women@work

Jo Brennan
Position: Chief Executive Officer, Habitat for Humanity Australia .

What does the term ‘turnaround’ mean in your life?  “The term doesn’t resonate for me when I think about my career but it does when I think about business. It’s about turning something that is not growing into something that will be here in five years time and flourishing. In relation to Habitat Australia, it’s about growing and developing families and communities, sustainably, where before that did not exist.”

March 8, 2011 is the 100-year anniversary of International Women’s Day. Jo Brennan, now almost a year into her new role as CEO of Habitat for Humanity, Australia (part of the world’s largest not-for-profit home building organization), plans to take 100 women to Nepal next March building homes for a whole community of families as part of Habitat’s Global Village Program.

It’s a plan she’s asked Westpac’s Head of Women’s Markets, Larke Riemer, to share in, and the foundations are already poured. A networking lunch has been organized to canvas for supporters and I’ve already been approached to join up. So, it was with a very different sense of anticipation that I arrived at Habitat’s offices in North Sydney – voice recorder in hand – to interview Jo for Ruby’s Women @ Work.

The open plan office displays pictures along the walls capturing the joy of partner families, mothers, fathers, grandparents, children (often with Habitat volunteers) at work or standing triumphantly outside the safety and security of a home that will be their own, built with their own “sweat equity”. Notes of thanks and donation pinned to a white board complete the classic picture of the not-for-profit that inspires those who work on it, in it and for it, or who’ve benefited from it.

Jo’s CEO style is to do. Her desk sits among the staff. I have no idea yet which one she is but they all have telephone headsets on, and beaver away at their computers, backs to the centre of the room. The sense of team, strong, robust, on the journey to sustainability, is palpable.

I am ushered into a large meeting room to wait for Jo who’s finishing up a phone call. The remains of a planning strategy day, featuring the word “sustainability”, prominently adorn the surface of the ubiquitous conference room white board. The ‘ufo-docking-station’ of a conference call device sits smack bang in the middle of the enormous blond wood veneer table dwarfing my voice recorder – which for all its retiring compactness can still be very intimidating to an interviewee.

Three of spades
Jo walks in, notices the recorder immediately, and turns back, apologizing about forgetting to bring a card. Someone from the office calls out: “Just give her the three of spades”.

“I grew up in country South Australia on a farm – cereal and produce – near the Clare Valley . I was the youngest with four older brothers and spent lots of time outside with my father.

“He was a really interesting man and a great inspiration for me. A World War Two returned veteran, he’d been on the frontline of the Battle of El Alamein and with his family had opened up the West Coast of South Australia, The Eyre Peninsula. My father was a real believer in actions over words. He had a great sense of service and commitment to country and of getting on with things.

“We did an oral history with him before he died. It’s a wonderful keepsake and a fantastic story of the strength of a everyday Australian and a nation builder of his time. His motto was family, farming, football and along with my grandmother and aunt (and my own gut instincts), they are my litmus tests when making any decision.”

Board-game challenges
Jo’s self-confessed skill at board games, especially “Monopoly” and “Squatter”, “where in the end no-one would play me”, make it easy for us to draw direct links to her ongoing career choices in asset management and construction. But it was her particular experiences growing up that have provided her with the confidence to be action orientated.

“Growing up in a small community is about contributing more broadly to that community to help it grow and reach a richness and diversity that would be missing if no-one got involved.

“I spent a huge amount of time playing community sports, experiencing family unity and taking part in groups such as International Young Farmers Federation. They provided other social networking avenues and gave you the skills to speak in public, debate, put on plays and events. Stepping up to the plate provided you with a richer more diverse experience of community.”

In her role with Habitat, Jo finds she is still coming to grips with being the public face of the organization and how much it is about her personally. Her previous roles have also involved selling concepts and ideas, taking change through an organization and getting people on board to make the journey, but always in a much less public and personal way.

