Our Impact
“I hope that Baidam’s generosity and commitment towards empowering future generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander professionals and leaders will inspire other companies to follow in their footsteps.”
Aunty Bronwyn Fredericks, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Indigenous Engagement, University of Queensland
The Baidam Initiative
We created the Baidam Initiative to help bridge the gap. As a profit-with-purpose business, we give back over 50% of our profits to regional and remote communities - creating pathways to employment in the IT sector for Indigenous and First Nations People and providing funding for cybersecurity certification training.
Through the Baidam Initiative program, we partner with some of Australia’s largest employers to offer secure employment options. As well as delivering business-as-usual outcomes, we provide a procurement vehicle to help organisations achieve Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) outcomes and address the profound IT security skills shortage we all face in Australia.
Since our inception in 2018...
$
1.7M+
Indigenous employee salaries.
3x
Lifetime university scholarships.
$
500K+
Direct trading with other First Nations businesses.
$
2.5M+
in economic and social value contributed to Indigenous peoples, businesses and communities.
In Partnership with the SANS Institute, we have donated several global industry training packages to support Indigenous technical equity.
The Baidam Initiative Scholarship story
In 2020, we offered the first in-perpetuity scholarship for Indigenous STEM students. To date, we have delivered three scholarships:
2020
University of Queensland, Brisbane
Awarded in 2021 to Denzel Strauss, a UQ Commerce and IT student. Denzel commenced a STEP internship with Google in late 2023.
2021
Australian National University, ACT
Alongside fellow security startup Dvuln, we partnered with the ANU through its Kambri Scholars program to offer life-long scholarships to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.
2022
Queensland State Government
Baidam was honoured by the Queensland State Government for our work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and awarded the Queensland Reconciliation Award for our ICT scholarships.
2023
Edith Cowan University, Western Australia
In partnership with Tenable, we enabled the first life-long scholarship for ECU STEM students.
Meet Candice Bowditch
Candice is an Indigenous Australian Computer Scientist from the Northern Territory of Australia. Her people are Larrakia and Wadjigan (saltwater) and Arabunna (desert). Candice is a Security Engineer for Google's Detection and Response team.
She studied her Bachelors of Computer Science at RMIT University. During her time at university, she was the elected President of the RMIT Computer Science & IT student society, in addition to this she was a World Economic Forum Global Shaper and Vice Curator for the Melbourne hub. After graduation Candice was the inaugural recipient of the Baidam Initiative SANS certification scholarship, where she studied SEC503: Network Monitoring and Threat Detection In-Depth.
She is also an Aurora Education Foundation International Study Tour Scholar and a Google Anita Borg scholar. In 2023, Candice spoke alongside our Co-founder and Group CEO, Jack Reis, and Mary-Beth Hosking, CEO of VIC ICT For Women, on the importance of inclusive leadership in technology at SXSW Sydney.
Candice strongly believes in technology's power to empower historically marginalised and underrepresented communities. Her interests include green energy transition, national security, cybersecurity and Indigenous participation, excellence and contribution to the advancement of STEM fields.
We are honoured to have supported her on her pathway to a successful career in cybersecurity.
How can you take the initiative?
Please ask if you’d like to know more about employing qualified Indigenous ICT personnel or how Baidam is bridging the gap with Indigenous representation in the ICT sector.