Thank you for the opportunity to apply for this interesting position. 

What interests me about this position is that it utilises all the skills and significant experiences I have gained from my working life of over 20 years, as well as my extensive volunteer project management skills with my degree in Development Studies, which I achieved with Distinction in Newcastle, whilst simultaneously raising 3 children on the Central Coast, and rolling out a massive corporate project for my part time job in Sydney. During that time I also managed to voluntarily direct a project involving 150+ other volunteers, including children, youth and adults. This demonstrates my ability to plan and balance competing priorities.   

In 2015, using a borrowed laptop that was band-aided together, and a manual car I didn’t know how to drive, I started a consultation company, at the request of my future business partner that saw me travel around Australia consulting with a wide variety of trade companies such as plumbers, electricians, major trucking companies and others to assist them to streamline their administrative procedures by upgrading their use of technology. I worked with companies as small as 4 or 5 people up to companies with up to 500+. By analysing their business processes, negotiating between a range of internal and external stakeholders and understanding their enterprises dynamics and complexes as well as their accounting practices and various internal communication challenges.
I designed the consultation process and taught others also to specialise in identifying and maximising administrative tools and using the relationships between various features in the system to automate and streamline operational duties. I assisted clients, and taught my own employees how to identify and improve communication channels internally and between their customers and suppliers

A recent example of my resilience, courage and integrity, was when, in my capacity as Secretary for Gosford Musical Society, I was in the position to receive a number of very serious allegations against a long term friend and life member of the society. I was required to keep all of the information confidential, protecting the parties affected, but also protect the society from any potential action that could come up in the future either by the complainants or the person the complaints were against. In this situation I verified the complaints, reported the information to other senior members of the Board of Management, and after consultation with our solicitor, police and other relevant agencies, we concluded that there was no choice but to permanently expel this formerly highly valued member. Unfortunately, due to confidentiality, we have never been able to explain why to the society, and it has cost me a lot of friendships, many up to as long as 25 years. In addition to this, immediately after this action was taken, at 2 mins notice, during our Annual General Meeting in 2022 when there were many unhappy members attending, I was asked to run the meeting. This was something I had never done, and had not prepared for, having assumed our Vice President would be taking on that duty. I had to present as calm and composed and listen to concerns and accusations from members, many of whom were twice my age, and I had previously looked up to. 

In addition to my work experience in 2021 and 2022 I was tasked with acting as the Production Manager for Gosford Musical Society’s return to the stage after a 2 year hiatus during Covid. GMS is a 76 year old group with over 400 active members. They stage 3 adult performances per year and 2 Junior productions, with most shows taking about 6 months from conception to after show wrap up duties. In July 2021, the show we had just cast was 42nd Street, which involved a cast of 40 people and another 20 production team members. I was required to  keep the cast, team and GMS community engaged throughout the extended lock down of 2021, communicate and apply vaccination and evolving Covid policies to keep the cast and team safe throughout the return of GMS in 2022 for our first opening night in 2 years. It took a lot of patience and diplomacy to manage so many people during such uncertain times. Traditions needed to be put aside in order to keep the cast, crew, team and audiences safe as Covid was beginning to make its way into the public and reached its peak while we opened. 
I had to liaise with Laycock St Theatre staff and management, which was run by Central Coast Council, to make sure our policies and their policies worked together in practice and manage expectations in terms of ticket sales, as many were still hesitant to be in enclosed spaces, and others were concerned about losing money with last minute cancellations. 
It was an incredible amount of pressure to be under with no existing road map as to how to do it. 
In the end the show went on for all scheduled performances with a full cast, and Gosford Musical Society is now back to running at pre-Covid capacity.