Sherrie Killiby inspires her colleagues with her fancy dress-ups for work meetings

Knowing how tough it has been for everyone to work from home during lockdown, one Sydney worker went to the extremes to cheer up her colleagues.

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It began as an idea to cheer up staff working from home and ended with 84 fancy dress costumes worn in 84 days to more than 800 online meetings.

Senior Transport for NSW manager Sherrie Killiby’s dedication to dressing up for virtual catch-ups to help boost morale, ranged from a red top hat at the start of COVID-19 lockdown to the Karate Kid, Star Wars’ Princess Leia and blonde ABBA bombshell, Agnetha.

“As the weeks wore on — and of course they wore on and on and on — my ideas got more extravagant and it went into props and backgrounds,” the Digital Customer Info Service dir­ector said.

Where’s Wally made an appearance.

As did Princess Leia.

“People started to expect it and give me fabulous feedback and I could see what it was doing with the team as well. I could see that they were embracing the opportunity to kind of laugh and have a chat.”

Ms Killiby had two rules: she couldn’t buy new outfits — the clothing must be borrowed or found within her home, with the mum-of-two often raiding her sons’ costume boxes. Second, she had to wear the fancy dress to every ­single meeting “no matter what”.

Harry Potter dropped in. .

As did Cleopatra.

“It didn’t matter who I met with, whether they were internal or external, whether they were in my team, or if I’d never met them before,” she said.

“I had over 800 meetings in the period that I did the dress up and I met with the most senior executives at Transport — individually or in groups.”

The Karate Kid attended a meeting.

Let’s not forget Abba.

This included dressing as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz during a funding pitch to Transport for NSW boss Rodd Staples. With weeks spent planning and preparing her different looks, Ms Killiby said her Cleopatra outfit, on day 50, was her most extravagant.

She ended the “completely off the chart” exercise a few weeks ago after Transport for NSW started pilot­ing a return to work program. And her final costume: Porky Pig, known for his catchphrase “That’s All Folks”.

Originally published as Sherrie Killiby inspires her colleagues with her fancy dress-ups for work meetings