Michele Ong

Changes in career aren't a divergence from a path. The common thread is you, your experience, and how you can apply what you know in a different space. Zaneta Mascarenhas is Member for the Australian House of Representatives for Swan. Join us as we speak with Zaneta about her journey through engineering and resources, climate action, and politics, and hear about how community and impact ties all of that together.

I'm Michele Ong, and this is STEAM Powered.

Good morning, Zaneta. Thank you so much for joining me on STEAM Powered, I'm really looking forward to our conversation about your journey.

Zaneta Mascarenhas

Thank you so much for having me, Michele.

Zaneta's childhood experiences and exposure to sciences and the world around her.

Michele Ong

That's amazing. So, we'll get straight into it because your career spans engineering, climate change, policy, and politics, but we'll get started at the very beginning, and I'd love to know what drew you to pursue engineering, and specifically, chemistry and chemical engineering.

Zaneta Mascarenhas

I think that children fall in love with maths and science as children. And I'm very passionate about children having the opportunity to be exposed to play-based learning, and particularly STEM-based learning.

As a primary school student, I remember one of my classes that I did was called Magic Powders, where we mixed powders in the kitchen as year six students.

I'd also say that my dad was a metal worker and always encouraged me to be interested in the physical world as well.

For me, I enjoyed maths and I enjoyed science. And so, when I was thinking about what career I'd be interested in doing, it felt natural to pick science and engineering.

But I also grew up in a nickel mining town as well. And I feel like from my primary school teachers to high school teachers, to my dad, and where I grew up led me into thinking about studying science and engineering.

Michele Ong

That's so cool. Magic Powders sounds awesome though. What did that involve?

Zaneta Mascarenhas

So like, honestly doing things like mixing bicarb soda with vinegar or another thing that we did is that we had to have these different seedlings and we could feed it different things from dyes, to coffee, to sugar and see how that impacted the way that the plants grew. And I just remember always having real fun with experimentation and what's lovely is I try and encourage my children to do that as well.

And so my kids will be like, mum, I want to do an experiment. Sometimes it's totally wacky, but I want them to be able to explore because in some ways, children's imaginations don't have boundaries. And I feel like sometimes as adults, we learn more boundaries, but sometimes that discovery you find by thinking outside the box.

Michele Ong

I love that because having that practical experience seeing cause and effect is so much more fun for kids than having to do, you know, the textbook learning, being able to have that practical experience just adds so much more value.

Zaneta Mascarenhas

Absolutely. And it's funny 'cause I remember doing one of my science classes in high school where we had to bring different metals into school, and because my dad was a metal worker, he helped get me all these different types of metals. So we got copper, brass, iron, zinc, lead, but he also got me some mercury from work, which I think is totally not appropriate, but I felt really cool because I had a little jar of mercury as well.

I don't think that would be acceptable today.

Michele Ong

No, that's so awesome though. And like because it was in, you know, mining/resources town, the exposure is so entirely different to what you'd get in the cities and they definitely wouldn't have allowed the mercury in the school.

Zaneta Mascarenhas

Yes.

How your environment shapes your perceptions of an industry.

Michele Ong

It's awesome. So where did you imagine your career in engineering would look like?

Zaneta Mascarenhas

I knew that I was interested in working on mine sites because I'd grown up in a mining town. I'd say that I was attracted to, I'm going to say the environment profession, and the town where I grew up, we did rehabilitation of mine sites as children.

So I always like to think that the way that I learned about mining is how you extract the minerals, but how you also heal the land as well. And it was a very holistic perspective. So I feel like I've seen some of the best practice of the mining industry, and I wanted to be involved in helping mining companies do their best version of themselves.

In saying that, I studied chemical engineering, not environmental engineering. But I also wanted to have practical skills to be able to share my knowledge with people.

And the thing that's funny about when you start as an engineer at a mine site, you've got your piece of paper, you're like, Oh, you know, I'm an engineer now, but for your operators and your people in the workshop, they don't care, like they don't care to an extent.

What you need to be able to do is show that you're prepared to listen and learn. And one of the things that I'd say that I've seen female engineers do really well is be prepared to listen and learn because I think particularly for operators that have been on site for more than 10 years that have seen all these different people come and go, having this young person that's like, "I know everything, this is the way that we're going to do it." That sometimes really irritates them.

