Changing course: How Drive the Future helped students find their own path to success 

Success is often described as a race toward a fixed destination. But in engineering, motorsport, technology — and life in general — progress rarely follows a perfectly straight path. 

That idea shaped Drive the Future 2026, an engaging program held at Texas State Technical College in Austin, Texas, on October 21. Building on last year’s Drive the Future event, Arm, Aston Martin Aramco Formula One® Team, and Texas State Technical College expanded this year’s program to give students hands-on engineering experience, access to industry role models, and a clearer view of the many pathways into STEM. 

“Technology is pervasive in every corner of our planet and is changing the way that we live, work, play and, of course, move,” said Charlotte Eaton, Chief People Officer at Arm. “We’re going to need to continue to innovate forward into the future with new technologies and, of course, many brilliant minds. So it’s important to be here bringing through the next generation, inspiring them to pick up careers in STEM, inspiring them to come and drive the future.”

As AI literacy becomes an increasingly foundational workforce skill, Arm’s EducateAI Coalition aims to show how AI connects with real technologies, industries, and career pathways. Drive the Future brought that commitment to life by connecting real-world applications of AI and advanced computing with perspectives from industry professionals who have faced their share of challenges.  

“I’m proud of the work that Arm is doing alongside Texas State Technical College and the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One® Team through the Arm EducateAI Coalition to develop the next generation of innovators,” said Stephen Ozoigbo, Head of Government Partnerships & Ecosystems, Arm. “Building the next generation of innovators requires sustained collaboration across industry, education and government. Partnerships like these are essential to strengthening the talent pipeline, creating economic opportunity and supporting Texas’ continued leadership in technology and innovation. I’d like to thank our partners, including the British Consul General in Houston, Richard Shackleton, and his team for their support at the 2026 event .”

Thinking like engineers

Working in small teams, they were challenged to design an intelligent control system for a next-generation vehicle. They considered how inputs, sensing technologies, and different systems could work together to help a vehicle understand and respond to its surroundings. 

The challenge gave students a practical example of how AI and advanced computing can be applied to real engineering problems. Through Arm’s partnership with Aston Martin Aramco Formula One® Team, students could connect these technologies with the people, industries, and career opportunities shaping their future.

“It was really interesting to learn how data is collected and how it’s fed into machine learning. The hands-on activity that we did was really helpful,” said Aniasha, one of the participating students.

The exercise called for more than technical knowledge. Students had to test ideas, listen to different perspectives, respond when an approach did not work, and make decisions together. This was to mirror the same combination of creativity, collaboration, and systems thinking that engineers use to solve real-world problems. 

“Today was super fun. We got to programme some of our own machine learning, getting to see how that works,” said Sonia, another participating student. “Getting to play around with it was an incredible opportunity, and it’s just really shown me what I could have in my future.”

Jessica Hawkins, Driver Ambassador for the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One® Team worked directly with the student teams. Acting as mentors, they helped students work through challenges, and shared how collaboration takes place in a high-performance motorsport environment. 

Finding another way forward

For Jessica Hawkins, the theme of changing course is personal.  

Moving from GT3 to GT4 racing could have been seen as a step away from the expected path. Instead, the decision created a different opportunity and helped turn a change in direction into a title-winning season. Through our partnership with Aston Martin Aramco Formula One® Team, Arm is proud to support Jessica’s journey and help bring her experiences to the next generation. 

Her experience offers an important lesson: persistence is not simply about pushing harder in the same direction. It is also about understanding when another route may take you further. 

That perspective was central to the event’s fireside conversation, which brought together Hawkins; Paatz; Charlotte Eaton, Chief People Officer at Arm; and Choka Thenappan, Hardware Engineer at Arm. 

The panel explored where careers begin, how people recognize and embrace opportunities, what setbacks can teach us, and the advice each speaker would give their 16-year-old self. Their experiences showed students that success can take many forms — and that uncertainty, mistakes, and changes of direction are part of learning rather than evidence that someone does not belong. 

Extending the impact beyond one day

Drive the Future was designed to reach beyond the students in the room. 

After the student program, participating educators joined Arm engineers and Texas State Technical College faculty for technical sessions covering areas including AI, embedded systems, systems engineering, and sensing technologies. 

Educators then worked together to turn the day’s engineering experience into practical ideas for their classrooms. The workshop offered a tangible example of what Arm seeks to achieve through the EducateAI Coalition: equipping educators, teachers, and program leaders with the knowledge and resources to extend AI learning beyond a single event and into classrooms and communities. 

As Arm’s first EducateAI hub, Texas State Technical College demonstrates how the coalition can work through regional education partners to expand access to AI learning, strengthen local capabilities, and create pathways to future workforce opportunities. 

Driving your own success

The technologies transforming mobility and computing will be built by people with different experiences and routes into the industry. Helping young people see themselves as part of that future means showing them not only what engineers create, but how they think, collaborate, adapt, and grow — especially when faced with challenges.  

“Talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. We need to make sure that we are reaching out and really inspiring the next generation because we can’t continue to be a leading tech provider if we’re not including everyone,” said Anahita Crawford, Global Head of DEI at Arm.

By bridging classroom learning with real-world applications and industry perspectives, Arm and the EducateAI Coalition are helping students and educators understand not only how AI works, but where it can take them. 

Through hands-on problem-solving and honest conversations about careers, Drive the Future gave students an opportunity to build confidence, connect with role models, and explore where their own curiosity could take them. 

There may be no single roadmap to a career in STEM. As the students learned in Austin, a roadblock can reveal another possibility — and changing course can be the move that drives you forward.