First Person Meet Vanessa Fuchs Senior Media & Content Producer

VANESSA FUCHS

SENIOR MEDIA & CONTENT PRODUCER (SCIENCE)

What are your key responsibilities? I’m responsible for helping people around the world discover the surprising world of plants. I achieve this by developing and delivering creative communication strategies and stories through traditional and digital media channels to engage audiences with the Australian Institute of Botanical Science’s (AIBS) experts, research, and projects. A big part of my role is hosting, producing, and promoting the Institute’s Branch Out podcast and What the Flora!? series on YouTube.

What first got you interested in science communication? It sounds cliché, but it started at a very young age. I spent the first 18 years of my life growing up in a place called Alligator Creek, in North Queensland. I had to google what ‘Alligator Creek’ is classified as and apparently, it’s a ‘rural village’. I always wondered why my German parents chose Alligator Creek over somewhere like Sydney or Melbourne to settle down, but I’m thankful to have grown up amongst nature. As a child I spent a lot of time playing with the home video camera and making nature documentaries to try and be like David Attenborough. This embarrassing material – which resurfaced at my 18th birthday – shows that I’ve always loved nature and storytelling. I decided to study at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, where I completed a Bachelor of Journalism and a Bachelor of Business with a major in Advertising in 2010.

Tell us about your career prior to joining the Gardens? Even before I started my university degrees, I always knew I wanted to use my communication skills to create meaningful and positive change. I have purposefully spent the last 12 years of my career working for not-for-profit and government organisations such as the Royal Children's Hospital Foundation, YWCA Queensland and the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH). In 2016 when I landed the Public Affairs Officer role at OEH, I wanted to build on my communication qualifications and decided to complete a Master of Environmental Science at the University of Sydney. In 2018, the Science Communicator role was advertised at the Gardens and I was so thrilled to land this unique job. Looking back to my days of making nature documentaries with the home video camera at Alligator Creek, I believe every decision I’ve made has led me to this point in my career.

What have been some of the highlights of your work with the Gardens? I’m always banging on about the Branch Out podcast but that’s because it is by far one of my biggest professional highlights and perhaps even personal achievements of mine. I started at the Gardens in March 2018 without any podcast making experience, but I was encouraged to create a podcast and just two months later Branch Out launched. It has gone from strength to strength – winning awards and demonstrating this powerful form of audio storytelling can successfully engage current and new audiences with our plant science and horticulture. It has also allowed me to get to know the Institute’s scientists and interview a range of other experts spanning the chocolate and wine making industry and even neuroscience. The most high-profile person I interviewed for the show was NASA astronaut Dr Gregory Chamitoff, who took seeds from the Australian Botanic Garden Mount Annan to the International Space Station for an experiment.

What’s next? The success of Branch Out and What the Flora!? has primarily been achieved by promoting it through our channels such as social media. Now that Branch Out has a strong foundation of 6,000+ subscribers and a portfolio of 47 episodes (and counting), the goal is to reach new audiences through tactics such as paid advertising on Spotify and other podcasts. What the Flora!? is a little less established so we’re focused on trying to increase our YouTube subscriber base to get more people viewing each episode.

‘As a child I spent a lot of time making nature documentaries like David Attenborough’

When you are not working, what do you like to do? My husband and I love to take our one-and-a-half-year-old daughter to cafés, new parks and playgrounds on the weekend. Watching her learn how to interact with and understand the world around her is a joy unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Travel is real passion of mine and I have travelled extensively − everywhere from Cambodia to Iran and Palestine. We’ve already taken our daughter on about 10 flights, and we try to get up to Queensland to see my parents and sister to go sailing in The Whitsundays as much as possible. I also make time to do the things with just my husband or my friends, such as dining at the multitude of amazing restaurants Sydney has to offer. I also like to go to music gigs, comedy and theatre shows, new art exhibitions and I’m always trying to end the night at a karaoke joint or on a dance floor. Getting outdoors or exercising is also important to me, and I really enjoy Zumba and high-intensity gym classes – I really feel the difference mentally if I don’t train at least three times a week!

Tell us one thing that might surprise people to learn about you. I received a black belt in Kyokushin Karate when I was 18 years old and I couch surfed and travelled Iran for a month during Ramadan.