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Q - First of all, can you tell us a little about yourself, your career so far, and what you do now?
A - My career journey started in a nursing degree! After a year and a half of study and practical's, I realised that this wasn't the career path for me and so I switched over to the much broader world of Commerce. During this process, my roommate at the time had introduced me to the world of People & Culture and being the sucker for punishment that I was, I decided it would be great to do full time study and a full time internship at a Real Estate agency in Sydney. This is where I found my love of all things People & Culture and the difference this function can make when they are given a seat at the table! I stayed in this business for the 3 years of my degree and grew exponentially thanks to the guidance of two incredible leaders.After a few years, I moved to Melbourne and I was encouraged to move to a bigger business to understand how P & C works at scale and so I moved to a global law firm. This is where I found my love for all things process and operations. It was an incredible opportunity to lead some global projects at the firm and grow my ability to work with commercially minded stakeholders and highlight the power of people as a driving force for growth.Following Covid, I was ready for my next challenge and I wanted it to be one where I could gain exposure to leadership teams, move quickly and make an impact. Enter Linktree. As with a lot of start ups, there is the potential for rapid growth not only in the business but also for your career and after 12 months in the business, I went from Manager to Senior Director, leading entire People function and strategy for the business. It was an incredible 2 year journey where we saw many highs and a few lows and where I learned so much about the leader that I wanted to become.After Linktree, I moved into HR Consulting for a few months and it was here that I gained the appreciation of how a business could work and be structured to maximise profitability. I became obsessed with ways of working, forecasts and making everything more efficient. When discussing this new passion with a close friend and mentor, they mentioned that I should explore an opportunity to move into the world of operations and introduced me to the CEO of Kic who was looking for a person with my skillset (people and operations).As a big fan of Kic and the work that Laura and Steph (Founders) do, applying for this role was a no brainer and after a year and a half as their GM Operations, it is still a no brainer to me. In this role, I am responsible for all things strategy, operations, reporting, partnerships and people! It is a role filled with purpose and passion and I feel very lucky to be sitting in it.
Q - What was a pivotal moment in your career that shaped your path?
A - Six months in to my role at Linktree, my manager departed from the business. Not only was she my manager but she was a great mentor to me on all things start up ecosystems and I felt I had instantly lost that. In order to keep the business humming, I was asked to step into the role of Director of People Operations. Not only was this a big title, but a big role. I was only 5 years into my career at this point and I felt like a huge imposter. There were so many things that I hadn't done before or hadn't been exposed to and I wasn't sure if I could do this role. I knew I wanted to take the opportunity but I was afraid that if I didn't succeed in this role, not only would I let myself down but I would also let my team down.So, in order to ensure that I could give this role my best shot, I created a strong network around me who were not only incredible operators in their own right but were exceptional people leaders. This ensured that I had a community around me for honest feedback and advice. I also put myself through multiple leadership courses and consumed so much content on leading teams that I started to sound like a Brene Brown groupie. From there, with a strong knowledge base behind me, I knew I just had to give it a go, ask questions and be open to feedback as I went. This opportunity led to many other opportunities and I am so grateful that I embraced the challenge.This challenge showed me the power of having a network of advisors, something that I still have and use to this day. That network has shifted over time as my role has shifted and it is something I will always cherish. It also shaped the way I view new opportunities. Before this, I always thought of the reasons why I couldn't do something and now when I am given an opportunity, I think about all of the things I will learn from that experience and the ways I will grow (both personally and professionally).
Q - What has been the biggest risk you've taken in your career, and what did you learn from it?
A - Nothing felt like a greater risk to me than stepping out of my comfort zone in the People & Culture space and into the Operations space in my current role at Kic. As someone who likes to feel as though they are exceeding expectations, stepping into a role where most of the job description was something I hadn't done before, felt incredibly daunting but also very exciting.I loved the mission of the business and so I knew that if I could gain exposure to all of these things that I had never seen before, that I would be one fulfilled individual and I am glad to say I am feeling pretty fulfilled.Before stepping into my role at Kic, I had never been part of a business strategy session. I had never forecasted financials of a business. I had never determined targets or OKRs (outside of my own team). At Kic, I was able to do all of this and having this commercial mindset has not only made me a better operator but a better leader as well. I can make better decisions for the business, I can communicate the why for these decisions much more effectively and I can truly act in a way that supports the growth of the business.Having this type of understanding has made me a much better operator and I think, has refined my people strategy expertise and this wouldn't have been possible if I didn't take the step to explore a whole different career path.
Q - What resources or networks have been most helpful to you in your career development?
