Simon Ogus (macroeconomics expert), and Mr. Martin Bell (hyperscaling expert, formerly with Rocket Internet).
Over the years, Arowana.U has also curated and hosted study trips for our team, joined in some cases by our key co-investors. For example, in March 2017, we organised a technology trip to Silicon Valley, where we were able to meet key executives at companies like Tesla and Impossible Foods.
In addition, Arowana.U organises external speakers to conduct seminars and workshops for our team. For our 10-year anniversary in 2017, we had the honour of having Prof. Boris Groysberg from Harvard University conduct a two-day workshop in Australia, attended by over 50 people from the Arowana ecosystem. Also in the same year, we had Stanford University professor Tony Seba keynote the opening of Arowana’s London office at Somerset House.
