I’m a born and bred Territorian. I was born in Katherine and grew up out bush in a town called Borroloola on the lands of the Garawa and Yanyuwa. For context, it’s 10 hours drive south east of Darwin, near the coast. I moved to Darwin when I was about 10, and lived there until I moved to Sydney to study Media, Arts and Production at UTS. My focus was ‘new media’ – which is such a funny term these days – but basically it was websites and animation, with a bit of sound and film thrown in.

I got my first job at a music festival while still at uni, and fell in love with live music, festivals, and the absolute thrill of being behind the scenes of something so exhilarating. I had a few different junior roles at music festivals over a couple of years and then went on to work in marketing for Sydney Writers’ Festival for three seasons.

By then I was also making music myself – I was a singer in a band that played a lot of parties and festivals, which was super fun. I took some time off festivals to make music and lived in Berlin for a few years. I paid the bills by building websites on the side, but eventually returned to Australia to work as Darwin Festival’s marketing manager for a year. I was lured back to Sydney by a role at FBi Radio, which was a dream come true after being a long-time lover of community radio.

While at FBi Radio, I saw a maternity cover position to run MusicNSW advertised and I jumped at the opportunity. It was a seven-month contract but somehow wound up still here over seven years later because I genuinely love the work that I do.

In a basic sense, it’s a whole lot of meetings, emails and phone calls. But really, my job changes a lot depending on what’s on the cards. Some days it’s planning MusicNSW events with my incredible team, budgeting, invoicing and bill reconciliation. Other days it’s meeting with ministers, or strategising with industry colleagues about specific issues, putting in grant applications or developing campaigns. It varies so much – which is part of why I love it – it’s never the same thing week in week out. And I’m constantly learning and surrounded by inspiring, passionate and talented people.

Navigating burnout has been a huge challenge recently, and its subsequent mental health challenges. How do you support an industry when you’re personally struggling, how do you keep things moving when you’re really going through it? It can be hard, and often there is no rest when you need it most. But I’m a huge advocate of therapy – I’ve been seeing a therapist for seven years and it’s the best thing I’ve ever done for myself and my career.

I’m incredibly proud of a few projects I’ve worked on in the last few years. Julia Robinson and I founded I Lost My Gig Australia – we built the website and launched that project in just a few hours and it had a huge impact on how we tracked and understood the ramifications of COVID-19 for our industry.

In 2020-2021 I worked with an amazing group of Sydney venues to help secure $24M in venue funding last year, which meant NSW could retain important live music spaces.

And for the last year or so I’ve been working on the Music Industry Review into sexual harm, sexual harassment and systemic discrimination with some incredible industry colleagues. It’s been a really hard project for a range of reasons, and the report comes out soon, but I hope it’s going to be a real watershed moment for our industry.

Being a young-ish woman in this industry in a leadership position is not always the easiest, but it’s an incredible privilege. I’ve had to learn confidence, and to stop asking for permission, and that even if I didn’t feel like I’d earned my place at the table – that I was there and I shouldn’t waste the opportunity.

But I’ve also had to learn that leadership takes many forms. When I was younger I thought it was about confidence and bravado, and speaking loudly and forcefully to get your point across – then people would take you seriously. But I’ve since learned that leadership can be much gentler, and still be effective. These days for me it’s about listening, inviting others in, and making friends and connections with people, on common ground – no matter who they are. And once you have a connection, you can build trust, and have real talk. And that’s when good things happen.

You can do serious work, but don’t take yourself too seriously. Make time for fun and joy and frivolity.

The biggest threat to artists is how undervalued they are. They’re adored and admired, but also so many are expected to work for less than minimum wage. So few artists are actually paid well – when you go to a gig, the chances of the security guards and bar staff are being paid more than the talent is quite high.

It’s not a simple solve, but there are a few things we can do to start. For example everyone can pay artists more. People can stop asking artists to use their music for free. Governments can celebrate and support local content and help build audience confidence. And this might be a hard one – but no more free live shows! This just trains audiences to expect live music for free.

Sleep. It’s good for health and mental health, making good decisions and being a nicer person. I had insomnia a lot when I was younger, so sleep health is something I’ve had to very consciously practice.

I’m quite strict generally, as I’ve been a work martyr in the past and it’s not healthy or good for anyone and just leads to burnout. I often talk about active self-care as being an important part of caring for your community. If you’re not good, then you’re no good to anyone.

I have rules like no working late, no working on weekends, no taking calls unless absolutely necessary. And try to lead by example for my team. But sometimes in my job, it is necessary – and on those days I’m kind to myself and make sure I also find time for joy and fun and rest.

Chaka Khan – Like Sugar gets me every time.

To be honest, I didn’t really feel inspired during the pandemic. I felt tired and overwhelmed and stressed out – so many people in my community were struggling and I felt a responsibility to do everything I could to help. So it has been a pretty long hard couple of years. But I did think a lot about our health care and frontline workers, and what they were going through, and it helped keep everything in perspective.

I did a lot of things to help me cope with the stress and keep joy in my life – daily walks with my bestie kept me laughing and sane, cooking up batches of rendang and delivering to friends so we could share a meal on Zoom. I started a food Instagram of all the things I was learning to cook like crumpets, chiffon cakes and fermented chilli sauce. I also made lots of playlists of music based around silly categories like ‘child choirs’ and ‘bird chirps’ and my favourite ‘stool creaks’, a playlist of solo piano music where you can hear the creaking of the piano stool in the background. Perfect music for writing grants to!

Gillian Welch at the Enmore was pretty incredible. For her final encore, she made everyone be very very quiet and proceeded to sing acapella, and without a microphone, out to the sea of adoring fans. Just her voice echoing throughout that gorgeous venue – you could hear a pin drop. It was so captivating and eerie – and so intimate (with 2000 other people). Very special.

We Don’t Need Another Hero – Tina Turner.