And for me, when I worked on site, what they appreciated was not my qualifications, but the fact that my dad was a metal worker, because it meant that I-- and I idolised my dad, and so they knew that I would treat them with respect in the first instance.

So, it's just kind of funny being a graduate and learning the culture of a site.

Michele Ong

Yeah, that's an interesting perspective, because it is--a lot of people underestimate organisational culture as part of these industries and environments, but there is a certain way about them, especially because they're often in these very specific, intense spaces for short, intense periods of time.

So they develop certain ways of doing things. And what you learn in university and textbooks doesn't always correspond with the practical application of how it works with a bunch of people. Like, that changes everything.

Zaneta Mascarenhas

Absolutely. And, one of the things that I was thinking about, coming into this is like, what are the characteristics that make a great STEM workplace? And for me, the number one thing is culture. Culture makes a huge impact as to whether you thrive or you almost feel like a part of your soul dies in an organisation.

And with that culture, it also relates to the leadership and the way that the leadership enforces that, but also making sure that you've got a good mix in your team and that the quietest voice can be heard and that people feel included.

The evolution of culture and safety in the workplace in the mining industry.

Michele Ong

Yeah, absolutely. Which kind of leads in nicely to my next query about this. In your time there, because you spent 15 or so years as an engineer, what observations have you made about the way the industry has evolved and the way that culture has changed in that area?

Zaneta Mascarenhas

I'm going to say that I've had the opportunity to have really incredible bosses and bosses make a huge impact to the culture of a workplace. So my very first boss was an ex-bikie from Ballarat, who then became a vegetarian Buddhist. So he was just this fascinating man.

His name is Tim McDougall and he gave me so many opportunities. But he also had a great team as well and I think that he was really important for creating that incredible team. He really had this belief in me and I feel like I wouldn't have had as many opportunities as I had if it wasn't for him.

And so I'm really grateful for that. Also another one of my bosses was John Ganza and he was really supportive of female engineers in the workplace, but also fostering a really positive work environment. And I remember him talking about a, you know, there's these competitive graduate programs and you have some of these students that topped the, like, number of subjects or you know, dux of their class, and then you get them in this group environment.

And I remember John saying, yeah, I was observing this one particular young male engineer, and he was being really disrespectful to the female engineers, and the bottom line is, is that when you're a part of an engineering team, you're making really important decisions, you need to have that team culture. And if you're not going to be a team player with everyone, you don't get to have a job. So despite this person being like the top of their class, John was kind of like, you're not going to be a good cultural fit. You don't get to have the job.

And so it's funny because last week I went and spoke to Curtin engineering students, and one of the things that I wanted to emphasise to them was the importance of teamwork and the need to celebrate everyone's wins together. And when you're in the workplace, it's not about an individual person's success. You actually need the team to succeed. And particularly when you're dealing with things like safety and environments you can't be competitive in those areas.

You need to be collaborative because if you're competitive, it can be to the detriment of a colleague who could get injured or worse, killed. So team environments become even more important. And our first Australian female astronaut, one of the things that she also talked about was the importance of teamwork.

Like, yeah, do well academically, but also, have a look at committee work or team sports, because that's what teaches you those skills of interacting with people.

Michele Ong

Yeah, Katherine is such an amazing speaker. I love seeing her.

Zaneta Mascarenhas

Me too, a total fangirl here.

Michele Ong

Oh, 100%. So yeah, it really is such an important aspect to be able to consider teamwork and be able to collaborate with others because so much of what we do at the moment in society is a very individual endeavour. So it's fantastic that you've highlighted the fact that it's not just in this, in this industry, in engineering and in STEM, but everywhere values the teamwork so much because you can't move everyone ahead unless everyone's on board.

Zaneta Mascarenhas

Absolutely. And a part of that is also about making sure that you have women at the table and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds at the table as well, and making sure that workplaces are safe for people from diverse backgrounds. And I'd say that workplaces are learning how to do that better.

And I've seen, specifically the mining industry, change from a safety culture perspective. My dad's from a generation of metal workers that have less than 10 fingers. By the time I started my career, if I thought that work was unsafe, I would be supported in saying, I think we need to stop this work. But that's the safety aspect.

