Big V: From investigating tattoo parlours to CEO of the VCCI — Sally Curtain has done it all
From investigating tattoo parlours and food poisonings to steering a TAFE through Covid, the new VCCI chief executive brings a lifetime of grit, discipline and hard work to one of the state’s toughest jobs.
Being dropped off to school in a police car wasn’t the easiest way to make friends at school for the woman who is now the most powerful advocate for Victorian businesses.
Sally Curtain, chief executive of the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, grew up in Drouin in Gippsland and her father was the local police sergeant and her mother was a carer for five adults.
“It’s not cool that’s for sure, driving to school in the divvy van is not cool,” Curtain says. “It’s not a way to win over the popular kids.”
Despite the schoolyard awkwardness of hopping out of a police car every day to get to the school gates, her father, instilled in Curtain a sense of fairness and hard work.
“I’m from a close-knit family,” Curtain says.
“They are very, very hard workers.
“At night my dad ran a car maintenance business and, on the weekend, he would fell tress and they ran a farm as well.”
But her father’s police work would often interrupt family life.
“We grew up in what we called the brown tissue box, we grew up in the police house next door to the police station,” Curtain says.
“It also meant that when people were signing in and the police station was shut and they would just come next door and I would kind of welcome them in the house.”
The discipline and competitiveness of sport was a key ingredient in Curtain’s regional Victorian upbringing.
“My interest was in playing sport — every sport you could play,” she says.
“My netball coach was Janice Ablett, Gary Ablett’s sister, and on the sidelines encouraging me was gun netballer Jenny Rose, who was also the wife of (Australian boxer) Lionel Rose.
“In year 12 I got a chance to play one game of footy. I would have been a good footy player, because I was a bit of a rough netballer.”
Getting out in nature was another one of Curtain’s ways to make the most of out life in regional Victoria — even if it would seem slightly risky for this generation of children.
“Our grandfather would give us a box of matches and a knife and we would head off to the bush and enjoy our day. We’d have a bucket and knife to go mushrooming, if it was the right season,” Curtain says.
“You just couldn’t imagine that happening today.”
Curtain was the first in her family to attend university, but she wasn’t sure she’d picked the right subject by the end of completing it in 1996. However, it proved to be worth its weight in gold almost 25 years later.
Curtain studied environmental health at Swinburne University but the main focus of her studies was managing pandemics.
“I felt like I had been sold a pup when I finished in 1996 when there were no pandemics, strange enough when I find myself in my first CEO gig — there is one,” Curtain says.
Curtain started as chief executive of the Bendigo Kangan Institute in late October 2019. In just a few months, she would be forced to completely redefine how the TAFE and training provider delivered its courses and supported students due to the Covid pandemic sweeping the world.
“I was very recently into my first CEO gig and the pandemic hits,” she says.
“The (Victorian) government had this need to very quickly train people in cleaning, food handling and some other things and we spun up some courses online and delivered training to tens of thousands of people.
“We had just three days to spin it up, deliver it and help solve some problems for the government.”
Despite having the TAFE’s main office in Broadmeadows, a key hotspot during the early waves of infection, there were no reports of staff or students catching Covid at the institution.
“One of the goals was for none of our staff or students to contract it and we didn’t have any of those so that was great,” Curtain says.
Another critical call Curtain made just before the pandemic proved eerily prophetic in hindsight.
“I’d make this call as I’d arrived because people were using 15-year-old computers and I decided to buy everyone a laptop,” she said.
“The laptops had all arrived about the end of January. The IT people had just configured them all and then lockdown happened and we had just given everyone their devices.
“They had been telling me it would take five years to digitise and we did it in two weeks.”
Curtain’s environmental health degree did lead to some interesting career opportunities before she made it to CEO of the Bendigo Kangan Institute.
Her first professional job was inspecting tattooists and sex work premises across parts of the state.
“I spent every Tuesday for about six months at a tattooist in Geelong learning about all sorts of things to do with tattoos,” Curtain says.
I don’t have a tattoo but at the end of every night (the owner of the parlous) offered me a tattoo and I developed a great appreciation of tattoos.
“People would get their pay and head down to the tattooist at the end of the week. It’s addictive.
“As a 21-year-old going out and doing those things was pretty interesting.”
Curtain also worked on the Springvale pork roll poisonings in 1997.
“1000 people got sick,” she says.
“It’s one of the biggest food poisonings in our lifetimes and I needed to investigate that.
“You take all of the samples, you interview all the people and work with the state government.
“Not long after that there was another pork roll poisonings out of Springvale and I sort of became this expert in investigating port roll poisonings.
“It’s so strange where you find yourself and what you end up doing.”
Curtain was announced as the new VCCI CEO in July, and she started the role in September, when her high-profile predecessor Paul Guerra moved to become the boss of the Melbourne Football Club.
It’s not lost on her that it is an absolutely critical time for the state’s businesses, with many struggling to hold on after the devastating Covid years and a cash-strapped state government that treats them like a cash cow.
“Victoria really is at a critical juncture,” Curtain says.
“It’s certainly an interesting job to come into at this time.
“There’s plenty of challenges in Victoria.
“Business is struggling. Businesses are struggling to make a dollar.”
Curtain lists crime, the cost of doing business in the state and the Allan Government’s work from home laws as key impediments to the economy.
“Businesses are saying pretty clearly that they will invest elsewhere. And that’s the last thing we want,” she said.
Despite most of Curtain’s impressive CV being in senior public sector roles, from local councils to the Depart of Justice and helping to set up the state’s corruption watchdog, Curtain knows exactly what’s required to run a business.
“We have got a family business in building consulting,” she says.
“My husband runs it and we’ve grown that from nothing, over 20 years.
“We certainly understand running a small business.”
And it’s this understanding of just how tough it is to run a small business that fires her passion to advocate on their behalf going into 2026, which includes a state election in November.
Originally published as Big V: From investigating tattoo parlours to CEO of the VCCI — Sally Curtain has done it all
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