15 Years & Counting

Careers, chaos & curiosity.

I am Ben Robertson. I think out loud about careers & chaos, build AI tools for students who deserve better, and write about what happens when you stop pretending the world is linear.

The Thinker The Builder The Writer

No. 01 — Who's This Guy

A careers practitioner who thinks the careers system is broken.

I work in Careers & Employability in higher education. Mostly with creative and digital disciplines. My job title says translator even when it doesn't. Between students and employers. Between academics and institutions. Between what the sector keeps doing and what it should probably do instead.

Linear career models assume a world that no longer exists. Trait-and-factor thinking flattens people into tidy shapes. I'm more interested in what happens when you design for complexity, serendipity and messiness — the actual texture of a working life.

So I build things. AI tools that give students something genuinely useful. Sessions that start from curiosity, not coercion. Frameworks that treat uncertainty as the starting point rather than the problem. The tools for navigating liminal spaces with confidence.

A subversive insider, basically, leaning into asymmetric opportunity creation.

No. 03 — Collaboration

Leeds Untied. (Not a Typo.)

A cross-institutional careers collaboration with Marc Steward at the University of Leeds. Started in lockdown. Still going.

Ten joint sessions. A published journal article. An AGCAS conference presentation. A Student Circus partnership. A podcast. All of it under one banner, one working thesis, and roughly one billion GIFs: students don't care whose logo is on the slides.

The full story →

What it includes

10 joint online sessions
AGCAS Phoenix Journal article
AGCAS national conference
Leeds Uni Student Ed. Conference
Student Circus partnership
Leeds Untied — the podcast

No. 04 — In the Wild

A few receipts.

Ben Robertson on the BBC with Harry Gration

Television

BBC

Interviewed by legendary BBC presenter Harry Gration on young people and the future of work.

Feature Film

That One Man

A background role in an indie feature film (2025) supporting Andy's Man Club and men's mental health. One of the most meaningful yeses I've ever said.

Award

Enterprise Award

Received the Enterprise Award for Excellence from Leeds Beckett Vice Chancellor Prof. Peter Slee — recognition of curriculum-embedded careers work with the School of Cultural Studies and Humanities.

No. 05 — On Stage

Recent talks.

Ben Robertson delivering the CLT AI Symposium talk

CLT AI Symposium July 2026

From a T-Shirt to a Method

A Term of Building with Generative AI

On Bloom's 2 Sigma problem, Kenneth Stanley's Greatness Cannot Be Planned, and how a plain t-shirt led to an accidental answer to a decades-old careers education question: personalisation at scale.

Developed:UK Leeds June 2026

The Exposure Gap

Why the skills gap is the wrong story

A 10-minute TED-style talk to founders, investors and ecosystem builders. The argument: UK education policy is misdiagnosing the problem — the real gap isn't skills, it's exposure to the world students are being asked to enter.

Leeds Business School × Leeds School of Arts March 2026

Wear Your Values

Building a sustainable career that actually fits

Delivered as part of a student-led sustainable fashion pop-up. Reframing sustainable fashion as democratic — charity shops, Vinted, experimentation — and the same for careers. A challenge to the "what do you want to be when you grow up?" question.