Meet Our Career Ambassadors

Jessi started her career journey at 17. With a complex upbringing and not always understanding how to support herself, Jessi was scared of not being good enough and failing. She saw a lot of trauma throughout her youth growing up in remote communities. She was enrolled in over 11 schools growing up and never really feeling settled. Thankfully, she had someone in her life who believed in her and pushed her to follow her passion for helping and empowering others with impartiality and humanity. Jesi remembers as a very small child being told, “everyone has a story and a past, we don’t always know it or see it, but it’s there’.

Throughout her career Jessi has met and worked with incredible people. She has had the honour of learning and growing and been given opportunities she never would have dreamed of! The most meaningful part of this work to her is that every day she witnesses and has the privilege of being part of humanity. She sees, hears, and feels the impact, change and growth in her community. Jessi’s career changed her life, and she feel so grateful.

Every day is different. You never know what the day is going to bring you. One day, we’ll be looking at emergency services and a crisis that’s going on in the community, or we’ll be deploying people to New South Wales because of the floods. We’ll be, again, talking to ministers. My favourite part is probably listening to people’s lived experiences and sharing that experience, engaging with stakeholders and being able to really share that and reduce that stigma.

After a 16-year career within the Education sector and undertaking classroom and leadership roles within Early Childhood Education & Care (ECEC), Primary, High School and College environs, Josh was ready for a change and sought new challenges. The Community sector has not disappointed!

Josh started working at CatholicCare in 2017 leading programs and services within the Youth & Adult Mental Health, Homelessness, Alcohol & Other Drugs, Family, and Justice sectors. Now, he’s leading the diligence activities and the bringing together of Marymead Child & Family Centre and CatholicCare Canberra & Goulburn to become one new entity – Marymead CatholicCare Canberra & Goulburn.

Very few other areas of work give you that diversity and mixing with people that you wouldn’t normally mix with, and just the opportunities that brings too. There’s a lot of opportunities for internal movement within the sector. You can find your niche and you can find your happy place and I think there are always different organisations that you can move to and learn from. And the sector looks after each other, there’s a real camaraderie in the community sector.