SNEVic Career Conference 2025
The Day 200+ Nepali Engineers Showed Up For Personal and Professional Growth
The Day 200+ Nepali Engineers Showed Up For Personal and Professional Growth
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On August 31, 2025, something remarkable happened at Swinburne University's ATC Building in Hawthorn. Over 200 Nepali engineering professionals — from fresh graduates navigating their first Australian job search to seasoned directors leading major infrastructure projects — came together for a single purpose: to lift each other up.
The SNEVic Career Conference 2025 wasn't just another professional development event. It was a statement. That Victoria's Nepali engineering community is here, it's growing, and it's building something lasting.
The day opened with a registration and networking session that quickly proved the hunger for connection in this community. Conversations that might normally take months of LinkedIn messaging happened organically over morning tea — graduate engineers meeting project managers, civil engineers swapping notes with software developers, all united by a shared journey of building careers far from home.
The keynote session brought together four leaders whose stories resonated deeply with the room. Shesh Ghale, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and CEO of Melbourne Institute of Technology, spoke from the vantage point of someone who has built institutions from the ground up in Australia. Divya Pasupuleti, an executive leader at NBN Australia and board director across multiple organisations, offered a perspective on navigating leadership at the highest levels. Dr Govinda Pandey, Executive Chairman of Rockfield Technologies and co-founder of LiXiA, and Dr Rabin Tuladhar, Professor and Dean at Central Queensland University's School of Engineering and Technology, rounded out a keynote lineup that proved South Asian leadership in Australian engineering is thriving across every sector — from academia to telecoms to deep tech.
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The first panel — Bridging Cultural Gaps & Adapting to the Australian Workplace — tackled the questions that migrant engineers often discuss in private but rarely hear addressed on stage. Chaired by Dr Raju Adhikari (Honorary Fellow at CSIRO and Adjunct Associate Professor at RMIT), the session featured Dr Tilak Pokhrel from Swinburne University, Yew-Chin Koay (President of Engineers Australia's Overseas Qualified Engineers Committee), Deepti Wagle (Senior Structural Engineer at V/Line), career strategist Roger Pym, and Ram Upadhyaya (Director of Infrastructure Services at Hindmarsh Shire Council). The discussion moved well beyond platitudes — panellists shared real strategies for navigating workplace culture, communication norms, and the unwritten rules that can make or break early career progression in Australia.
SNEVic Career Conference 2025 Highlights from YouTube
After a lunch break buzzing with new connections, the afternoon sessions drilled further into the skills that separate good engineers from leaders. Hem Raj Panta, Principal Engineer at Jacobs, presented on building professional communication and leadership capability, with Jerry Andrews, General Manager Victoria at Engineers Australia, joining the panel alongside Ram Upadhyaya and Roger Pym. The message was clear: technical excellence alone isn't enough — and the engineering profession in Australia is actively seeking diverse voices in leadership.
The third panel on strategic career planning, chaired by Ranjan Vaidya (Director of Innovative Asset Engineering), brought Dheeraj Kandel (Project Manager on the North East Link Program) and Renu Adhikari (Project Manager at Yarra Valley Water) into the conversation alongside Roger Pym and Yew-Chin Koay. The session culminated in an interactive Q&A with Roger Pym that gave attendees direct access to executive-level career coaching — the kind of guidance that typically costs hundreds of dollars an hour.
Events like this don't happen without an enormous amount of volunteer effort, sponsor support, and institutional backing. A special acknowledgement goes to all our Executive Committee for their valuable contribution to making the day a success, and to every sponsor and volunteer who gave their time and resources.
But more than logistics, what made the SNEVic Career Conference 2025 work was the room itself — 200+ engineers who chose to spend their Saturday investing in their community and their careers. That's not something you can manufacture. It comes from a community that genuinely believes in pulling each other forward.
The Society of Nepali Engineers in Victoria has been quietly building this momentum for years. On August 31, it was impossible to miss.
Some of the most impactful moments happened outside the scheduled sessions. Attendees lined up for free professional LinkedIn headshots — a small thing that makes a real difference when you're job-hunting in a market where first impressions are digital. CV writing workshops, cover letter clinics, and mock interview sessions gave job-seekers hands-on, expert-led preparation. And the giveaways and swag? A nice touch that reminded everyone this community knows how to have a good time while doing serious work.