Congratulations on your new role! How are you settling in, and more importantly, how are you handling the heatwave?

To be honest, it’s definitley been a tad warm over the past few weeks, but nothing compared to the truly warm reception I have had as the incoming Executive Editor for 10 News First Queensland!

You’ve been around a few newsrooms, what’s unique about 10 News First Queensland?

I’ve worked in several newsrooms across Queensland in a variety of roles, and there is absolutely no doubt that the workplace culture, the team and the drive here in the Brisbane newsroom is the best of any I have experienced. 

The new role I’ve taken on simply allows me to continue my passion, and to work with the experience of a truly gifted team to give our viewers something worthy of switching on for every single night. That’s my goal, and I aim for it every day.

What was your pathway into journalism?

It’s a bit of a blur through school and university at UQ in Brisbane, where I worked for the three years between studies as a builder’s apprentice.

Then suddenly and most unexpectedly, a TV role reared in front of me, and I ran head on into it. Local news in Mackay, cane fields and more cane fields. A bit of tourism, the odd cyclone and all sorts of people who wanted to tell me their stories. And I couldn’t get enough of it! I was hooked from day one, and the feeling has never left.

Two years later and I was on the Gold Coast. Same company, same job. Very different city, but one I had grown up in and was intensely familiar with.

It was between the tourist capital of Australia and Brisbane that I would then spend more than two decades immersed in the daily, weekly, in fact endless news cycle. There was no boredom to be had. This was the fastest growing region of the country, and I was right in the middle of it. 

We hear you’ve had a little side hustle in the past?

For the past five years while operating as a newsroom Chief of Staff, I had launched and operated a landscaping operation on the side. Today, the tools and machines I’ve acquired are back in the shed, but the skills and mindset gained will never leave me. You can learn a lot by giving something entirely different a decent crack, without worrying whether you might look a little silly if it doesn’t work out. 

What do you love most about this industry?

News doesn’t play by the rules, and it certainly never adheres to any deadline or sternly worded invoice. We just tell it like it is, the best we can in every single bulletin.

If you’re in Brisbane, please come say hi if you haven’t already. Our Queensland team would love to say g’day!