“To grow an organization like this and make it sustainable demands that I step up to the challenge. Taking the leap, putting myself forward has been that challenge.

“I think as woman we’re almost programmed not to put ourselves forward. There’s a difference between the way men and women promote themselves and it’s something I have to consciously work on to overcome. I have to put myself out there and market Habitat as well, be a spokesperson and an advocate. It’s a step I needed to take and was ready for, even though working for a not-for-profit has come earlier than I expected in my career.”

Much earlier it would appear. Jo puts that down to the fact that one of her best financial decisions was to buy property (“It’s back to Monopoly”), hold onto it and to inherit from her father the ability to be a strong saver.

Haystacks in a row
“He had all his haystacks lined up and believed in having a back-up plan. Saving and buying property has given me a strong financial platform and allowed me to do the role I’m in now. You need some runway to do something like this.

“I left teaching with very little Super and low financial literacy. Since then, I’ve worked purposely toward having sustainability – a diverse financial plan – a sustainable life.”

The term sustainability figures a great deal in Jo’s conversation in relation to both her work and life and the process by which she has travelled to where she is now. There are three points she uses to help explain her path to CEO in the organization she now calls home.

Firstly, there was the choice to teach against doing law. Working intensively with a 10 year old who couldn’t read, she remembers the afternoon when his life changed.

“I could see he just got it (the reading thing) and, at that point, I knew he was on his way to do great things.”

From there she moved into corporate work and roles in asset management and construction, culminating with a massive project to manage the design and construct “on time, on budget and on spec” of her former employer, Santos ’ new headquarters.

“Walking into that at the end of three and a half years and the efforts of hundreds of people was a real tangible outcome from something that we’d talked about and envisaged for years. I think I’m a frustrated engineer and I’d never done anything like this before but I do know how to harness expertise and I’m not afraid to get in and do. It’s been pure magic knowing that I effectively moved 1400 staff into a building that works and makes a great work environment and still continues to function in that way.”

Tipping point
Then in 2009, very early in her Habitat role, Jo was on site on a Habitat project in Vietnam and met a man in his early 70s who was about to move into his own home for the first time. A veteran from what he called, The American War, he explained what the home meant to him through a translator. Blind in one eye, missing the best part of one leg, he’d worked the dump for more than 20 years, living on less than a $1 a day picking over rubbish. For the first time he was about to get his own safe, secure home and the difference that made to him was immeasurable. His family would be able to come and visit more often because now there was a place to go where the door could be shut and the children would be safe.

The Habitat model is based on microfinance and the concept of the hand-up not the hand-out. Complex issues of identity and establishing this man as a person with his own rights had been scaled to allow him to be able to apply for land and home ownership. As a partner with Habitat, he spent time helping build the home; sweat equity it’s called. He will pay back his microfinance loan over time to the revolving fund that then helps more families. He will receive the support to find work locally that will allow him to exist and make those repayments and will not have to return to a tip because no thought had been given to formulating a sustainable future for him. The Habitat philosophy is centered on integrated community development with the home at its heart

“Walking around that rubbish dump was to understand that I could have an impact. That it wasn’t theoretical. I couldn’t change the world but with the team we could make a real difference at a local level. We could help someone build a life and a safe, secure home that wasn’t on a rubbish dump.”

3 Achievements
Completing my father’s memoirs
Building a 15,000 square meter commercial building that works
Family ties and commitment

3 Passions
Scuba diving
Learning by doing
Helping people find ways to make a difference
WWII history

Sharyn thinks it was a bold move by the Queensland chapter to give her the award and put the kangaroo harvesting industry in the spotlight. And winning has taught her some important lessons on how to market yourself and a project when it is as emotive as this one. It’s about staying on message and choosing carefully what media or methods of communication you use because there have been some “really nasty personal attacks”.

“I thought I was in a position to present a different side of the industry and perhaps promote it in a different light – from a female perspective. I really wasn’t ready for the negatives. I’ve learned to pick and choose where we are going to get the most benefit and where I am going to be able to market myself in a way that is positive.

