Chief Robotics Officer

Learn as much as you can about robotics by reading books and watching videos about the field. If your school offers robotics classes, enroll in them. If your school has a robotics club, join it—and start your own club if one doesn’t exist. Since CROs also have a business background, take business classes and get involved in school business clubs and join organizations such as Junior Achievement (https://jausa.ja.org), Future Business Leaders of America (https://www.fbla.org), and Business Professionals of America (http://bpa.org).

Participate in robotics competitions to test your abilities, meet people with shared interests, and have some fun. Here are some competitions to check out:

• BEST Robotics Competitions: https://www.bestrobotics.org
• FIRST Robotics Competition: http://www.firstinspires.org
• National Robotics Challenge: https://www.thenrc.org
• SkillsUSA Competitions: http://www.skillsusa.org
• VEX Robotics Competitions: https://www.vexrobotics.com/v5/competition
• World Robot Olympiad: https://wro-association.org

Other methods to explore this field include building robots; participating in summer exploration programs that are offered by colleges and universities, high schools, professional associations, robotics companies, and other organizations; and participating in information interviews and job shadowing experiences with chief robotics officers and other robotics professionals.

Watch videos about robotics and check out podcasts such as The Robot Industry Podcast (https://www.automate.org/robotics/the-robot-industry-podcast). Two other interesting resources are the Association for Advancing Automation's Automation's blog (https://www.automate.org/blogs) and The Robot Report (https://www.therobotreport.com).