Finance executive Michelle Japp shares her unimaginable loss
Business executive Michelle Japp was excited about her pregnancy as were her colleagues, and a hospital check-up was so routine that she was dressed for work. Then her world unravelled.
“Never Let Me Go” is a powerful ballad sung by English indie rock band Florence and the Machine, from their second studio album, Ceremonials.
To Michelle Japp, the now director of finance with Menulog in Australia, it is the song which reminds her of the tragedy of Friday, August 10, 2018 – the 24 hours of hell she now refers to as “Day Zero”.
On that day she and husband Craig brought into the world their tiny, beautiful boy named Oscar, who was stillborn at 37 weeks into her pregnancy.
He arrived as they listened through tears to the song, the title of which is engraved on Oscar’s memorial plaque.
Michelle says she uses the words “Day Zero” to describe the most difficult day of her life because she has since seen it as “before and after Oscar”.
“Because of the feelings and the emotions that I went through in the immediate aftermath, if you like, Day Zero was the day that life got turned upside down and at that point we looked at how we moved forward from it,” she says.
“Quite early on after it happened, I knew that losing Oscar wasn’t going to be in vain, and I was always going to try to make a difference.”
At the time she had worked for eight years with the listed shopping centre manager Stockland, and been promoted twice while pregnant.
Michelle and Craig had been on a long fertility journey with Oscar and his older brother, Leo. Leo and Oscar were conceived through IVF after the couple lost twins at eight weeks and then endured six embryo transfers.
Michelle never felt angry about losing Oscar, but rather an “irrational guilt” about the months leading up to his passing.
“We still don’t know what happened to Oscar, and that is the case in most stillbirths, so you can only look at – ‘Could I have done anything differently’?” she reflects.
“I don’t think so. I did look after myself. I did have gestational diabetes for Oscar’s pregnancy but I managed that really well. But that, in hindsight, was probably an indicator of what could have happened.
“That is a learning because I don’t think that was made really clear to me at the time.
“I think the only ‘why me?’ that came into it was because of the fertility journey that we went through. It was kind of ‘surely we have got this far. How has this now happened’?”
After leaving Stockland in 2019, Michelle spent four years at Woolworths as the general manager of finance and late last year joined Menulog – the Australasian arm of one of the world’s largest online takeaway food platforms, the London-based JustEat Takeaway.
As the company’s director of finance, her leadership style has been profoundly shaped by her personal experience.
At Menulog she is already showing that finance leadership is not just about the numbers, but rather about balancing performance with purpose as she helps steer the firm through a tough and highly competitive marketplace, while staying focused on community impact.
Few in business ever have the courage to talk about such a deeply personal, tumultuous and life-changing event. But Michelle says she does it for a higher purpose.
“If you look at the stats on stillbirths in this country, they haven’t changed in about 30 years. So I think it is important that we do talk about it, even just the terminology and just making people aware. So if I can make a small difference, that is important,” she says.
Over the past six years she has often taken time to reassess how she approaches leadership, now ensuring resilience, purpose and values are at the heart of every decision she makes.
“My particular situation is just a reminder that everyone is going through something. What happened to me was so visible because it had to be. I didn’t have a choice about sharing it,” she says.
“But the lesson is to remember when in business, in life and in everything that we do, people are people. People aren’t going to perform the same way every day.
“So the more personable you can be, the more empathetic you can be, the more you actually take the chance to understand people, the better you can be at what you do.”
Four words no mother should hear
Being the general manager of finance at Stockland in 2018, Michelle muses that she was the most senior pregnant member of staff at the time. Her upcoming birth was big news.
Days before her regularly scheduled hospital check-up at the Royal Hospital for Women in the Sydney suburb of Randwick, she had attended a meeting of the board’s audit committee.
The morning of her visit to hospital she was dressed for work. But she never got there.
After being quickly surrounded by midwives, doctors and specialists as the nurse performed what was supposed to be a routine scan, she made a panicked call to her husband, who was at home looking after Leo.
They were soon both by her side when the doctors delivered the most distressing news imaginable in blunt terms: “Your baby has died.”
She says Craig almost collapsed on the bed, but their biggest immediate concern was for Leo who even at three-and-a-half years old instantly knew something was wrong.
They had spent so much time building him up to believe he was going to be an amazing big brother. Suddenly it wasn’t to be. The second baby seat they had strapped into their car would stay empty.
“I remember the impact on Leo in that moment, and the impact on Craig,” Michelle says.
But the greatest trauma was yet to come: Giving birth to Oscar.
Social workers warned Michelle and Craig that one of the hardest things would be dealing with the deafening silence that would follow his delivery.
When the moment eventually came, Michelle now describes it – she acknowledges it sounds odd to say it – as “a really beautiful labour”. It was just her, Craig and a midwife in the room.
With Michelle and Craig’s families in the United Kingdom – they both came to Australia from England – next came the “horrendous” phone call to their parents, who were all expecting a message any day to announce a happy arrival. Instead they were left in shock.
They were in all in Sydney by the side of their son and daughter within three days.
