Day my life changed: Marni Cook on how the work world has changed
She’s one of Australia’s leading execs but Marni Cook admits that when she first welcomed her son, part-time wasn’t on offer. But she soon managed to become the country’s first remote worker.
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Leadership development and executive education consultant Marni Cook’s career has been anything but linear. Here, she shares how braving the entrepreneurial rollercoaster led to opportunities and growth.
I was working in retail when my first child, Tom, was born in 2001. My plan was to take up to two years off but my former husband decided to go back to study, which meant I was going back to work, pronto. Meeting with my employer, Country Road, I found out I could only work part time for the first four weeks. There wasn’t quite the flexibility we enjoy today, so I was facing being a full-time working mother.
I cried, went home and thought, ‘How is this life going to work? I have this beautiful baby boy, but this wasn’t really the plan.’ Out of the blue, on the very same day, the phone rang. It was TAFE and they were looking for a retail and marketing lecturer, and they’d come across me by word of mouth.
I was able to do that on a really flexible basis, which kicked off my career in education and, while working, I studied adult education.
I was there for five or six years, during which time I had my daughter, Olivia, and I was very happy. Then my husband took a role in Melbourne and we had to move.
I was petrified because I felt I was leaving the best job in the world. I found myself working for Monash University as program director of the Australian Centre for Retail Studies creating and delivering training programs for executives, buyers and planners.
Mainly, I was working with stores specialising in fashion. It took me back to my roots and I loved it.
When we decided to return the family to Adelaide, I gave my notice and they said, “It doesn’t really matter where you live. You’re travelling for work anyway.”
I was probably one of Australia’s first remote workers, certainly in terms of working for a university. As the kids got older it made the travel side of the job easier but in some ways more difficult. Back in those days, if a sick child needed to be picked up from school, their father would be asked, “What’s your wife doing?”. It was tricky.
In 2015 I landed a role at The University of Adelaide as an industry professor and program director. I was responsible for the wine business program, so I quickly had to learn the world and language of wine. The job took me overseas several times a year, to the other great wine capitals and also to China.
There came a point where, after working seven days a week for five years, I looked at that suitcase at the end of the bed and I thought, “Make it stop. Make the travel stop.”
Not that I didn’t love the work, the people I met and the places … but it made sense to focus on my consultancy business because I could do that quite flexibly.
It was around the time we started learning of covid but that was something happening somewhere else in the world.
Within a month or so, covid was here. Lo and behold, be careful what you wish for, because the travel did indeed stop, not just for me, but for everybody.
It was challenging because I’d elected to reboot my consulting business, and that simply wasn’t going to happen during covid.
But I had been appointed chair of a number of boards, including McLaren Vale Grape Wine and Tourism Association, and on the day of our first meeting with an entirely new board, the Adelaide Hills were on fire; so our first job became helping our neighbours.
And what a horrific time the following years were for the wine community and so many businesses.
It was heartbreaking but we were able to really make a difference and it changed the way I look at things.
I’d had quite a lucrative career up until that point, but this mattered so much more.
I was able to sit on various government committees and think tanks to help.
Then someone told me a job had come up to run the (state government’s) South Australian Leadership Academy.
Who knew there was one? I certainly didn’t.
I thought, “Well, that’s a job worth doing. I can take my other hats off for a little while.”
We were responsible for inducting and educating the executives and leaders, right throughout government, who are responsible for more than 110,000 employees in the state.
It was quite an honour to have that role and six months turned into two years. After that I took on what looked like a perfect position but, turns out, it wasn’t for me …
So now here I am at another turning point wondering, where I will go next?
I have no doubt the time I spent at Country Road gave me credibility when I started having retail clients, because I walked the talk.
Lots of consultants give consulting a bad name, and often that’s because they don’t have the proper industry experience.
The same can be said of some academia, because they haven’t had lived experience.
Having industry experience, an academic background, government … it’s a nice combo to be able to offer in my next role, whatever that might be.
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