Introducing Robyn Porter — WISENET’s Public Officer
How My Career Just Grew…
…an inspiring story
Robyn Porter is a Consultant with Capital Hill Consulting mainly assisting clients with strategic management issues for their organisation and facilitating large scale R&D proposals. She is currently undertaking a PhD in “Commercialisation and technology transfer in Cooperative Research Centres”.
I’m a consultant in research management and funding, mostly facilitating large-scale R&D proposals. How did I get here? By growing my career organically.
Having studied Chemistry at the Canberra College of Advanced Education, my fi
rst job was as a Technical Assistant at Hawkesbury Agricultural College (now UWS,
Richmond). However, after 18 months in Sydney it was time to move back to
Canberra.
Luckily, a friend was working at the Research School of Biological Sciences at
the Australian National University (ANU) and let me know about a technical
assistant’s job in their Genetics Department. It was a great research job, both
intellectual and practical. I spent four years working on the “purifi cation and
characterisation of the alcohol and aldehyde dehydrogenases of Aspergillus
nidulans” and thoroughly enjoyed myself.
My husband and I then went overseas and started planning a family. When we got
home, through contacts and networking, a short-term position became available at
ANU, as a temporary technical assistant in Botany. The position was only for two
months, but I ended up working there for a year.
I then applied for a research
assistant’s position in protein biochemistry. I was purifying hydrogenase from
Anabaena cylindrica to investigate its hydrogen metabolism. I could see
the potential for a quicker procedure by using HPLC in purifying cyanophycin,
rather than the slow process then in use worldwide. I proved proof of concept
for this procedure and was working on reproducibility, accuracy and precision
when another group published a similar method – isn’t that often the way! And
then I was off on maternity leave.
I enjoyed being at home with our new
daughter and previously thought I would stay at home with any children until
they started school. However, I discovered that being a “stay-at-home” mum was
not part of my make-up. I worked part-time at a second hand bookstore and
decided it was time for me to leave the scientific bench.
My new role was as a Patent Examiner,
which involved an initial six months of training. I had a ball as a patent
examiner – I was reading about inventions at the forefront of research, I was
able to nitpick and had an Act of Parliament to back me up.
After several years, I found that I wasn’t being stretched enough. A colleague told me about a job that was hard work, long hours, but with lots of travel and champagne! It was a temporary transfer and I was the only applicant (word of mouth advertising only). I started on the Monday and by Wednesday I was negotiating my fi rst Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) contract. It was a nice small one – only about $9 million of Commonwealth funding and a total budget of about $43 million. Talk about steep learning curve – but what fun I had. There was a real team approach and everyone enjoyed working together.
You have to love these temporary
appointments – after I’d been there 15 months, (it was a three month transfer) a
couple of permanent positions became available, so I applied and was successful.
The position involved liaison, provision of information and advice on the CRC
Program, negotiating new CRC Agreements, processing amendments, preparation of
briefing materials for expert panels and providing secretariat support to
external panels and the CRC Committee.
After three and a half years I needed
a change – partly motivated by the need to further my career and partly by the
need to change to a less stressful job with minimal travel. My husband had died
after a long illness, leaving me with a 12-year-old and seven-year-old twins.
So I took a sideways move to a policy
position in the Industry Department to the Coal Industry section. It was
interesting work, but I really wasn’t a policy person so returned to the CRC
Program. I later took a temporary transfer to the Higher Education division of
the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST). I was providing DEST
support for the development of the Government response to the Review of Nursing
Education. It confirmed that policy work wasn’t for me! This created a real
dilemma, as progression in the Public Service requires both policy and program
delivery skills.
At the end of the transfer I was once
back again negotiating CRC contracts. So I decided to take the bull by the horns
and tell close colleagues that I was looking for a new position – anywhere in
Australia! A previous manager suggested that I join him in his consulting firm
“facilitating large-scale R&D proposals”. I decided that this was the next step
in my career and left the Public Service after 13 years. At the same time, I
enrolled in a PhD, studying commercialisation best practice in CRCs. My “new”
boss is very supportive of this stage of my career and hopes to see some great
results.
So what advice can I offer to others – take your time over your decisions, but don’t procrastinate. When the opportunity arises think about where you want your career to go. Finally, don’t be afraid to take a chance – it may be the best move you ever make and if it’s not, it’s not the end of the world, there will be other opportunities.
Robyn is the Public Off cer for WISENET and involved with APESMA (the
Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers, Australia) as
the ACT Branch President and on the “National Assembly” as a scientist
representative.