Career Stories

“On average, people have three to five careers in their life. And I’m certainly one of those people.” What does HR actually do, and why does it matter so much in organisations that change lives? Mandy Cann is General Manager of Partnering and Employee Relations at Mission Australia. She leads HR partnering, employee relations, remuneration and organisational design for a national charity of around...

"You make your luck, take some risks, have a go." Did you know what you wanted to be when you left school? Most of us didn't, and plenty of the most interesting careers are ones nobody ever told us existed. Procurement is one of them. It's the work behind the poles, wires and contracts that keep the lights on, yet almost nobody grows up dreaming of doing it. In this episode, Dr Luella Forbes recon...

"It's about being famous for your ideas and for your contribution." Ever felt like you're doing great work but nobody's noticing? Or that people only see you as "the IT person" or "the change person" when you know you can do so much more? You're not alone, and the good news is you don't have to wait for someone to tap you on the shoulder. In this bonus episode, Luella sits down with Leanne Hughes...

What does privilege in the workplace really look like? In this September Career Advice episode, Dr Luella Forbes and Associate Professor Michelle Gander unpack networks, money, time and access, why privilege is so hard to talk about, what you can do with it whether you have a lot of it or a little, and why comparing yourself to others rarely tells the full story. Ever scroll past someone who seems...

How do you get noticed at work without waiting for luck? Speaker and author Leanne Hughes shares the mindset behind her new book, Work Fame, and the career that took her from Wicked Campers to running her own consulting business. Everyone tells you their big break was luck. It wasn't. It was a habit of showing up with your head up instead of your AirPods in. This week Luella sits down with thought...

Most people think corporate affairs means writing press releases. Sally Richardson's version of the job means coordinating with state governments during a live incident, running on what she calls the "no surprises doctrine," and keeping 3,500+ staff aligned when a transport network is in the headlines. Her path there wasn't linear. A commercial lawyer who moved to New York for what was meant to be...

In this episode, Dr Luella Forbes talks to Angela Bliss, Head of Behavioural Science at NAB, about a career that's moved through art history, gallery direction, web design and freelance consulting before landing in a discipline built on one idea: it's easier to change someone's environment than to change their behaviour. They cover why personality predicts behaviour better than demographics, the v...

"On their worst day, the shadow kind of looms over everybody and stops them being able to do what they need to." Ever walked into a meeting already flat, distracted, or just not yourself - and wondered afterwards why the room felt off? Turns out your team feels it too. And there's a name for it. In this month's Career Advice episode, Dr Luella Forbes and Associate Professor Michelle Gander unpack...

"I think what I'm most proud of is the relationships that I've built along the way." -  Janette O'Neill She built a global sustainability function from the ground up, led people and culture transformation across Australia, the UK and Ireland, and was named interim Chief HR Officer for North America right as Covid upended everything about the role. Thirty years in, people still ask her the same que...

"Resilience is not that we don't have setbacks. Resilience is about coming back and showing up every day in spite of all the challenges that we have." She arrived in Australia with a husband, a master's degree, and no career plan of her own. Within two decades she was running one of Western Australia's largest Aboriginal community-controlled organisations - pulling it back from massive debt, then...

"Trust is very hard to build up, and it takes a long time - but it can be destroyed overnight." - Ron Christianson Most of us think of a crisis as something that happens to other people's companies. Then the media is outside the CEO's apartment, ringing the bell, and someone has to decide what gets said in the next five minutes. That someone, for years, was Ron Christianson - and this week he tell...

"The bits that will never go away are the human interactions that go with it." - Dr Luella Forbes Everyone wants a straight answer on whether AI is coming for their job. Dr Luella Forbes didn't have one either - not until she'd spent a month talking to three different people who do. What she took away instead is sharper - it's not AI taking anyone's job right now, it's the excuse it gives leaders...

"I don't think anyone's job is going away." - Matt Dunn Everyone wants a straight answer on whether AI is coming for their job. Matt Dunn doesn't give one - because there isn't one. What he gives instead is sharper: the people who get replaced won't be replaced by AI, they'll be replaced by colleagues who learned to use it first. In this bonus episode, Dr Luella Forbes sits down with AI expert Mat...

