As a 'bowser boy' pumping petrol at the bottom of Bulli Pass Maree Kerr couldn't imagine the contours her life would bring.
She
would soon be engaged to a boy she had met when she was 14 and now
this, her first job after leaving school in year 10, she was content
with having a steady income in a job she enjoyed.
Ambition and
drive would come much later for the young girl who would go on to become
a business executive and who has just been appointed the new general
manager of Healthy Cities Illawarra.
The fact she was female
didn't daunt her in her climb up the corporate ladder, but her lack of
tertiary education would attract the ire of some of her male
counterparts.
Not that she let their irritation, or occasional boardroom comment, bother her.
Tall, red-headed and full of life Kerr is a survivor - a force of nature.
"I
think it more impacted them rather than my ability to perform the job,"
she says. "I left school in 1978. Not many people went to university
back then and so it really wasn't ever a consideration. No-one in our
family had been to university. I would never discount getting a degree
in the future, but from a professional level, I'm very practical. I
might not have that university degree behind me but I know how to get
things done."
Kerr, a former general manager of Shellharbour
Hospital is the current chair of Illawarra Relay for Life and a director
of the Horizon Credit Union, Top Blokes Foundation and WEA Illawarra.
She's
also been a regular judge for the Illawarra Business Awards after
Shellharbour Hospital won the award in 2008 for best Community Sector
Business.
In the first 18 months at the hospital Kerr oversaw a
$1.2 million upswing in turnover. She later introduced a lucrative
rehabilitation wing to complement the existing medical and surgical
wards.
Kerr was offered the position by Peter Mangles, the then
chief executive of the Westpac Lifesaver Helicopter, who co-purchased
Shellharbour Hospital in 2007.
Kerr
at the launch of the 2012 Relay for Life with Georgia Hazeldene,
paralympian Tony Davies, and Holy Spirit students Tiara Dobbs and Tim
Rowling.
"I had been doing some volunteer work with the rescue
helicopter when Peter asked me if I would like to do some quality
assurance work for the hospital. A few months later he told me he wanted
me to be the general manager," says Kerr. "I thought he had the wrong
person, heart's in throat, type of thing. But he said I know you can do
it and I'm here to help you."
Mangles shared his extensive
executive knowledge with Kerr, who says she was fortunate to have such a
willing and generous mentor.
"He's so knowledgeable in a lot of
areas that you can't help but learn from him," she says. "When you've
got someone like him on your side, who believes in you, it makes you a
better person. I certainly had no experience on how to run a hospital
before that but now I know I could walk into any hospital and make it a
success."
Kerr is a great networker and in her re-branding of the hospital made sure she was a constant figure at corporate functions.
"I
earned a lot of rungs up the ladder when I was at the hospital, turning
a business around really holds you in good stead," she says. "People
know what you can do. You can't get successful results without going
through a process of change. Don't get me wrong, I didn't do it all by
myself, you always try to surround yourself with a good team."
She
left the hospital in March last year when Mangles sold the business and
opened her own consulting firm. Last month she turned 50, a milestone
she celebrated with friends and family.
"It wasn't too traumatic
turning 50," she says. "There's no psychological scarring put it that
way. I'm like my mother in that regard. She's always said there are some
things you can't stop in life and age is one of them. You've just got
to keep going and push past it."
Kerr has had more of her fair
share of trauma in life. She was 32 when her first husband Greg suddenly
and unexpectedly took his own life the day after his 35th birthday.
They had been childhood sweethearts and had married when Kerr was 20.
"The
wedding was at St Michael's church in Thirroul. It was beautiful. We
had a great time and were married 13 years. We didn't have any children.
His death was very sad, not just for me but for our families."
While she didn't know it then, looking back she now believes he suffered from depression.
"His
death was such a shock to all of us. I just didn't see it coming, but
looking back now the signs were there. When we were in conversation he
would sometimes go very quiet and sometimes I'd turn around and say are
you listening to me. He'd have this far away look on his face. He would
be totally disengaged from the conversation."
She made a decision
early on that she was not going to drag her friends into her grief so as
much as possible she put on a good front in public.
"As soon as
my front door closed behind me that would be the worst," she says, with
tears in her eyes. "At a time like that you do a lot of soul searching,
you strip yourself back. You ask yourself if you did anything, if you
said anything that could have made another human being take their own
life. It's a very hard and difficult time. Everyone copes differently
with grief. Even though it's not logical you are constantly asking
yourself if you could have done something to prevent it, to stop it. I
know a lot of young men commit suicide. I know I'm not the only one ever
to have gone through it. I wish I was. I wish I could say I was the
last. In the end it was my family and my faith that helped me cope.
Being Catholic and having a place to go was important to me."
Three
years after the tragedy Kerr was married and had her first child
Lachlan. She left her job of 17 years at AHM Health Insurance where she
had worked her way up the ladder from processing claims to a managerial
position in training and development. When Lachlan was 15 months old she
re-entered the workforce as the business development manager at St
Mary's Star of the Sea College. Her second son Isaac was born in 2002.
When
she landed the job at Shellharbour Hospital her husband John offered to
stay home and care for their children. A decision which allowed her to
focus on work, although being a working mother she says is always a
balancing act.
Happy family. Maree Kerr with her husband John and sons Isaac, 11, and Lachlan, 14.
"Family
is everything to me," she says. "I love my job, but my boys will always
come first. If they want me to go and watch them in a sporting event,
or if there's something special on at school I make sure I'm there for
them. On weekends we have family time which is very important to us all.
I'm also learning that as children go through different stages they
need you for different things. But throughout it all we've always tried
to instil in the boys that you have to work hard to get the things you
want out of life."
Kerr herself had an idyllic childhood. Her
father was a train driver and she grew up as one of five children at
McCauley's Beach in Thirroul, catching grasshoppers in the tall
grasslands by the dunes.
"My parents built a house right on the
beach," she says. "So our backyard was the ocean. It was a spectacular
and happy childhood. We did all the things kids did back then. We went
to church each Saturday and we learned to play tennis."
Kerr's
work as chair for Relay for Life she says is inspirational and
rewarding, particularly the Fightback ceremony where messages are given
supporting the fight against cancer.
"Last year we raised
$376,000, which is amazing," she says. "Although I think being the chair
is the easiest job of all. I do the media and just make sure all the
sub-committees are on track." Joining Horizon as a director was also an
easy decision.
"I've always been a lover of the credit union and
mutuals. I'm not a bank person," she says. "I believe what they stand
for and I believe you get a different level of service."
As a female executive, in what is still regarded as a male domain, Kerr says her approach is to just keep moving forward.
"I
don't focus too much on gender to be honest," she says. "With me what
you see is very much what you get. I'm the same with men as I am with
women. I don't profess to know everything. One of my strengths is that I
don't hesitate to jump on the phone and bounce ideas off somebody."
It's
still early days in her new role with Healthy Cities Illawarra and
Healthy People Illawarra but already she can foresee stormy times ahead.
"The service has been operating for 26 years and so they're doing plenty right," she says.
"But
from next year the government is moving to a competitive tendering
process which could strip us of our funding. It's quite a scary prospect
actually, but it's also a challenge. We need some strategies. My focus
will be to bring a commercial stream to the business."