The next aspect is making sure that people can raise concerns, particularly from diverse backgrounds. And I don't think that that's consistently across the board.

Observations about organisational culture in an organically culturally diverse industry.

Michele Ong

Yeah. It's interesting though, because this sector, we draw people and skills from not just within Australia, but from everywhere. Like there's so much international hiring as well. So you would have expected that given the diversity of the workplace, naturally, as a result of where they source their people, that you would get a little bit more cultural diversity in terms of acceptance and listening and equity in that area.

Has that just been a relatively recent kind of thing?

Zaneta Mascarenhas

That's a really, really good question. Because you're right, the resource sector has attracted skills from all across the world. And if I think of my childhood of growing up in Kambalda, I feel like I had the most multicultural childhood because of the resource sector. And because there were so many cultures, I didn't experience racism in my town.

Instead, the first time I experienced racism was in Kalgoorlie playing sport. So I don't know what it was like for my dad growing up. And I'd say that for me, I feel like I've probably experienced more sexism than racism, from a workplace perspective, but with that culturally diverse skills that we're attracting, it does seem intuitive that we should have these workplaces that are culturally safe and, I'm unsure if that's consistent across the board.

What it reminds me of is when I was working during the global financial crisis, I was a part of a team and redundancies were happening and for this particular team, I was seconded into that team, so I wasn't going to be affected.

But for that particular team, they only had two women, who had English as a second language, and those two women were the first two to lose their jobs. And in my mind, when I saw that, they were picked because they were seen as the people that were going to complain the least. But for me, because I want to see more female engineers in the workplace, I'm kind of like, you've just made redundant all of the women in this team. What does that say to young engineers? And they were experienced engineers, so they would have had like two decades of experience behind them.

Michele Ong

Yeah. It's hard to tell sometimes when there are multiple intersectionalities involved, because you know, even when you talk to other people, it's like, well, I can't tell whether this thing happened because of which aspect of this person's intersectionality. And yeah, it just, it's a complicated situation.

The impetus and shift to climate change.

Zaneta Mascarenhas

So moving on from the engineering aspect, you shifted from engineering to climate change specialisation. So how do you develop your skills into that space from engineering?

It's funny because I would say that I feel like I used more of my degree in my climate change role than I did as an engineer on the mine site and a part of it relates to chemistry. And so PV equals NRT for those that are like following equations at home.

Because one of the aspects of my role was accounting for greenhouse gas emissions. And so, the gases that we report are carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, but then there's also other refrigerants that we report as well.

And so you're looking at things from like, number of moles, concentrations, calculating that from the quantity of fuel burnt or whether you're actually measuring emissions, so the truth is there's like a lot of either chemistry or engineering in that, particularly if you're measuring emissions as well.

Sothere's the calculation of them, but then there's looking at energy efficiency and emissions reductions and the different options for that. And then there's other skills from looking at different business models under different temperature scenarios, which is kind of around climate risk analysis.

So I feel like it actually used lots of my skill set than I anticipated that it would.

Michele Ong

That's awesome. I mean, it makes sense now that you've said that. So was the move to climate change, a conscious decision, or is it just for you a natural progression as part of your career?

Zaneta Mascarenhas

I decided that I wanted to change jobs during the global financial crisis, and I was actually designing a fuel hub for a mine site, and I felt like my bosses around me didn't understand the technical aspects of it. And then, this is a sidetrack, one day I like was at this Caltex petrol station across the road from Murdoch University and I saw this truckie offloading fuel and I'm like, right, okay, I could speak to someone that's an expert in this area.

And so I had a chat with this truckie called Xavier. He was Catholic. He had over five children. He was super lovely. Got to ask him my technical questions. And for that particular year, I was like, Oh, this has been the highlight of my year as an engineer. And this was by chance of chatting to a fuel truckie at a Caltex petrol station, and I'm like, maybe I need to look at alternative career options.

And so I ended up speaking to a friend who was working for a climate change consultancy and I was like, look, I'm interested in moving jobs and they had a vacancy. And it was funny because I had applied to work for them before, but I didn't get in the first time. But the second time I was lucky enough to actually have the opportunity and I loved it.

It was an incredibly positive workplace. Lots of really committed, passionate people. And I'd say that when you're a part of a mission that's trying to make the world a better place, that attracts really talented people. And I loved being a part of that team.

