SOLL Staff Series: an interview with Katie Possingham

Katie is the new Administrative Assistant at the School of Languages and Linguistics. She is an exceptional administrator with considerable experience in a range of administration support and events coordination roles.

Niles interviewed Katie about her work at SOLL and the amazing happenings in her life.

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Could you tell us a little bit about your work here at SOLL?

I look after the SOLL inbox, our stationery and kitchen resources, anything building-related. When things are broken, I help follow those things up with the university. I also write the fortnightly SOLL Newsletter.

So, what is a typical day like for you?

Typically, I spend the first part of my day looking at emails, forwarding any emails to various people if they need them, responding to enquiries. Then there’s often a meeting or two to discuss various projects. For example, I helped with the Open Day. I couldn’t be there on the day, so I helped beforehand. I usually reserve some time in the afternoon for some projects that I’m working on. I’ve been trying to do an audit of the building. A lot of people will see me going in and out of their offices and writing down numbers on a spreadsheet, trying to put a whole bunch of things together. With a lot of people working from home for the last couple of years and me being new, it’s a good chance to start fresh and get things organized. Also, I’m organising the R U OK Day workshop, and I’m having a look at our on-boarding process to try and streamline that as well.

Could you tell us more about R U OK Day?

R U OK is an organization that started thirty years ago, and it’s focused on raising mental health awareness to reduce rates of suicide. People may get to the point where they need to seek professional health, but R U OK Day’s essential premise is that anyone is able to ask someone else if they are okay. A really simple conversation can save someone’s life. It’s not just about paying attention on one day, but that one day is a good opportunity to raise awareness and have morning tea and learn some skills, and then take those skills and that awareness to use it for the rest of the year.

(The R U OK workshop slides can be found here.)

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Where did you work before?

My professional life has mainly been working for Girl Guides Victoria, which is a not-for-profit organization that focuses on non-formal education for girls and young women. I was the events coordinator for the last four years.

What made you decide to work here?

Girl Guides is quite a small organization, professionally. I was keen to move somewhere else so I could expand my skills and learn something different. The University has a lot of opportunities for someone who’s looking for a professional career which is excellent. It also seems like a very supportive organization in terms of professional development.

Did you undertake any exciting or interesting tasks in the past two months?

Probably one of the things that I’m most proud of is that when I started here, our newsletter was a Word document that was turned into a PDF. I had previous experience using Mailchimp from my last job, which is an excellent bulk mail service for putting together advertising campaigns and newsletters. So, I transferred our newsletter over to Mailchimp, which not only looks nice, but it’s easier to read. It also allows great back-end functionality. You know who’s reading it, what people are actually clicking on and how many people… it hasn’t happened yet, but if they unsubscribe, we can see that, too! It’s going to be able to make the newsletter a more useful and more effective communication tool.

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So how about your spare time?

I probably do two main things in my spare time. First, I still volunteer with Girl Guides Victoria. I am a volunteer Girl Guide Leader and I spend every Friday night hanging out with fantastic young people. Sometimes on weekends we go camping. On other days of the week, I’m in a play at the moment. I’m involved in Waterdale, which is a community theatre organization. We’re putting on ‘As You Like It’, which is a pastoral Shakespeare comedy. It’s a lot of fun.

You’ve mentioned Girl Guides several times. What do they do exactly?

A lot of people are familiar with the Scouts. Girl Guides are a very similar organization. They are the largest female-only organization for young people in the world. There are Girl Guides in 150 countries across the globe. On a week-to-week basis, we have a girl-led program, which tends to focus on what the girls themselves are interested in. But generally, our activities focus on leadership, community service, advocacy and life skills. They typically really like cooking, but also doing challenges together, building things, creating things. The group of girls that I work with are all very imaginative.

Do you have anything else that you’d like to share with our readers?

I really enjoy working at SOLL. I really enjoy walking down the corridor and hearing people speak lots of different languages. I can only speak English really, but I have spent some time before living overseas, and I love travelling. It’s nice that every day I work, it feels like I’m travelling because we’ve got French tutors down the corridor, and then upstairs, people are speaking Spanish. My officemate also often speaks Spanish. So that’s something that I’ve really enjoyed.

Thank you very much.

No worries.