Changing The World One Byte At A Time. Photo By: Josiah Ann Nelson

The JCCC Career Development Center will host a TECH Panel to help students launch their careers in the technical field. The TECH Panel is on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. in the CoLab (OCB 100) and will feature leading industry experts who will discuss their experiences. 

Amy Smith, Internship and Employer Relations Coordinator for JCCC, explained that the TECH Panel will begin with a professional panel featuring four industry professionals who will discuss their experiences in the field. 

“We wanted to bring in people from tech companies and cybersecurity firms, but there is a lot of tech hiring in the healthcare space right now,” Smith said. “Sean Roberts, who’s the Chief Technology Officer at the University of Kansas Health System, was brought in because we want to give students an up-to-date look at what it is like to work in tech for healthcare.” 

After the Industry Professionals’ panel, the next step will be a round-table conversation in which each panelist will move around to the individual tables where students are seated. This will give students an opportunity to interact with the panelists, ask questions, and learn more about them and how they navigated their career paths.  

“Not everybody has an opportunity to ask their specific question in a panel format. And so, when we put employers at tables with small groups of students, it seems like richer conversations come out of that,” Smith said. “It’s an easier way to ask questions that are maybe a little more specific to you that you don’t want to ask in front of an entire room.” 

The TECH Panel will end with open networking, allowing students to speak to individual panelists with whom they have identified as most helpful for their future.  

“If you want more access to that individual, if you want to request their contact information to reach out later. If you want to talk to them about potential internships at their companies, that’s kind of the time to do it,” Smith said. “We have seen people make strong professional connections that way, which can later lead to professional opportunities down the road.” 

May Coleman, Platform Engineer at Netsmart, wants to impart one message to students: it is an amazing time to take tech classes.  

“We’re in a really exciting time for those that actually love to get into the weeds and tinker around with debugging, whether it’s software, firmware, hardware, all the above, thinking about large-scale integrated systems down to the components,” Coleman said. 

TECH Panel Agenda 

9 a.m. – 10 a.m. Industry Professionals Panel 

Panelists: 

• Sean Roberts, Chief Technology Officer, University of Kansas Health Systems/KUMC 

• Anya Kricsfeld, Vice President of Global Technical Support, Devo 

• May Coleman, Platform Engineer, Netsmart 

• Taylor Unke, Senior Lead UX Designer, Lifted Logic 

10 a.m. – 11 a.m. Round-table Conversations 

11 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. Open Networking