The Local Hero

I think my purpose, what gets me out of bed every morning – whether it’s an innermost dream or not, is to be able to give back and to provide opportunities to people in the community who are unemployed and have less choices than those employed.. That’s what drives me and what I do. It’s about believing in people. With all the people I met; all they often need is someone to believe in them and see the potential in them. It’s amazing what a little hope and belief can do.

One of the things I enjoy about working on “A Hat of Many Dreams” is the fact that I come across people from all walks of life. Some, I know quite well; however most of them are newly met. It’s not always easy to start a dialogue; but if I have learnt something during these almost three years, it’s the fact that people are always appreciative when you give them your time and that likewise, in giving me theirs, they open up genuinely, sharing their thoughts, hopes and dreams.

I didn’t know Emma very well before our interview but when I left, I felt that I made a new friend. She proved to be a great interlocutor and she offered me great insight into the model she created, as well as into her own motivation.

I have been very interested in the idea behind the SPARK program at Ginninderry.  Social justice has always been one of my most powerful drivers therefore it’s easy to understand why a project offering people a new path through education and training ticks all my boxes. Like they say – don’t just give someone a fish, but teach them how to fish.

I even ended up as a participant in one of the training programs; which was very reaffirming for me personally.

The SPARK program has already won many accolades and awards such as ACT Training Awards in 2017.

In fact, at the time I am writing this story, Emma, the mastermind behind the SPARK program, has just been chosen as one of the three winners in the 2018 Westfield Local Heroes program for creating 175 jobs and over 200 work experience opportunities for local people.

- "How many hats I wear in a day? I am a partner, daughter, sister, friend, mentor, employee, project manager, negotiator a conflict resolver… I communicate, I do marketing and funding – it really depends on the day but there are so many hats that I get to wear.

Out of all these hats, I like being a friend the most. It’s a lovely hat to have.  Do I have it on all the time? In a way, yes. From work perspective – my friend hat becomes a mentor for the people involved in our SPARK programs. I am not a case manager, I take time to listen and offer guidance. I love that about my job.

I never knew what I wanted to do in life, when I was a child. When I finished high school, I didn’t have a direction but I had this strong desire for travel and adventure. Looking back, I think it was a drive to explore new cultures, new countries, new experiences. I still don’t know what I want to do, even at 43 years old. My life ended up the way it is because of all my experiences, I think. But I never had a burning desire to be something like a doctor, or a nurse; I have a desire to experience people. If you look at my job now, it’s very unusual, it’s not a described occupation but it fits me.

My first favourite story was “The Hungry Caterpillar”. it’s the first story that I can remember my parents reading to me. Then, when I was able to read by myself, I enjoyed Enid Blyton.

I used to have a reward system; I loved reading and if I was good for a month, my mum would buy me a book from the supermarket.  In the beginning, there were the little golden books and   I particularly remember “The Little Engine that Could” and “The Scruffy Puppy”. My mum still has them at home.

I am not a big reader now but I do enjoy reading autobiographies. I like reading about true stories and all of the books on my shelves are books about people and their life journey, not fiction books.

Coming out of high school, I had no career focus at all. My biggest dream was to travel around the world. I was happy to get any job I could and then save money and travel. I worked in a video store for a while and then when I saved enough, I bought myself a one-way ticket to the UK. Once there I worked in pubs, or as a nanny and travelled around Europe. For a short while, I lived in Boston, working as a nanny.  Then I got a job with Disney Cruise Lines, as a Youth Counsellor.

It’s a great experience, travelling and working onboard cruise ships. You learn how to get along with people who are so different and how to be part of a team. It gave me a great understanding of work ethics, of how to deal with and solve a conflict and how to deliver outstanding customer service.

Disney taught me a lot of valuable things in terms of career, but travelling made me learn a lot about myself too.

When I came back to Australia, I still didn’t know what I wanted to do.  When I came home, I was presented with two jobs. One was a cruise specialist at Flight Centre and the other one was working with young unemployed people who were on Centrelink benefits, helping them advance their careers, make a CV, train for their interviews and place them into jobs.

I chose to work with young people; I wanted to see if I could use my skills to help them with their future. That was my first step in this sector, education and training; that’s where it all started.

Who I am now? I am Emma. I am me and I love me. I am comfortable with the person that I am, comfortable with my moral compass. I think it’s very important to be kind; it doesn’t take a lot to be kind to the others.

I am happy with my economic status, with my work, with the wonderful friends and family I have in my life.