Working in the climate change space and perspectives of impact and timescales.

Michele Ong

That's so cool. So what was, okay, given that the highlight of your engineering job was speaking to the truckie. What were some of the highlights of working in climate change?

Zaneta Mascarenhas

Yeah, that's a really, really good question. I'd say that probably one of my highlights was helping a company look at their climate risks.

Basically there's a new framework for companies to report their climate risks to financial markets. And it's called the climate-related financial disclosures. So Companies were basically doing this voluntarily with introduced laws from the government perspective to get more ASX companies to actually report their climate disclosures.

And what was great was being in this boardroom that was looking at resource companies, what they were doing today, and what they would be doing in 10 or 20 years time, but also what their business would look like under different temperature scenarios.

They were looking at the risks for their mine sites, but also how their business would change and shift. But the thing that I particularly liked about that boardroom is that the people were having disagreements but it was a contest of ideas done in a really respectful way.

And in my mind, I want boardrooms to be places where people contest ideas, and I've worked for companies where the executive is really negative and toxic and people are built to compete against each other, where what I saw here was respectful dialogue, people disagreeing, but then coming to a conclusion.

And I feel like I've seen that in small teams, but I haven't necessarily seen that in executive teams, but then also seeing how they're maturing the way that they act on climate change was incredibly rewarding. So that was one.

Another was helping a company work out their power solutions and whether they'd integrate renewable energy into their power solution.

And there's all these different hurdles for deciding on what project gets selected, but when you see companies going, right, okay, we're going to do the thing that we haven't done before, but it is cheaper, and it is also going to be better, but we're a little bit scared, because often in the mining industry, you don't want to be the first to do something innovative, you want to be the second, so someone else learns all the mistakes. So seeing the resource sector become more innovative was also really rewarding as well.

Michele Ong

That is very cool. Because yeah,just like banking, the resource sector just have a relatively conservative approach when it comes to these sorts of changes, because you don't know all the effects it has from making such a massive change to the way that they do things.

At the same time, what you were saying with that first circumstance, the way that they were exploring the ideas in terms of impact and long term and value chain and how even something about what happens to the way you operate when temperature changes by 10 degrees. All of that is such a fascinating-- it's speculative, but it's also imaginative, and it's creative because you're thinking about all the additional ripple effects of something happening within your organisation, the individuals, the tools you use, all the supply chain stuff, because all of that is also going to be impacted and having to incorporate that into your plan, that's fun. Like to me, that sounds fun trying to figure that out.

Zaneta Mascarenhas

Absolutely. And another one of the women leaders that I've seen in WA is a woman called Kirsten Rose, and she used to head up a renewable energy organisation, and went to BHP, is now at CSIRO. But I remember her talking about speaking to operations teams and be like, we need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and generally for mines, you're only thinking at three to five year timeframes.

Thinking at a 10 year timeframe, is really not typical for an operations team, but it was funny because she changed the frame of reference and was like, don't worry about how to implement this in the next three years. Let's look at this from a 10 year perspective. And then people let go of all their day-to-day stuff and were able to change their frame of thinking and be like, okay, let's go back to first principles. How would we do this? And I think that the engineering brain can be very methodical, but almost too rigid, and sometimes you need to go back to first principles and almost be like the child scientist. No boundaries, how do we think about this problem? And sometimes you need disruptors in the workplace to try and go, right, okay, how do we think about this in a different way?

Michele Ong

Yeah. And that's definitely a creative way of approaching a technical problem, because a lot of the boundaries that we set, they're very, very limiting. So when you actually take away some of those barriers and just say, right, so we're looking at a long view now. If we were looking at a long view, how would we approach this?

And then you work backwards to figure out how to handle it from an operational perspective. And having that long view just gives you so much more perspective on what you can do now. It's very cool.

Policy and politics.

Zaneta Mascarenhas

We're kind of heading towards the policy side of things, because we're planning ahead, we're moving towards that sort of thing, so you've shifted, again, to policy and politics, so for you, was that gradual, or was there a moment where you went, what I'm doing right now has more scope, or more perspective?

