Meet Angie Kelly – storyteller extraordinaire and the editor of Macquarie’s news site, The Lighthouse.

WORK STUFF

I’ve been at Macquarie for…
Exactly 12 months.

In a nutshell, my job is to…
Find inspiring stories from all the faculties and tell the world about them! Every day I meet researchers who are solving some of the biggest problems in the world today. They’re making discoveries that will change people’s day-to-day lives in both small and spectacular ways and helping to set the wider community agenda with innovative thought-leadership.
In just one week recently I met three people who perfectly illustrate the diversity of expertise here – one is working on feeding the world with new drought-resistant crops, another helps deaf people hear and yet another is developing technology to stop our bank accounts being hacked.  Amazing!

The question I hear most often in my work is…
“What should I wear for the photo?”

The top three things on my to-do list today are…
To jump on the phone and find our next great story, to organise new photos of academics I’ve met recently and go to lots of meetings.

If I could do any other job at Macquarie (with instant qualifications/knowledge) it would be…
If I could find a job in the Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies that involved dancing, singing, journalism and mastering digital media wizardry, that would really be living the work-life-fun dream. I get a little jealous every time I visit the fantastic facilities there as the course has changed dramatically since I was a student there in the 80s.

A Macquarie staff member that impressed me last week…
Everyone in Group Marketing’s Content Team deserves a shout out for the enthusiastic and engaging way they tell Macquarie stories on our various channels including Facebook, Twitter, the staff and student newsletters and now The Lighthouse. It’s one thing to find the stories, but knowing how to tell them so they have the biggest impact possible is equally important.

I get my campus coffee fix from…
Fibonacci’s at 75 Talavera. It’s fun to start the day by having a little sing-along to manager Martin’s excellent Spotify playlists.

PERSONAL LIFE

My ethnic heritage is…
Aussie with Irish heritage on both sides.

My favourite subject at school was…
English.

Outside work, you’ll often find me…
Salsa dancing (don’t laugh).

If we went to happy hour, I would order…
A Margarita (see above).

My most treasured memory…
Putting my hours-old second baby into the arms of my 8-year-old daughter. Closely followed by the moment I realised I’d met the love of my life.

If I could have dinner with anyone (living or dead) it would be…
Dorothy Parker. In New York of course.

The last great movie I saw was…
I’m a sucker for newspaper movies like The Post and Spotlight. The power of newspapers to expose injustice, give a voice to the unheard and make a difference is what always dazzled me about them and drove my hunger to be a journalist from an early age.

In 10 years from now, I hope to be…
Living at the beach – Manly here we come.