The decision to leave home is always characterised by grief, loss and fear.  It is not taken lightly and its aftermath is life-long.  When a boatload of asylum seekers bobs onto the horizon, we are not witnessing the final chapter of a ‘choose your own adventure’ story; we are witnessing the fallout of the worst conflicts and human rights violations on the planet today.

Jessie Taylor is a barrister, refugee advocate and human rights enthusiast.  She is also foster mum to a teenage boy who travelled to Australia alone as a refugee from Afghanistan.
Jessie has honours degrees and Law and Arts from Monash University and a Master of Science (Humanitarian Action) from University College, Dublin.  She is secretary of Liberty Victoria and a former Chair of the Law Institute of Victoria Refugee Law Reform Committee.
Jessie is the author of the report, ‘Behind Australian Doors: Examining the Conditions of Detention of Asylum Seekers in Indonesia’.Gu

Announcements

Sergeants Session 

Despite the Chairman’s best effort to ignore him Michael stood his ground and insisted on another “Would I lie to You “ segment, this time featuring the ever reliable Superintendent Neville Taylor.  Supt Taylor did a superb job in convincing the audience he was totally untruthful about a remarkable piece of policing. The reality was almost all of what he said was the truth – only the place was changed to protect the innocent.

Guest Speaker of the Day: Peter Wilson AM on Mentoring

Peter explained how the term Mentor came about.  It derives from ancient Greek mythology, Mentor was a friend of Odysseus who placed Mentor and Odysseus' foster-brother Eumaeus in charge of his son Telemachus, and of Odysseus' palace, when Odysseus left for the Trojan War. 

The term mentor is often confused with being a coach.  Mentoring is about the long term development of the mentee, coaching is a short term targeted intervention to develop a specific skill/s. Depending on who you talk to mentoring has three underlying principals; Socratean – the wise elder, Quasi Parental – a more direct interest in the mentee or Spiritual – built on shared values.  

In researching for his book, “Make Mentoring Work”, Peter explored the meaning of mentoring by interviewing 90 notable Australians in many leadership roles and looked at 20 mentoring programs including the Victoria Police Leaders Mentoring Program.  
Among the interviewee were John Eales, Michael Kirby, Bob Hawke, Mary Robinson, etc all of whom had their own take on mentoring but who all valued mentoring highly not withstanding the wide variety of careers and styles.  Many have had many mentors and continue to seek out people who can help them.

Peter also talked about the importance of talking about failure in a mentoring relationship, much can be learned from failure and how it is managed, Dr Fiona Woods talking about losing a patient and John Bertrand talking about sinking Australia 11 after 47 seconds were quoted as examples.  Peter finished with a neat summary of the elements of mentoring and the attributes of good mentors and mentees.

 

 

 

A District 9800 Rotary Global Scholar for 2014, Michelle Heard, 27, is mesmerised by the Australian accent. “Maybe this will wear off, but your accent makes everything you say sound so much more interesting,” she says after our club meeting last week.

 Michelle, from Houston, Texas, decided last year to go back to studies, after four years with KPMG there. Her clients included, of course, the oil and gas industries.

She was sponsored by RC Houston Skyline, District 5890.

Her long term goal is to work ‘making a difference’ using her business skills at an international humanitarian organisation such as Amnesty International.

 Rather than choosing a US university, she thought it would be good to study in a different culture. This led her to enrol at Melbourne University for a two-year Executive Master of Arts.

The university tuition fees for the two years are $58,000, and she was thrilled to hear about our Global Scholar programme from a Houston friend at a dinner. This will provide $30,000 towards the fees and she also won a Melbourne University scholarship for a further $10,000.

The shortfall, which also involves her entire cost of living here, will drive her to part-time work here hopefully with KPMG but at worst, waitressing.

She’s currently flat-sharing short-term at South Melbourne and is hunting around for any shared accommodation. “The cost of living here – food, rent, transport, entertainment - is much higher than Houston, even allowing for the stronger US dollar,” she says. “In Houston some girlfriends and I would share a weekly bottle of nice inexpensive wine and it was always a Jacob’s Creek for $US6. In Melbourne the same bottle costs $15. That’s weird.”

Half of her Executive MA course covers the humanities with an orientation towards human rights and international conflict resolution.   

She already has an M.Sc. in Accounting from Texas A&M University and she was in the top 10 for Texas in CPA exam results.

She is looking forward to the slightly more laid-back Australian lifestyle. At KPMG Houston, work in the peak season on multinational tax issues was 65-70 hours a week and other times, close to 50 hours. “You become good friends with your co-workers because there’s little time for other life,” she jokes.

But a top-tier accounting/consulting firm like KPMG gives marvellous training. “I was put into leadership roles when quite young and had to work out how to manage a team very quickly.  You can’t learn these sorts of management roles in a classroom.”

Early last year she spent three months working for KPMG in Hamburg, Germany on international tax. She came back with successful suggestions for KPMG Houston on how to improve its systems. Her boss wrote that Michelle had “made a tremendous impact” on the firm.

 Her older brother Falkner 29 is a firefighter in Alabama and her sister Megan, 23, is at university doing a Master’s in Aerospace Engineering, with a goal to work for NASA.

Houston is a sunny city and Michelle was an outdoor hobbyist, hiking the trails. She’s looking forward to exploring Victoria.