I don’t tend to look too far ahead or to do long term planning, but everyone has a dream: to love what they do and to make a difference in people’s life, to be a good partner, friend and daughter. I don’t believe in people’s dreams to be happy or successful. Happy has a lot of definitions and success is too often measured by money.

I think my purpose, what gets me out of bed every morning – whether it’s an innermost dream or not, is to be able to give back and to provide opportunities to people in the community who are unemployed and have less choices than those employed.. That’s what drives me and what I do. It’s about believing in people.

With all the people I met; all they often need is someone to believe in them and see the potential in them. It’s amazing what a little hope and belief can do. I want to always be in a role where I can get the best out of people and give them that opportunity to discover their potential. But it’s not a dream, really.

Sometimes I dream I win the lotto. Then I think; “What would I do with all that money?”.

I always think about travel and experiencing new things.  I also think about starting a not for profit organisation, working with people in the community who need a hand up not a hand out and focused on training education and employment.

As a teenager, I played softball for my home town of South Australia and later in Junior Development Australian teams. This taught me at an early age about the importance of team work and about being part of that team. It taught me to always finish what I started, it taught me about boundaries, and about communication, it gave me my moral compass from a young age.

What keeps me going is knowing that there is always an end goal.  I am one that never gives up. I don’t like being told no. So, when I do get told no, it cannot be done, I will always find a way that it can be done.

There is always a way to do things; even it if is hard, it drives us to make sure that those individuals in our community who didn’t have many chances get them. When you have a job, you have more choices; when you have education, you have more choices and then you contribute more to the community.

Being able to give people those opportunities to change their trajectories is very humbling. What we are trying to do here at Ginninderry is to give people that choice : here’s an opportunity, take it if you want.

 Sometimes when you have a full-time job, a good paying job, it’s easy to get disconnected with the rest of the community, if one doesn’t keep being involved. And this is what I like about my job – I am connected with every single person in a community that you can imagine. And I think that makes me more appreciative in life. Money doesn’t motivate me but achievement does; whether it’s achievement from a funding perspective, or achievement in setting a time frame to renovate our garage and turn it into a studio. I think I am very goal focus; I am outcome focused but that outcome does not have to be money. If you look at successful people, goal-setting is very important and if you don’t have the drive to achieve those goals, then you need someone to push you.

I have no idea where I will be in 5 years’ time. Through my whole working career, I’ve never known what job I will have.   I have only applied for two jobs in my life. All the other job opportunities came from networking and connecting with people.

All I know is that my partner would like to move back to Adelaide and I have committed to that. But I would still like to work on Ginninderry so I am not sure how I am going to make that work.

I don’t like fame or individual accolades. I don’t like to be singled out, it’s important to keep grounded and level headed. Everything you do in life you can’t do on your own; collaboration is key - and I wouldn’t be where I am today without all the people in my life – I have an amazing partner, I have a great team here at work, I couldn’t achieve things without them. From a work perspective, I think I would use the fame to speak to the Government about what they should be doing with their funding for unemployed people. I would certainly use my 15 minutes of fame to talk about those key issues.

My first role model? I used to look up to the big kids on our street, but I don’t know if they were role models. I wanted to have a new bike like they did.

My sports coach was my first true role model. She taught me that no matter what background one comes from, you can achieve something.

Growing up, we weren’t a wealthy family. We used to get second hand clothes. If the ice cream truck was coming on Sundays, we didn’t have money to buy ice-cream, my mum would make me an ice-cream. However, I had a great childhood. It’s probably only in high school when I noticed that there was class, difference. I never noticed before that there were private schools or people who had expensive cars; I was only aware of the class levels in high school. But my coach really taught me that one can be successful through their continuous hard work. If you have the talent, the abilities and then you put some work into it, this is the most important thing in the world. It is your ability, your drive that would make you successful, not the soft toys, not the brand-new shoes or the new softball glove. It’s about the commitment.

My current role-model? I have a few. I really admire my boss, David Maxwell (and no I am not sucking up!). I love working for him. Is he a role-model? It’s more like a mentor.

I love his commitment to his project, staff and family. Do I aspire to be like him? No, I never want to be a developer in my life! Do I aspire to have the same attributes like him? Some yes, some no.  

In a bigger world perspective, I love Richard Branson. I read a lot of books about him. I love the way he takes risks, I like his entrepreneurial mind. I like that he values his staff more than customers. And he has this quote that says “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of the employees, they will take care of the clients”. I think that is so important. A lot of people think only about the end-user but if you don’t have the right staff, the right employees who are committed to same vision, committed to great service, then you are never going to have a great business.

