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78 PCB007 MAGAZINE I MAY 2021 Looking back on our second year, the IPC Education Foundation (IPCEF) takes pride in how we how we adjusted our engagement ini- tiatives during the pandemic. We couldn't rely on our original strategy of hosting and attend- ing a range of in-person activities and events. So, we shied our focus and launched a vari- ety of digital and virtual engagement activi- ties to share information about the electronics manufacturing industry with students, teach- ers, and anyone else interested in this poten- tial career path. e Foundation held 10 informative webi- nars covering a wide range of industry-specific topics, and conducted 28 interviews with IPC student members, IPC Emerging Engineers, industry representatives, and IPC leadership to share knowledge about career paths into the industry; this led to blog posts, articles, and social media campaigns. e Foundation suc- cessfully reached more than 110,000 individu- als and engaged with more than 5,500 individ- uals through these activities. But even though we reached a lot of poten- tial talent, we also realized that these online mediums led to several challenges. COVID fa- tigue is real: Students receive an overwhelm- ing amount of online content from their class- es, organizations, and extracurriculars. ere is a lot of information out there and students need to be extremely selective on what to at- tend or register for. My colleague, program manager Aaron Birney, reached out to our stu- dent members and the general consensus was that the students desire in-person sessions and would welcome time away from their comput- er or laptop screens. Student members also shared that they would be more likely to attend virtual events if it would directly impact their personal career journeys. at was the reason behind the IPC APEX EXPO Career Panel for 2021. It was impor- tant to find a group of panelists that has exten- sive knowledge about the industry from well- IPC Education Foundation Lessons Learned Foundations of the Future by Charlene Gunter du Plessis, IPC EDUCATION FOUNDATION Figure 1.