During the QUT Business Leaders Talk (BLT) on 9 Thursday of August, I got a chance to listen to three alumni from the QUT Business School: Anjuli Steffen (State Manager Queensland Uber Eats), Tim Nelson (Director, TPR Media) and Alison Price (Managing Director, SoilCyclers).
I got really inspired by the diversity of the speaker’s pathways. The three of them went out from QUT with the classic idea of following graduate programs and then integrating one of the “Big 4”.
However, they differed at an early stage and managed to get their company or position following their passion.
Even though the three speakers run different types of businesses: digital media for Tim, food delivery for Anjuli and soil recycling for Alison; they all shared very powerful insights about ‘after degree’ life. They said it isn’t that much about which industry you work in, but who you meet and how committed you are in your project.
“Don’t count your hours but follow your passion”
Anjuli Steffen graduated from QUT with an MBA in 2012 – she now runs UberEats Queensland with a focus on innovation. Starting her professional career at PWC Australia, Anjuli expressed her interest for diverse positions such as consultant, commercial strategy or strategic planning manager and worked in a wide range of domains from finance to logistics. According to her, the most important thing in a job position is the passion. As long as you are passionate about what you are doing, the investment will always worth it to be.
“You never know who you will meet”
Tim Nelson graduated in 2007 with a Bachelor of Business and now leads the digital team at TPRMedia, managing both national and international client campaigns. The best advice Tim could give us is to be always ready for the investor that will make the difference. It was very inspiring to hear the whole story behind his start-up blooming and the importance of networking. Tim implied that you only have a few minutes to convince the person that could make a difference and that you need your speech to be ready at any time.
“Every experience is a step in your final project”
Graduating from QUT in 2003 with a Bachelor of Business, Alison Price became managing director for SoilCyclers in 2009. SoilCyclers is Queensland’s largest mobile soil recycling business and last year oversaw recycling projects on more than 50 sites and processing almost half a million cubic metres of material. Alison advocated that a business is a business, and different industry experiences are relevant when working in construction.
Alison implied that even though her professional career course was not the one she had imagined, she developed skills and knowledge in every single position she got before setting up Soil Cyclers.
I highly recommend students to attend the next Business Leaders’ Talk as every career path is different and you will always find useful advice from those business leaders.
And who knows, you might win the Gold Class Experience like I did and enjoy the talk from the front row with a picnic basket for two 🙂 .