Good question. Because I worked in climate action for 12 years and there was a time when I saw governments acting on climate change and a time when we had governments that denied that climate change was existing. When I started my career, I saw what could happen when we've got governments and businesses working together, and we saw a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. And then we had the, I'm a politician, so I'll be political. Then we had the coalition government, and then we saw emissions increase. Andthe thing that I recognised is that we need all parts of the economy to act on climate change, and so I was actually asked to run for federal parliament twice.

So the first was the 2019 election, and Hannah Beazley, Kim Beazley's daughter, was also running. I stood down because she was a Beazley and her dad had been the previous member for Swan. And I, at that time, I was heavily pregnant. The second time when I was asked, I had two children, my daughter was six months old and my instinct was I don't know if this is the FIFO job that I want for my family.

And the truth is, Parliament's not even a FIFO job because you fly in and you fly back in and so you're never off.But I had dedicated 12 years of my career to climate change action and so I was kind of like, what am I prepared to do for my community? But also having lived in our community for over 10 years at the time, I didn't feel like we were being represented well.

And I felt like our community was being taken for granted. So I put my hand up and won the seat of Swan, which was really surprising because I didn't think that someone with an unusual name, Zaneta Mascarenhas, would win this seat. But Swan got the second largest swing to the Labor Party in the country.

So I think that the electorate was ready for change, but I also think the electorate wanted someone with a STEM background who had actually worked in the resource sector and decarbonisation. So I feel incredibly humbled.

Michele Ong

That's amazing. And the courage to take that chance because it's a new sort of space and it's changing the overall look of the seats.

Working not just for now, but for the future.

Michele Ong

So what is driving you in this position as a politician, like what sort of initiatives are the things that drive you right now?

Zaneta Mascarenhas

Well, I'm going to almost take it back a step, which is, I'm going to say that my year 6 and 7 primary school teacher is probably one of the greatest influences of my life. Her name's Mrs Wilson, and she taught us that one person can make a difference. And the thing that I learned in the town where I grew up is community is really important, and we need to invest in our communities to make sure that they can be resilient and happy places.

So for me, what keeps me going is this belief in Australia, but Australia being a place where everyone can reach their full potential. Whether that relates to making sure that we have action on climate change, and we've introduced a 43% target by 2030, we're introducing 82% renewables into the grid. But I'm also going to say access to quality education. WA has been the first state to sign off on fully funding our public schools. I want our schools to be places where kids can thrive. I also want to see investment in our universities, but also our healthcare system, because I want people to be well.

And if I think of why my mum and dad moved to Australia, it was access to good wages, good education, and a healthcare system that will look after themselves. Also investing in our workers is really important to me as well. And so for me, I feel like they're really big changes and often when I go door knocking people will talk to me about their rubbish bins or their roads and people won't talk to me about the big issues but I know that these big issues can have a big impact on people's lives.

Michele Ong

Yeah. It's again, everyone's working very operationally, right? So we're not, no longer in the workplace, we're in the home. But people are still What affects me right now? What affects me in the next three to five years? They're not looking at the 10 years, 20 years kind of thing. And all of these are 10 years, 20 years kinds of problems because they're so multifaceted. I mean, all the things that you've listed as being your passions in this area, they're all interconnected, but they're all not small.

Zaneta Mascarenhas

Yeah.

Michele Ong

Yeah. So, getting people to think differently. It is getting people to think differently and changing their perspective about what sort of timeframes they're looking at.

Not just for this election cycle, not just for this current pay cycle. It's looking at things from a different perspective and how that can impact the immediate cycles.

Zaneta Mascarenhas

Yes. And I think one of the things that's hard in politics is looking at timeframes and how long it takes to effect change. Because there's so many steps, it sometimes takes a long time to see that change. And, I want to see amazing, positive change for our country. But the truth is that takes time and last month the Labor Party celebrated its 30 year anniversary of Affirmative Action policy and so that was around prioritising women into elected winnable seats and that happened 30 years ago and we achieved our goal ahead of target, which was 50% women, which we have in the state parliament, which we have in the federal parliament.

And one of the movers of the motion at the party conference was there. And I just felt incredibly grateful for the work that she had done, because I'm standing on the shoulders of my sisters and she wouldn't have realised that the child of migrants would have the opportunity to run for Swan and be the first female member for Swan in 101 years.

