Leaha Riley

How did you kick start your career?

Program and Operations Manager Palladium

I grew up in a small town on the New South Wales mid-north coast and as soon as I finished school, I moved to Sydney. I started looking for an entry-level job to break into the workforce and found a role as a receptionist and accounts receivable clerk before moving up to Brisbane two years later.

In Brisbane I started working as an assistant paralegal for a property conveyancer (who sponsored my study to complete a Diploma in Business Administration & Management) before making the transition into the banking industry, starting in property settlements as a settlements clerk, which led me to assisting in property lending, before landing my first operational role with ANZ Corporate Finance. I was with ANZ for 12 years, taking on more and more responsibility and more operational and project management responsibilities to eventually become a fully-fledged project manager, completing a formal Project Management Professional (PMP) qualification which I was able to ‘fast-track’, given my years of recognised prior learning on the job.

My favourite role with ANZ was as National Operations Manager for the property development finance team. I loved my responsibilities, my team and my manager. Unfortunately, ANZ soon underwent a restructure and I put together a business case for why I should receive a redundancy, which allowed me to have a break.

I had planned to have only a few months off until unfortunately, the COVID pandemic happened, which made finding a new role very difficult. To make matters far worse, my best friend suddenly passed away. Those few months of planned rest turned into an almost 18-month career break for me. That wasn’t what I wanted or intended, but it ended up being a blessing in disguise as I needed that time to process everything that had happened and to properly grieve. When I returned to the job market I wanted to be proud of where I was working and what I was doing, knowing I was making an impact to help others. Losing someone so close to you is a massive life change and makes you reassess absolutely everything!

Eventually I came across an opening for a Business Services Manager at Palladium International (a ‘positive Impact’ international consultancy business that manages programs for the Australian Government, to effect positive change) and saw that it lined up well with my experience and values. The role also included interesting responsibilities such as managing the operations of all the Asia Pacific Offices.

In addition to the Business Services Manager role, I also took on added responsibilities such as Sustainable Business Lead, Travel Director and APAC Communications Lead, alongside the management of the IT and administration staff. After almost two years in this corporate managed role, I was asked to join one of the flagship programs of Palladium, the Humanitarian Logistics Capability, as Project Manager - a new challenge that I welcomed! I am now the Program and Operations Manager for the HLC program, a pivotal, ‘whole program’ role that oversees active response operations, project management and execution, governance, business development, and technical project delivery My role is rewarding, unpredictable, yet highly impactful, and I am now very proud to tell people where I work and what I help to achieve, to help others.

What would you say is your proudest achievement to date?

Although I wasn’t on the front line, being able to support the Australian Government’s response to the Türkiye earthquake disaster has to be one of my proudest achievements to date. That was very much a baptism by fire, as it was the first emergency response that I had played such a big part in.

The Australian Government deployed search and rescue workers from NSW, ACT, and QLD state agencies, as well as three Australian Government liaison officers to Türkiye to help Türkiye’s locally led response and early recovery efforts. This was also strengthened with the deployment of two HLC team members to Türkiye to provide logistical support to Team Australia. Being the logistics and operational contact back in Australia for our deployment team in Türkiye was a very important role to ensure they had sufficient fuel, access to vehicles, and secure communications, like satellite phones. It’s all those little moving parts that need to work together in such an urgent situation. I worked very long hours on that response, at all times of the day and night, and I am very proud of the support the HLC team was able to provide to the Australian Government and the people of Türkiye.

Advice for anyone who wants to enter your profession?

Don’t be afraid of feeling like you don’t know everything. Don’t ever say no to a job or an opportunity because you don’t feel like you’re ready. I think so much of the learning is done on the job, and for me, it’s transferable skills, the ability to connect with and learn from people and the willingness to put in the work which have always opened unexpected and exciting career doors.