I always wanted to be a doctor but ended up in nursing - although I married a doctor.
For 11 years from 1985, I worked as a nurse in San Francisco and rose to be nursing manager of more than 100 staff. When my first daughter was born I needed to be able to look after her, so I took a role in a start-up ‘nurse-on-call’ company.
The startup was developing on-call software and I really wanted to see that product succeed, so helped with the sales. That was successful and we sold the company.
I was head-hunted to join another startup, selling healthcare products on the US west coast to companies like INTEL, Wells Fargo Bank, HSBC and SONY Corp.
I got divorced at that time and really needed to be financially independent. So I joined AVAYA for higher pay, selling enterprise call centre equipment, again to companies like Wells Fargo Bank. From there I moved to CISCO selling corporate governance systems.
I married an Australian in the US and we decided to re-locate to Perth, Western Australia because he is from Geralton. The big game in Perth is mining and I really wanted to get into that. After selling for some technology system integration companies, I got a job with Motorola managing the BHP account.
A couple of years later I got my dream job offer - looking after the Western Australian Government Healthcare account for Microsoft. I loved that job and sold more than $120 million worth of products and services. I resigned from Microsoft in 2018.
These days at dinner parties, people no longer ask me to “look at their rash”, I’m more likely to be asked about protection from cyber-security threats. I spend my new life as a consultant, advising on boards and telling stories!