And it's because of the work that she did 30 years ago. So for me, I just know like, I want to be a part of positive change, but I might not see that for 30 years. And that's okay. That's okay. Butyeah, that's what drives me.

Michele Ong

Yeah, it's knowing that the stuff that you start now, you may not be able to see finish because your term's up or, you know, it's just something that can take a generation to be able to finally take effect.

Zaneta Mascarenhas

Yeah.

Michele Ong

Ah, big goals!

Systems thinking and transferrable experience.

Michele Ong

With your interest and your passion for community impact, and because policy is intrinsically woven into that, is that something that you feel affects the way that you've always thought? Like, have you always been that kind of strategic perspective thinking, or is that something that evolved with your work and with experience?

Zaneta Mascarenhas

I gotta say, I don't know what's the short answer, but I feel like you learn things through experience.

So I did a year of volunteer work in Bangladesh and there's a great case study that I was involved in one part of this. And so basically engineers looked at a community in India and they were like, no one's using toilets, so that means that gastro and diarrhoea rates are up. We're going to build hundreds and thousands of toilets and spend millions of dollars into this project. They built these toilets, also gave people rice, and then they did an audit, two or three years later, and they were like, Oh, only 20% of the toilets are being used. So it was not successful.

But then there was this other project, where they were like, we're not going to pay for the toilets. We're going to teach the community why sanitation is important. We're going to teach them how to build toilets and this model was called community-led sanitation.

They saw whole communities change their habits. And they achieved amazing rates of reduction in diarrhoea, reduction in gastric, reduction in taking time off work, reduction in cost of medicines, a reduction in infant mortality and it was this incredible model of this is what happens when you actually talk with the community and listen to them.

And so this is where I think that you need to think about what the community needs and sometimes their engineering brain will be like, This is the problem. This is the solution. But not actually think about it in more detail. And so you need to have interdisciplinary approaches to actually solve problems.

Michele Ong

Yeah, and having to remember that you have to account for the human aspect of your problem as well.

Zaneta Mascarenhas

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And there's even like a science to the way that humans work, but sometimes engineers think that everyone thinks like them, but that's not the case at all.

Michele Ong

Absolutely. So, going on from that, how have you felt that your experience as a scientist and an engineer contributed to your work in politics, and what sort of skills have you felt are the most transferrable?

Zaneta Mascarenhas

I feel like the place where backbenchers get to contribute the most is through committee work. I sit on separate committees, Climate Change, Energy and Water, Industry, Science and Resources, Treaties Committee, and then the other one is Corporations and Financial Services.

For Industry, Science and Climate Change, Energy and Water I have so much base knowledge going into those committees that during hearings, I can ask questions to a deeper level than the typical politician. And so it's something that I find really easy to almost get to the root cause of a problem.

As for Corporations and Financial Services, where I don't have a traditional skillset, the thinking that I bring to that committee, I'll describe as systems thinking. So I think about the way that the system works, and what the feedbacks are, and what the impacts are. And so, even the lovely chair, Deb O'Neill on that says, you know, your systems thinking brain is useful on that committee as well. I feel like that helps.

And then when we're having, let's say, discussions in caucus, there will be different perspectives that I bring as a STEM professional. I'm not the only person with a science degree in the Labor Party caucus, but I am the only engineer in the Labor Party caucus. And I would love more STEM professionals to be at all decision-making tables, whether that's local council, a board, or the state or federal parliament. And that's also one of my wishes to encourage more STEM people to think about contributing to decision-making bodies.

Michele Ong

Yeah, absolutely. Because, you know, it's diversity in all areas, right, that makes innovation and progress work.

Zaneta Mascarenhas

And we see it scientifically in ecosystems, right? So the ecosystems that thrive the most of those that are diverse. When you have monoculture within an ecosystem, there'll be one thing that happens and then a whole crop dies, right? Diversity works scientifically both in an ecosystem, but also on boards, and we've seen that scientifically from performance of ASX listed companies.

When you have women on the boards, they perform financially better, and often in the long term, as opposed to short term, which is the tendency we see with male dominated boards.

Michele Ong

It's something that is changing, which is amazing, and it's something that people are more consciously aware of when it comes to hiring and placements now too, which is cool.

So, purely logistical question now, because as a parent with young kids with a Fly In Fly In job. How do you balance the travel with home and mum stuff?