And if you look at Ginninderry, the staff that David picked and put together is amazing.

I have never worked in a place like this. We all get along and we all motivate each other.

I respect him and I respect all of my colleagues so much but – we are all completely different yet it works so well.  Whether David did it in purpose or not, that I don’t know; but it works really well. What we have here at Ginninderry is very special.

My favourite book is “Losing my Virginity” by Richard Branson. I really love that book.

One of my favourite movies is Moana – I could watch it over and over again it’s based on the ocean and on adventure. The main character is not a princess falling in love; she is a lead female who doesn’t need a man, she doesn’t need to get married, to find her purpose.

I don’t have regrets in life. I don’t necessarily believe in regrets because one cannot live in the past. I’ve made my decisions and chosen the path I’ve gone down and dealt with the consequences of all the decisions I’ve made. I think it’s about building resilience. My only regret is not learning that when you have arguments with people, instead of carrying that around with you, you need to let it go. When you have disagreements with friends, or fall-outs with family, it’s important to not hold onto those; it can make your heart very heavy. I think in the last 10 years I’ve learned to do that; I call it taking the monkey off your back; you got to take the monkey off your back and put it on someone else’s. I wish I learned that earlier.

My special place, where I feel at peace is the Ocean. Dad and Mum were surfers; and we used to go to the beach every single weekend – we always had this special connection to the Ocean. We would surf or snorkel every single weekend of the summer. And then on the winter, we would go and walk the dog on the beach. I notice a difference in me, I am calmer when I am around the ocean. Everything in my life has been based on the Ocean. Apart from being here in Canberra".

- How did you end up in Canberra?

- "I was working for a government agency in South Australia, which is the equivalent of the Land Development Agency here. Then one day, a group from Canberra came for a tour, learning about our project. I was talking about the work we do, about training and employment and social inclusion outcomes and at the end of the presentation, David told me he really liked what I was doing. Then he asked me if I liked to come in Canberra to be involved into a new development. Initially, I did a presentation for a whole range of stakeholders that I now work with; then he asked me if I wanted to work as a consultant, until the project was approved. I did; I got approval from my work place to work two days a month for a year.

 I developed a business plan and a case study for the SPARK program. The Government approved it and I got a job offer from David; then, in 2015 my partner and I moved to Canberra.

If I had to define myself in one word, it would be “me”.

- What motivates Emma best  -Success or Failure?

Failure motivates me because it teaches you what works and what doesn’t work.  It makes me more determinate not to fail again. Failure is essential, as long as you learn from it.

I don’t like using the term “success” because it is meaningless sometimes.

In my work, I am motivated the most by the people who don’t always show up and that are at risk of dropping off and failing. It makes me more determined to help them to achieve their potential. Success always comes with failure; you cannot achieve success without failure".

What does the SPARK program mean to Emma?

- "No one asked me that question before. The SPARK program is very important to me on both professional and personal levels. When I first came in Canberra, I had to overcome a lot of backwards thinking.

In the beginning people thought it was just a load of baloney; a developer’s attempt to get community engagement as a ticket to obtain what they needed in order to get the project approved.

I don’t think people had the vison, the ability to envisage what David and I saw, to see what it was going to be and what it could become.

For me, SPARK has really proven to everyone that developers can really give meaningful outcomes to the community, an outcome that it’s not just about houses.

It’s been a huge challenge for me to start a project from scratch, a project that had no brand and no funding.  Doors were closed on my face when I went to talk about funding. It’s funny how a few years later, all those doors are wide open.

SPARK was the defining moment in my professional career. It has “sparked” – it provided a spark for me too, as corny as that sounds. It confirmed that what I did in South Australia and the model I have developed here can be taken anywhere in the world. The real test was proving that bringing what I did in South Australia here, in a state where you only have a fraction of the people is still a feasible project. The answer was yes.

I am humbled by all the people I meet. Even by the ones who don’ t turn up.

Everyone has a path; a journey.  if I can play a small role in their growth and professional development, provide education and training and help giving them a hand up and not a hand out to do what they really need to do in order to meet their goals and dreams, it makes me grateful. It’s a very fortunate position, I am very privileged to have this opportunity to help people. And their stories are rewarding too – there are mothers with five children who have been unemployed for 10 years but now they working in a full-time position

There are the young boys who battled drug addiction but now are apprentices in the carpentry and building industry. Education is power. We empower people to change their lives".