would never cease learning.

And if they did, she warned, they would not succeed in the corporate world which was continually evolving and demanding change from its participants.

Heddington Insurance CEO and president Jennifer Cartmell passed on the advice to Bermuda High School students during their assembly last Thursday.

After a brief account of her meteoric rise in the business world, Ms Cartmell told the young women: "I challenge you to realise and accept that your education will never stop. I hadn't appreciated that until I realised that stopping learning meant stopping progress.'' Even now, Ms Cartmell said, she strives to learn each day so she will keep pace with the competition and develop ideas.

She told the students that they should also be "boundaryless'' in their thinking as each industry offered a variety of jobs they may not have considered.

"There's no limit to what you can do,'' she stressed.

Bermuda, particularly, offered "fantastic'' opportunities with a tremendous number of university scholarships being offered to students, she said.

Ms Cartmell pointed out that changes were occurring in the marketplace.

"It is very unrealistic for you to expect that you will spend your entire working lives in a single industry.'' "Corporate reality'' had changed from where loyalty to a job meant an employee would be well paid and reap benefits, she continued.

Instead it was now key that young women develop a variety of skills so they would be able to adapt and change as the new reality meant redundancies and corporations shutting down or consolidating -- meaning less jobs.

But Ms Cartmell quickly reassured the frowning students that they should not panic about there being no jobs for them when they were older.

She noted that local businesses were crying out for local talent.

"We prefer Bermudians because expatriates tend to be very transitional. Once you get good people you want to keep them.'' And technology -- which had changed lives tremendously -- would create business and employment opportunities in a corporate world which would also change because of it.

The era of the office and the communal workplace was coming to an end due to the growth in telecommuting, she said.

This would create some benefits but also disadvantages including the decline of teamwork and sociability in the workplace which had always been important to encouraging ideas to develop, she added.

Turning to "glass ceilings'', Ms Cartmell said while she realised they existed, she had never encountered barriers to reaching the top and neither had other women she knew.

She told the students that barriers were unlikely to be there by the time they entered the workplace because demographics showed minorities -- including women -- were making up more and more numbers in the workplace.

Ms Cartmell put this down to businesses realising that these barriers were holding back exceptional talent and a new thinking amongst corporations that they should treat employees like human beings.

EDUCATION ED