Because it's all a lot.

Zaneta Mascarenhas

It really is. I have to say that I'm really lucky that I have a supportive husband. My husband, he works in the resource sector. He's an engineer as well. He works three days a week and his workplace is really supportive of that. I want to see more men have the opportunity for part-time work and negotiate part-time work because that's when we see true gender equality happening in the workplace is where people can have flexibility as to who's the part-time worker. Typically it's a female in heteronormative relationships, but I want to see that change more.

And so, I have a supportive husband. I also have a supportive mum. And also I'm going to say that my husband often says, I juggle the balls and sometimes I just have to decide which ball to drop.

I could pretend that we're doing it all, we're not. We're totally not. I think that there's balls that you juggle and you try and make it up for times where you miss out on things.

And we had a Colour Run at my son's school and it was a forum that was scheduled, and I was like, could we please shift it so I can at least go to the first 30 minutes of my son's Colour Run. So if I can schedule that stuff in that makes me happy and I do want to be a present mother. And this weekend, my husband's going to help his mum and dad in Adelaide move house.

And it's the first time I'm solo-parenting with both of my children. And I'm like, Oh, I haven't had to do this very much because my husband does it for probably at least 20 weeks of the year.

Michele Ong

Absolutely. It's like, how the tables turned.

Zaneta Mascarenhas

Yeah.

**Michele Ong:**

What advice would you give someone who'd like to do what you do and what advice should they ignore?

Michele Ong

So, last one to wrap up our amazing chat. What advice would you give someone who'd like to do what you do and what advice should they ignore?

Zaneta Mascarenhas

I feel like a lot of the opportunities that I've had have been through networks of people that I've known.

Because my climate change job that I got, I ended up getting from someone that, when I volunteered in Bangladesh, I made friends with a woman from Sydney who was an arts graduate, and she had a friend that was moving from Sydney to Perth and was just like, be friends with my friend Harriet.

I wouldn't have guessed that being friends with an arts graduate from Sydney would help me land my climate change job.

Anyway, a part of what that discussion is about is your networks and your peers. And I think that it's important to invest in your networks because they will help look after you during different times.

The other is, I think, taking time to also, I'm going to say, look after your mental health as well. And there are times where I've had friends that have had really awful workplaces, and it's kind of like, is that workplace good for you? Or is it better that you step out and find something that accepts you for who you are?

The other is, is that if you're thinking about a career transition, whether you've got all the skills that you need and whether you want to think about further study. The additional thing, which is if you're interested in working into an area, just basically finding 10 people to say, I'd just like to have coffee with you to pick your brain about your profession and how I get into it.

And that could sometimes be incredibly fruitful and I've had a couple of friends that have done that and so maybe my number one tip is a cup of tea with 10 people whose careers that you're interested in.

Michele Ong

Absolutely. It's good to be able to get-- you're crowd sourcing information, you're being able to, yeah, just get a little bit of info from everyone about the good, the bad, the ugly, and helps you keep more informed. It's cool.

Well, that has been an absolutely incredible conversation, Zaneta. Thank you so much for your time.

And yeah, I really appreciate speaking with you today about your journey.

Zaneta Mascarenhas

Cool! Thank you so much, Michele. And I didn't ask you what your STEM background is.

Michele Ong

Well, my STEM background is as a computer scientist. So, I did CompSci at Curtin. I think we were probably there around the same time as well.

Zaneta Mascarenhas

Ah, there you go.

Michele Ong

Ha ha ha! But

Zaneta Mascarenhas

yeah, so I've been doing that for pretty much all of my career. Mainly in web and applications.

Michele Ong

So programming and doing it for myself for, since 2008. And yeah, just running my own business doing that since then. And it's, yeah. It's very cool. Get to do a lot of cool things, get to try out stuff whenever I feel like.

Zaneta Mascarenhas

Knowing how to code is really important. And I've worked in workplaces where people write birthday card messages in Excel formula, which isn't quite coding, but like is--

Michele Ong

No, I love that. That's cute. It's quirky.

Zaneta Mascarenhas

Totally. Cool.

Michele Ong

Yeah, well, thank you again. This has been absolutely amazing, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.

Zaneta Mascarenhas

Cool. Thank you so much, Michele.

Michele Ong

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