“What I want to get across is that what we do is sustain and balance the whole environment and landscape. Harvesting is a good thing for the rural landscape. The fact is there is so much more feed, pasture and water than there was hundreds of years ago and something will need to be done with the growing kangaroo populations. There will be issues with that growth and that will lead to measures being put in place. If we can do it in the managed and controlled way we’re proposing as a co-operative then it will be better for the kangaroo and the environment. The flow-on benefits for the community are just that – a flow-on benefit.”

But that’s an important benefit.

Sharyn moved out to southwest Queensland 14 years ago with her husband, and quickly discovered she loved the environment and the lifestyle, firmly believing it’s better to raise her three children “out here”.

“We’re remote and small. We have a population of 300 in the postcode and there are less than 100 people in town. It’s a particular lifestyle and if you participate in it then everyone benefits. I really value what we have out here. I want to make sure for future generations there is something left.

“Saving our rural communities is so important. If we don’t try new things and be innovative in how we approach the issues then it’s quite possible none of the communities will survive. There’ll be no employment opportunities. The land and what you can produce from it will also suffer and in the end everyone will just have to move on.”

It’s why the co-operative’s business of developing a product with such a high degree of sustainability and individuality offers her community unique benefits.

Currently, the co-operative owns storage facilities and buys and sells the field-processed kangaroo product. Taking the next step in the supply chain, opening a processing works, branding and marketing their own prime cuts of kangaroo meat, as well as looking at what they could do with the by-products, is one way to grow and become more profitable.

The achievements so far, have not been “dreamed up overnight”. For five years, notes Sharyn, it’s been about building support and making the model work, providing landowners with alternative views on the kangaroo and what can be done with it and how that can then be built into property management.

According to Sharyn, having the co-operative’s model work, bringing harvesters and growers together and promoting kangaroo harvesting as a sustained and managed industry at a local level, moves the kangaroo from “pest to be eradicated”, because it competes with the needs of landholders’ stock, to potential source of income. In fact, it generates opportunity for the wider community on a multitude of levels, not the least of which includes off-farm employment and the introduction – through growing the business – of its own infrastructure supporting other new business opportunities.

The journey to the RIRDC award has been a “voluntary” one. Once Sharyn arrived with her family, she became secretary of the P&C and from there went to be secretary of the Progress Association which led to being made secretary of the Queensland Macropod Wild Game Harvesters Association, the peak industry body representing the kangaroo harvesting industry. The experience earned in these roles, and the skills and knowledge gained from participating fully at a volunteer level, then led to a position with the Queensland Rural Women’s Network where she did their administrative services. It was a ‘tele’ worked position from home, which tied in well with her remote location and the fact she had young children at home.

Awarded an advanced diploma Rural Business Management through the University of Queensland, which recognized and rewarded the skills and knowledge she had gained in her various roles, Sharyn says, once people discovered what she could do it wasn’t long before she was the first one being asked for community development and business advice. In fact, she is now the Executive Officer of the Booringa Action Group, looking after community and business development, along with carrying out her role as a member of the co-operative.

“The RIRDC award nomination came up and the co-operative was looking at developing its business opportunities. Applying seemed the right thing to do at the time, but, I must admit, I was surprised I was there in the final four nominees. The other three were all of such a high caliber. They seemed to have more confidence in the promotion of themselves and their industry and what they were working on.

“The Queensland runner-up, Jane [Milburn], is giving me lots of advice on dealing with media, marketing yourself, how to deal with government and how to really make some changes at a policy level, dealing with policy advisors and ministers. That sort of learning through the sharing of experiences and the opportunity for networking has provided the greatest return for me in the award process. It really has been the most significant part of winning.”

3 Achievements
My three children: I know that sounds odd but that is it.

3 Passions
Family
Community: making it the best it can be
Fiji