Can you tell us a little bit about your current role as a Senior Advisor (Environmental Management) and what your typical day looks like?
Although my job has a fancy title it doesn’t do it justice to what it covers. To put it simply, I am a marine environmental officer. I work within an engineering team providing assistance and environmental advice to help manage public marine infrastructure across Queensland.
As an environmental officer, my advice or actions can cover some of the following areas:
- water quality
- flora and fauna
- contamination
- sedimentation
- waste and sustainability measures
- noise and vibration issues
- cultural heritage and native title requirements.
Another main part of my role is to create environmental assessments and reports to undertake maintenance or construction activities in marine facilities. As this role covers so many areas and environmental expertise, I don’t have any typical day, rather more a typical week or month – but it all depends on the type of work or area that you are working in across the state.
I enjoy undertaking ecological (aquatic and terrestrial) assessments, followed by writing observations and reports to attach to contract documents, writing technical specifications, reviewing and applying environmental policy to the delivery of our marine projects. At times I also investigate environmental incidents, undertake construction audits and create notifications to other government departments. My position is partly based onsite, and the rest is computer work.
Did you always know you wanted to work in this field, or did your career pathway take unexpected turns?
I was one of those lucky (or unlucky!) people that knew very early on what I wanted to do as a career. Personally, my love for the environment, animals and all things nature, shaped a lot of my experiences and therefore choices I made to get into a career that would bring those elements into my day-to-day life. Just because you potentially know very clearly what you want to do as a career, doesn’t mean that your career pathway will not take unexpected turns.
Even though I knew exactly what I wanted to do professionally, I wasn’t the best student or particularly great at study. I knew what subjects I needed to excel in and get good grades at to be able to have my first preference into university, but not being a top-notch student I struggled!. I actually didn’t have the best results coming out of high school to get my first or even second preferences in university. It was a blow to the ego, however if one door closes, find a window you can crawl through. And that’s exactly what I did. I researched universities and their courses and rerouted my decisions in what to study that would get me into my preferred degree. It ended up being choosing several subjects from one university, and choosing other subjects from a second university. This was before the recognition of prior learning and mixing and matching subjects didn’t really exist. It was a bit of extra work that I had to do to coordinate everything but in the end it worked out. I ended up graduating with a dual degree, with two majors and Honours – in my chosen field! These included a Bachelor in Environmental Sciences, majoring in Ecology & its applications, as well as Marine Biology, with Honours in Marine Biology and Biomedical sciences.
If you could go back and give your high school self one piece of advice, what would it be?
It is hard to pick just one! One of the things that helped me decide on what to study at university and what career to pick, was sitting down and doing a deep dive into not just what my skill set is, and what I wanted to be, but also what that job type would give me a few years down the track. Questions like:
- will this career give me the lifestyle that I’m looking for?
- is there an essential ladder that I can keep climbing if I still want to progress in this career?
- With today’s ever-increasing costs of living, will this career be able to give me financial security if I were to follow it?
This is a time where I really had to be honest with myself when weighing up the options. However, at the same time, realising that anything that you decide is always a good learning opportunity. You can shoot your shot, and if you work out after a year or so of giving it a red hot go, that it isn’t actually what you expected it to be, it doesn’t fill your cup, and it’s not for you, then take the learnings from this experience and just ask yourselves those questions again to redirect into a new career or area in life. It is not the end of the world if you find out what you originally thought was going to be your forever- career, didn’t end up being that.
You were previously a TMR advisor for Uniq You – why would you encourage other women to get involved in the program, either as participants or future advisors?
It all depends on your own personality and your own goals. Personally, this program aligned well with my personal and professional goals to give something back to the younger generation in the form of work and life experiences, tips and learnings. Uniq You was the perfect vector for this. I did this, because the structure of Uniq You aligned perfectly with my wants and desires. They are well structured, reach a wide audience, and it certainly has a lot of resources behind the team to deliver great outcomes for upcoming professionals. It is also very relevant to today’s ever increasing digital and more connected world. I became involved in this program, because I wish I would have had this opportunity when I was in a critical time of my fledgling, young life in deciding what I wanted to do for my career. Having access to mentors, leaders, and strong professional role models is invaluable!