At the hospital, Oscar was taken to a special space known as “The Butterfly Room”, where his parents could visit him over the coming days. They took photos that are now deeply cherished.
“If I look at myself from the outside now looking in, and I’m really sorry to be so direct but this was the reality of our life at the time, I was sitting there reading a book to our dead baby,” she says.
“It doesn’t make any sense, right? It just doesn’t.
“But you are in it and you are living it, and you do things that kind of do not make sense. Then before you know it, you are arranging a funeral. You have to just go with it. You do not have a choice.”
Michelle returned to work at Stockland after 13 weeks and never considered quitting.
She will be forever thankful of the company’s support. The chief executive and chief financial officer both attended Oscar’s funeral.
The week before she returned to the office, she sent an email to her team acknowledging what had happened and gave them permission to talk about Oscar. It helped staff throughout the business to talk openly with her about what had happened.
A year later, Michelle and Craig’s youngest son, Max, was born. It marked the start of a new part of her life and gave her the confidence to leave Stockland after 10 years of service to join Woolworths.
Michelle has since become a director of the Stillbirth Foundation Australia and in 2019 contributed to an article on stillbirth company policies by the networking group, Business Chicks Australia.
At Woolworths and Menulog she seen first hand the devastating experiences shared by one in six families every day in Australia.
“I only had a team of about 30 people at Woolworths and one of the girls in my team went through exactly the same situation as me,” she says.
“At Menulog, there is an incredible guy in our team who went through a similar situation this time last year. So I’ve obviously formed quite a deep connection with him because I understand what he’s going through.”
Openness helps the healing
When Michelle took the job at Menulog she was quick to share her story with managing director Morten Belling. The Danish-born Belling and his wife, Lea, have three girls named Laura, Rosa and Victoria.
“I think it was hard for him. He’s a family man, so it resonated with him,” she says.
“But it is an important part of my story, and how I’ve grown over time, especially my perspective on things. So I think he would probably see that come through in my leadership.”
Michelle has always been big on understanding the businesses she works for from the ground up, so she has been making deliveries for Menulog to see first-hand what the company’s drivers experience.
At Woolworths she also used to work regularly at the check-outs in stores.
She believes great financial leadership comes from knowing every part of the business and ensuring decisions benefit both employees and customers.
“I think I’m probably quite a non traditional finance person generally. I guess that’s my
personality, to some extent. But you cannot be a good finance person if you don’t truly and deeply understand the business. You just cannot do it,” she says.
Her active personality extends outside work into her sporting life, where she has spent the past 19 years playing for Sydney soccer team Coogee United and is currently training for her first half marathon.
Menulog was founded in Australia in 2006 before in 2014 being sold to JustEat for $855m. It is the only locally created platform in the Australian online takeaway food market.
Michelle and Morten Belling are now leading a shift back to Menulog’s roots, focusing on what really matters to customers, local communities, and restaurants.
“I think the reason we do so well in regional areas is partly because of our logistics network,” Michelle says. “We’ve been there a long time and we just offer fantastic service in all of those areas. But I also find that in the regional areas, people understand us more and understand that we are Australian-born.”
Menulog continues to expand into the on-demand grocery and convenience store delivery sector, while growing alcohol deliveries is a key focus.
The firm made headlines in 2021 when it brought to the Australian market JustEat’s global collaboration with US pop star Katy Perry in a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign. The Perry tie-up followed a similar campaign two years earlier with American rapper Snoop Dogg.
“Watch this space over the next couple of months for what is coming next. I am super excited about it,” Michelle says of the next ad blitz.
She will be forever grateful for the support of her husband through the most trying moments of their lives.
“I had not really needed support in life. I don’t mean that in an overly confident way, but life before what happened went pretty smoothly. Suddenly I needed to be protected like never before,” she says.
“So I think watching Craig go through that journey and his amazing strength was just incredible. I love him even more than I did before.”
The couple still count their blessings every day for the arrival of Max.
“It is a confusing thought sometimes, because as much as I would love to imagine life with Oscar here, I now can’t imagine life without Max. He would not be here if we did not lose Osca,” she says.
Oscar’s funeral was held on August 17, 2018, where he was surrounded by family and friends from the tapestry of the Japps’ life, including from work, football, cycling, a mother’s group, and even the midwives from the Royal Hospital for Women.
At the service Michelle and Craig chose to play a beautiful song for their son by soft-edged British band The xx called “Brave for You”.
The lyrics include the line: When I’m scared, I imagine you are there telling me to be brave. So I will be brave for you.
“It talks about standing on a pedestal for you. That’s one of the lines. So it is always taking the memory of Oscar forward. It is not leaving him behind, it is taking him forward and then using him for good, if you like,” Michelle says.
As our conversation draws to a close, she draws my attention to a silver necklace draped around her neck. In the middle is a simple pendant shaped in the form of the letter “O”.
“I have lots of reminders of him, but one of the most important is this beautiful necklace. It has got Oscar’s ashes in it,” she says softly.
“So if I am having a tough moment or a tough day, I do kind of go back to him and what happened and reflect upon how we have grown from there. And the strength I get from it.”
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