"AI is like the smartest grad who's never left the library. They've got no life experience... you need to check what they're doing, particularly if you're going to put your name to it."  Bethan Winn Bethan Winn is a critical thinking specialist, speaker and author of The Human Edge: Critical Thinking in the Age of AI, and through her business Human Skills Co she helps organisations figure out wher...

"Your gut is normally right, but you should back it up with some research as well." - Matt Dunn New AI tool, same old anxiety: am I using this properly, or badly, or barely at all?  Matt Dunn has spent the past decade in the middle of exactly that problem. He started thinking seriously about automation more than ten years ago and has since moved into AI, now leading AI Programs at Quantum, an IT c...

"Ultimately, humans are always going to be accountable - you can't put that on AI." - Mythili Baker Every few weeks, the AI conversation resets again - a new model, a new headline, a new reason to wonder whether the skills you've built still count. For people working inside large, regulated organisations, the question isn't abstract: it's showing up in budgets, headcount, and what "good work" even...

What does the FIFA World Cup tell us about leadership communication? And what kind of career do you actually have? In this June advice episode, Dr Luella Forbes and Associate Professor Michelle Gander explore how organisations communicate difficult news, how careers have changed, and why real employee engagement is much rarer than most organisations realise. In this episode: What two different Wor...

This week's guest is Simon Johnson, Senior Director of Customer Success for Asia Pacific and Japan at DocuSign. Simon leads a team of around 35 people across the region, but his career did not start with a clear plan. He missed the marks for the degree he wanted, fell into tech almost by accident, and built his way up through Macquarie Bank, JP Morgan, MYOB, EMC, Google and Okta. In this episode:...

This week's guest is Claudine Besserer, a global brand strategy leader who spent 32 years at Mars. She rose from a 21-year-old sensory analysis technician, training factory workers to taste-test chocolate and ice cream, to leading global brand strategy for Royal Canin, a brand she helped grow to 6.5 billion euros. Claudine built her career by repeatedly creating roles that did not exist and moving...

This week's guest is Anita Owen, Chief Delivery Officer at Novigi, a 550-person tech and data firm serving Australia's superannuation industry. Anita leads a team of 350, but her path to the C-suite started in data entry at a life insurance company after she dropped out of university and travelled the world. Her career has been built on curiosity, putting her hand up, and asking questions when oth...

In this month's Career Advice episode, Dr Luella Forbes and Associate Professor Michelle Gander reflect on May's guest conversations with Fadzi Whande, Charity Becker and Annette Brodie, and find a common thread: each of them took a long, non-linear path to land in the work she does now. Luella also opens up about her own delayed reaction, post-doctorate and post-redundancy. The doctorate is done,...

This week's guest is Annette Brodie, founder and CEO of The Reconnect Project, a Sydney-based social enterprise and charity on a mission to close Australia's digital divide. Annette spent more than two decades in the not-for-profit sector across Australia and the UK, with a career that moved from retail communications and waste avoidance to running her own organisation from the ground up. In this...

This week's guest is Charity Becker, an organisational coach based in Melbourne with 20 years of experience spanning coaching, coaching supervision, and coach training. After an unconventional path through hospitality, nannying and psychotherapy, Charity was drawn into the world of coaching while managing an executive coaching panel at a major bank, fell in love with it, and has since built a port...

This week's guest is: Creators & Guests Dr Luella Forbes - Host More detailed show notes with links to information discussed by guests can be found here. New epiosodes on a Wednesday, with interviews with leaders or experts every week and a monthly discussion on what we've heard in the last week of the month. We'd love to hear from you.  Share your thoughts on recent episodes or questions you...

Creators & Guests Dr Luella Forbes - Host Dinda Timperon - Guest In this bonus episode of Career Stories, Dr Luella Forbes is joined by Dinda Timperon — Head of Cybersecurity Engineering at a major Australian wealth management organisation, RAAF veteran, and founder of Perth Women's Circle, a community of over 10,000 women focused on professional growth and development. Having experienced burn...