Our IT and Admin Support, Paul, was featured in the Canning Gazette newspaper. Read the article below!
The sky’s the limit for local IT hero
Paul Bolton is the type of employee every business dreams of – enthusiastic, highly skilled, tertiary qualified, and with years of experience in Perth and abroad.
Paul also has a disability. As the ‘main man’ for IT support at Good Sammy’s head office in Canning Vale, he’s lucky enough to be within the 48 per cent of working age Australians with disability who are employed.
“Almost 200,000 working age Western Australians with disability are unemployed. At a time when businesses are battling to fill positions, it’s staggering to think there’s an untapped employment pool going begging,” said Good Sammy CEO, Melanie Kiely.
Paul has worked at Good Sammy Enterprises in Canning Vale for four years, starting in its retail stores before moving into IT and admin support.
“Once I moved to head office and started working in the online sales, my skills and my role quickly shifted into IT,” Paul said. “I had completed a degree in business and computing, which gave me most of my technical skills. My first job in the UK was a web services officer and then onto many IT-related jobs around the UK.”
Melanie Kiely said that employees like Paul are skilled, highly capable and passionate about their work.
“More than 80 per cent of working age (15-64) people with disability need no additional support from their employer to work,” Melanie said.
“Good Sammy helps me by NOT treating me like I’m different – they see me for the skills I have,” Paul agreed.
“I now have supervisor experience too. My ultimate goal here is to have my own IT team and be the Head of IT across the organisation”, he added.
Until then, Paul will continue to forge his career and break stereotypes about people with disability.
“I am an adventure junkie – I love to travel and have been all around Europe, America, Africa and Australia. I also love being up high – so have had a couple of lessons flying a plane, and have been hot air ballooning and parachute jumping too.”
Across Perth, there are organisations that offer valuable support to people with disability and the businesses who employ them.
Shared from the Canning Gazette
At Good Sammy, our mission is to create meaningful employment opportunities and pathways for Western Australians with disabilities by providing supportive, on-the-job development through our Academy Programs.
Through these programs, we empower our participants with the skills and confidence to explore what types of jobs they love and open pathways to future employment options.
We are so proud of Paul and his incredible employment journey.
