“I’d like to thank ALGA for providing the opportunity for recognition in the form of these industry awards, and to say congratulations and well done to everyone who was nominated. Also a big thanks to the QLD Committee for nominating me. I was in Canada when our QLD chair, Louise Cartwright, emailed me about the nomination. I hadn’t checked my emails much while I was travelling and figured by the time I got back to her they’d have come to their senses, but no, they submitted all the same, and I am most grateful for that.
All in all this is pretty humbling for someone who ended up in this business by accident. When I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Geology from the University of Calgary – more than 30 years ago – there weren’t many jobs around in what I had originally been trained for, which was petroleum exploration. I found myself in California where this shiny, new contaminated land industry was just getting started and they were looking for anyone with an earth sciences degree. And the rest, as they say, is history; interestingly I did end up spending a lot of my career looking for petroleum, just not in the way I had originally thought. So I want to also thank – and perhaps extend my sympathies to –my first boss and my first supervisor: Jean Kulla and Ed Stewart at McLaren Environmental Engineering in California. And to Rod Harwood and Peter Mirkov – thanks for taking the chance on me at Groundwater Technology Australia 23 years ago. And of course, I would never have ended up here at all if I hadn’t met my Australian husband Gavin while we were both working in Hong Kong.
I feel very lucky to have had the opportunities offered here, to have worked on so many different projects, and to have worked with, and learned from, so many amazing people over the past 30-odd years. I have only ever wanted to make a difference- so I guess getting an award from the leading industry body for my contribution to that industry is a fairly compelling line of evidence for that. To me the most important difference I could have made is to the environment and to the people I worked with. So being recognised as someone who simply tried to do what they said they were going to do, to the best of their ability, who strived to be fair and to treat people right, is surely the highest accolade anyone could want. Thanks again.
PS: even though I retired from paid work over 5 years ago, I’ve tried to maintain ties with this industry. Part of that is for social reasons – keeping up with the friends I’ve made and all the goss. But it’s also a continuation of me wanting to make a difference if I can. And since I have all this time on my hands….. It’s been important to me to try and give back to an industry that has given me my livelihood, however accidental, and I’ve done that through my involvement with ALGA – as a member of the QLD Committee, the Board, special interest groups, and through attending and participating in our monthly forums. So I’m here to say that my experience has been that the more you contribute, the more you get in return for that contribution.”