Brittany Higgins returns to workforce at same PR firm as husband
After years of legal action and advocacy, the former media adviser cited a desire to ‘get on the tools and be a working person again’.
Former political staffer Brittany Higgins has taken on a role at the same public relations firm as her husband, citing a desire to use her media skills and “reclaim that sense of identity”.
Ms Higgins’s new position as director of public affairs at Third Hemisphere marks her first major role after alleging in 2021 that she was raped in the office of Senator Linda Reynolds while working as a media adviser.
The Federal Court last year found on the balance of probabilities that former political staffer Bruce Lehrmann raped Ms Higgins in Parliament House in 2019.
“To feel sidelined and forever be living in your trauma is really reductive,” Ms Higgins told the Australian Financial Review. “There was this general feeling of ‘how long do I have to be the story for? At what point do I get to put it to rest and actually get on the tools and be a working person again, and have my own identity outside this narrative of Brittany Higgins,’” she told the masthead.
Before her work at parliament, Ms Higgins held an internship as media adviser for an environmental consultancy and a job as a radio news reporter on the Gold Coast. She has since taken on temporary roles as media adviser for the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria and the Queensland Human Rights Commission.
Ms Higgins’s husband David Sharaz started as a director at the PR firm in March this year. Third Hemisphere cited Ms Higgins’s and Mr Sharaz’s experience in crisis communications and media relations as relevant skills to their roles.
Third Hemisphere managing director Jeremy Liddle told the AFR: “Brittany brings unparalleled expertise in stakeholder engagement, crisis communications, navigating complex legal situations, and strategic advocacy.”
Ms Higgins said she was joining “a team that I fundamentally believe in and which believes in the same things that I do”, led by chief executive Hannah Moreno, a rape and domestic violence survivor herself.
“Who I was was really founded in my work. I was the most intense person back in the day – the first one in and the last one out – I had no work-life balance, and it was exactly how I liked it,” Ms Higgins said.
“To lose that was really quite tough. To start to reclaim that sense of identity feels good.”
Ms Higgins and Mr Sharaz work from home in their full-time roles while raising their three-month-old son.
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