INTERNATIONAL WOMENS DAY 2023

INTERNATIONAL WOMENS DAY 2023

To celebrate this years International Women’s Day theme to #EmbraceEquity, we invited our Sydney Team Leader, Bernadette Toms to share her personal experience on the challenges and opportunities that arise in embracing equity.

“I remember growing up and my grandparents instilling in me to stand up for yourself, they also encouraged me to do a lot of team sports like dancing, soccer & taekwondo, I really think that being apart of a team has helped me build confidence and a voice. We learnt self-discipline, perseverance, Self-control and indomitable spirit. Now, working in the industry I do, a lot of these qualities I have learnt have been applied to my day to day work tasks, I have the confidence and ability to take control of a situation when required.

During school I worked at Coles as a check out chick and at the end of school I was accepted into Uni to do Primary School Teaching, I wasn’t sure if this is what I wanted to do so after deferring for 12 months and having my family tell me I needed to study or do something they encouraged me to complete my traineeship in Warehousing, Transport & Logistics with Australia Post. This has really held me in good stead at 1300TempFence. When I started here, I was the Hire & Sales Administrator, I still do a lot of the same duties except now I am the Team Leader, helping and supporting the team. I’ve been given the opportunity to travel to other branches and help get them set up, putting processes and systems in place to ensure the smooth running of the support function. Its been a privilege to work here with such supportive leaders like Dan (Hampton) and Adam (Coleman) – they really let me take carriage of my own work and supporting the team which I absolutely love.

The advice I would give to other women in the industry is don’t take everything to heart – you have your good days and bad days but don’t beat yourself up – and don’t give up.”