Louise McElvogue

Chancellor, Brian Wilson

Vice Chancellor, Professor Atilla Brungs

Associate Dean Maryanne Dever

Faculty members and University Staff

Proud parents, families and supporters

Graduands.

I would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, upon whose ancestral lands we meet today. I honour the learning that has taken place on this site for thousands of years and their elders past and present.

To the graduands in the room….

This is your day. Heartfelt Congratulations.

It is no small feat to figure out what you want to study, get into a degree,

and then figure out how you will fund yourself through it.

However. To actually stick with it and graduate is something else entirely and you should be very proud of that achievement.

To your families and friends who helped you through financially, with emotional and moral support, well done. You in the supporter’s crew deserve special acknowledgement.

It really is an honour for me to speak to you today

Only when I started to write this speech did I realise that it is exactly 30 years since I graduated from UTS Communications, not sure I can really be that OLD.  

After living outside the country for almost 20 of those 30 years I am particularly happy to have reconnected with UTS.

I chair the industry advisory board for the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, so I know you have an exceptional Dean and Academic Staff who are keeping at the forefront of industry changes, in what must be the most be disrupted subject area taught at UTS.  At least the most disrupted so far.

 Today you leave with a degree from the Number One Young University in Australia and join an impressive band of UTS alumni who Think, Change and Do around the globe. 

Change is the key here and how you deal with change will be the most important aspect of your career- I will come back to change in a moment.

Today you leave with a raft of information from your degree along with having mastered one of life’s most vital skills- communications.   As American journalist Sydney Harris explained….   information and communications are used interchangeably though they are actually very different

“Information is giving out; communication is getting through.”

No matter what stream you are graduating from today--- that ability to get through, to connect and engage is the most important skill I have seen in any colleague or leader and a very powerful tool.  You need to think carefully about how you use that power to connect and use it wisely.

My degree has taken me to unexpected places I want to share three things I have learnt that might be useful to you

• You have to get comfortable being uncomfortable.
• You have to push doors to open them
• Change is good  

Firstly --get comfortable being uncomfortable. As I thought back on my journey from sitting in this hall three decades ago, I realised it really has been a very zigzag path. And while each of you will take very different paths, I think the most useful lessons you can learn are those that come from the twists and turns.

One of the certainties is nothing will turn out how you imagine it will, least of all you.  

I can promise it will be an amazing ride wherever you end up. But it will be messy and complicated. And that will be OK. How you react to the twists and turns is what makes the difference.

Let me explain with some lessons on getting uncomfortable from my journey

First lesson in getting uncomfortable.

Don’t let anyone's ideas about you and most of all your own ideas about you hold you back.

 When I graduated from UTS, I wanted to break the next Watergate

I had a great HSC mark, a good degree and a stack of experience working as a journalist, but I couldn’t crack the ABC, Fairfax or News cadet programmes. Missing out on a cadetship was a huge disappointment for me. The only person I know who got a traineeship got half my HSC mark, had no degree and their parents knew someone.

Instead I took a journalist job on a film and TV trade paper run by some ex-Fairfax journalists, who turned out to be great editors and fantastic teachers.  I worked my way up to a senior role in a couple of years when my boss asked me to edit an annual directory that listed everything in the film and TV business from lawyers to hairdressers to camera operators.

It was a horror, thousands of listings on yellow post it notes, no computers and every listing had to be checked by phone. This looked like a backwards step, taking me away from my journalism goals and I said no. My boss countered with offer to send me to the Cannes Film Festival if I took the job.

Mmmm… I was 23 and had never left Australia. So I took the grunt job editing the directory.

After six months of hell and yellow post it notes stuck to my feet and elbows, I was in France having cocktails with Meryl Streep.

I didn’t let my idea of myself breaking Watergate hold me back.  I took a risk and felt uncomfortable. On the same trip I spent some time in London, applied for a job I saw in the paper and when I returned to Sydney found out I got it.

Second uncomfortable lesson from this story. The best jobs you take are those you think you can’t do. As someone who had only spent 6 weeks outside Australia, the job as the international editor of a European media title was certainly a stretch. But I took a risk packed up my life and moved. In the first week I arrived the staff went on strike as a vote of no confidence in the editor who hired me. Now that really was uncomfortable, I thought it was all over before it began.

But I hung in there and within two years I won a journalism award for my work on the auction of commercial TV licenses, which involved an encyclopedic knowledge of British geography, TV regulation and talking to a lot of very posh POMs who struggled to understand my accent.

The final lesson from this career story is that you don't know where things will lead.  While I missed out on the cadetships for the best journalism jobs in Australia, my career has taken me around the world and I worked for the New York Times, CNN and the BBC. In the past five years, things have come full circle.  I have consulted for the head of news at the ABC, and Editors at Fairfax, The Guardian and News Limited helping them transition to digital. Many of the journalists who probably got those roles I longed for out of university, ask me for advice about how they can get more digital.

Which brings me to Lesson number 2.

Doors don't open unless you push and the way you push will make the difference. This is a tricky one and it took me years to figure it out. Working in media I had the confidence to doorstop anyone for a story, from Rupert Murdoch to Princes and Princesses. However it took me a long time to realise that I needed to use the same confidence in asking for help in my career.

You need to find a mentor, ask for advice and introductions. This is not just when you are starting out, it is something that you need throughout your career.

Now I am building a board portfolio and I have to ask all sorts of powerful people for help.  My advice: target the person you think can help you and write to them- the worst that can happen is they say no, but you will be surprised how many people want to help you.

The caveat is that people want to help if you ask in the right way.  

Be genuine, have humility, be crystal clear about what you are asking for and be willing to put in the work.

The most important thing to remember is to pass it on. Be willing to help those around you. Open the door to them and don't wait for them to push.  I promise it will feel good.

My final piece of advice is to embrace Change.

You are graduating into an industry that is in the midst of massive disruption. Journalism particularly is in a maelstrom and the changes in film, TV and all fields of communication will continue shifting.   

While the job titles are changing and the business models are shifting the fundamental need to tell stories, to speak truth to power and put your head above the parapet is needed more than ever.

Communications is different. The Panama Papers may have been released by hackers and not a Deepthroat, but the journalism involved is as complicated as anything Woodward and Bernstein did when they were told to “ follow the money”. Today we are working with the incredible power of technology that allows us to compare tranches of complex, global information much more easily.

I work in digital and technology and I can tell you the only certainty is that the pace of change is increasing. The next five years are going to be awesome- artificial intelligence, machine learning and virtual reality are just some of the developments changing your world.

More important than the technology is your attitude. You need to be willing to change, not just in your first job or your first decade, but continuously throughout your career. 

So I leave you with this final piece of advice.

Teach yourself new skills, take the job that sounds a bit dull but might offer you an edge, devour information about your subject area, do something you think you can’t do. The best way to keep growing is to continue to ask questions, continue to Think, Change and Do.

Thank you again for this opportunity to speak tonight.  I salute your achievement and wish you courage for the road ahead. Enjoy celebrating your degree and use you communication skills wisely.