A - I have so many things, it may as well be a 30kg suitcase at this point!- As I mentioned, I have an incredible community of advisors around me and to add to that, I have also joined the Startmate Ladymates Leadership cohort this year which has been awesome.- I have an amazing coach who supports my holistic leadership journey and who I have been working with to increase my own executive presence.- I have read some awesome books and listened to some amazing podcasts:
- The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
- You can heal your life by Louise Hay
- Radical Candour by Kim Scott
- Untamed by Glennon Doyle
- Atomic Habits by James Clear
- We can do hard things podcast
- The Imperfects podcast
- The KicPod (shameless plug)
- How to turn grit into a lifelong habit with Angela Duckworth
Q - How do you foster a culture of growth and learning within your team or organization?
A - Growth is very important at Kic and the below are some of the ways we have created a culture of growth at Kic:
1. The first thing we do at Kic is give the team the access to all of the information they need to do their roles. We talk through our bottom line financials, our targets and our team performance on a fortnightly basis so that the team know how the business is going. Through being transparent with these figures, it has given our team the agency to think big and creatively about the direction of the business and act as a leader. We have seen so many commercially minded decisions coming from some of our most junior team members and it has been so rewarding to see.
2. We have a great culture at Kic of collective feedback. As Kic is such a purpose driven business, because the team want to ensure they produce the best results for our community, feedback is shared and received as a positive message. We encourage our squads to share the initiatives they are working on each fortnight at our all team meetings and this presentation is often met with questions, feedback and guidance on ways to continuously improve on the outcome which in turn grows the team members involved.
3. As part of our squad ways of working, our teams will run retros on each larger initiative or product they launch. They use the Stop, Start, Continue method and seek to understand what went well and how they could improve moving forward. This learning is then taken through to the planning of the next initiative and reviewed again in a subsequent retro. Once the retro has been run, those learnings are also shared across the business as a way to collectively learn and grow.
4. Everyone at Kic has a performance development plan which outlines their growth plans both within the business and external to it. These plans are created by the individual and their manager and are reviewed monthly to understand how that individual is progressing against their goals. Throughout this process, the managers will support their team members with providing access to external mentors, networks or courses for further external development should they not have access to it at Kic.
5. As Kic is a part of The Commons co-working network, there are usually learning and development opportunities that take place each week across Melbourne. Attendance at these events are often advertised to our team and participation is encouraged. We also then ask those who did attend to share their learnings back to the team at a team meeting where we will dive deeper into the learnings across the business.
6. Where we have team members who are taking a strong interest in growth, we make sure to recognise this across the board through more tactical channels from team shoutouts, values-based awards and also promotion where that growth has seen them step into a new role.
Q - What advice would you give to someone looking to develop a growth mindset in their career?
A - I am of the opinion that you absolutely need a growth mindset to succeed in life. This growth doesn't necessarily need to be vertical (up the career ladder) but can be horizontal (through learning new skills and gaining exposure). Either way you look at it, to grow in life, you need to be open to learning and to looking at each scenario from a different perspective.There is a book that I was introduced to this year called The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz and I wish I had read this when I started in my career journey. This book talks about our self-limiting beliefs and the journey to finding true joy in everything we do. One of the agreements in this book is to not take things personally. As someone who progressed through the ladder at a young age, I don't think I had formed who I was as a person, let alone a leader and this lack of self-belief, prevented me from a lot of growth opportunities in the past as I would often put a lot of emphasis on who I was by the work I produced. This meant that if the work I produced didn't have a great outcome (something that happens every day), I would take it incredibly personally and it would greatly impact my self-confidence. This is why I struggled to step away from my traditional career for some time.It took me a really long time to break out of that habit and once I learned to separate myself as a person from myself as an operator, I was really able to open up my growth mindset and explore challenges that had once felt too overwhelming and I am lucky I did!
Q - Can you share a piece of advice or a lesson from a mentor that has stuck with you throughout your career?
A - 1. The first is from my coach at Linktree (a Co Lab coach), Megan Karsh. Megan always used to tell me that in order to work out the leader that I wanted to be, I need to work out what my personal values were first. It was through building these values in my sessions with Megan that I learned how to harness these values as a way to communicate and show up as a leader. I learned what things to push hard against and what things to let slide based and they became the guiding light of who I was as a leader.
2. The second was from my current coach, Janey Martino. Janey has often said to me that I play things too safe with my career and to be ok with taking risks. I would so often not put myself forward for opportunities because of the fear of rejection. Janey and I have worked really hard on breaking out of this habit and instead approaching everything with an "aim high" attitude.
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