Catwalks and Career Goals

Three months ago, I started my dream role in a company completely aligned with my purpose and passion. It had been a multi-year journey to move into a different part of the Energy Industry and the most recurring feedback I had from friends and industry peers following the move was “congratulations, I know this is what you’ve always wanted”. They were right, moving into New Energy was a goal I had freely communicated and an Operations/Asset leadership role even more so.

But my openness hadn’t always come easily. It was a long time into my career before I felt confident to freely talk about my goals and ambitions to someone who wasn’t either a close friend or mentor. I found this incredibly common amongst my hard-working and impressive female peers, whose fear (or experience) of being judged or brought down meant they kept their ambitions to themselves and often got overlooked when opportunities came up. It is also a widely understood contributor to the challenge in achieving gender balance in leadership roles and inspires books like Rosie Revere Engineer, which reminds kids to listen to their inner voice and not to be afraid to share their dreams.

I recently reflected on the inner voice reminding me to vocalise my goals and it took me back to the summer of 1998, where Ace of Base and Backstreet Boys dominated the radio waves and Titanic and Armageddon filled the cinemas. I was 15 years old and myself and two friends attended the two-week Maybelline Modelling Course, facilitated by one of NZ’s then “it girls”, Lana Cokroft. The tagline was: “Teaching young girls to connect with inner beauty, heighten confidence, motivation and self-worth” and the content involved make-up, catwalks and inspirational speakers. My modelling career was non-existent (coincidentally, I ended up working for the Maybelline brand as a product development engineer in my first job out of university) but it was a talk delivered to us by the gorgeous April Ieremia that has always stuck.

April had been a sports commentator at the 1996 Olympics and was gearing up for the 2000 games. She spoke about how presenting the Olympics to New Zealand had been both a dream and ultimate career goal. To this day, I still vividly remember April sharing her journey from keeping her goal a secret, to building the confidence to openly tell her friends and colleagues what she wanted. She had told us that combined with hard work, credibility and delivering excellence, this had her front and center in everyone’s mind when it came time to pick the team to lead the commentary.

April’s advice has always featured in the back of my mind and I have no doubt that finally being so open about what I wanted was key to landing my current role (I’m not sure you can get more direct than introducing yourself to the co-founder of a company you admire with “Hi, I’m Amelia and in a few years I’m going to be your Operations Manager”). But it takes courage and awareness of the bigger picture to be so bold, particularly for those of us who have had our ambitions criticised or dismissed in the past, resulting in low confidence and self-doubt (my 2020 IWD article gives context to this).

I promise it’s worth it though. Because in busy work environments it’s easy to have opportunities pass you by, either due to incorrect or biased assumptions about what you want, or because you may not feature immediately in someone’s mind. I was incredibly fortunate to have so many people rally and support when it came time to make my next career move, sharing leads, opportunities and connections. And I will endeavour to do the same for those who share their ambitions and dreams unapologetically.

Exciting things happen when you know what you want, identify the people who you feel comfortable sharing this with (professional girlsquad, leaders, mentors) and remember to dream big!