PACE and Employability Manager in the Employability & Graduate Success team, Kate Maitland, has a rich history with Macquarie.

Long before she worked and studied here, her first memory of Macquarie was coming into the old Library (now MUSE) to borrow books with her dad when he was completing his Masters in the 1980s.

Kate started in her first employment role in undergraduate admissions in 2001 in her second year of studying a Bachelor of Business Administration with Bachelor of Arts – Psychology, here at Macquarie. Since then, she has worked in Student Admin and the Graduations team before joining PACE. Kate has left Macquarie a couple of times, but always been enticed back by exciting opportunities.

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1. Something you’d like staff to know about
The Employability and Graduate Success team launched Employability Connect – an online portal for all current students and recent graduates to access resources, support, events and opportunities to do with PACE, employability, careers and student employment. This project also included the implementation of a Talent module which allows the teams to handle student job applications/ recruitment at scale.

2. Something you feel proud of
The PACE and Employability Team. We have worked with our Unit Convenors and partners to ensure that PACE students have continued to have positive experiences even in a predominantly online world.

3. What you need to do your best work
Coffee, time to focus and an organised list.

4. Something people usually ask you when they find out what you do for living
If people have heard about PACE, I usually hear praise for the program and stories of positive student experiences. I also get a lot of “I wish they had that when I was at Uni”.

5. Your definition of success
Doing what I can to help others be happy and achieve goals. A house full of happy, relaxed friends and family.

6. The first person you go to for advice (and why)
So many over the years. I like to share it around and have managed to find a collection of colleagues across the University who are only too willing to share their expertise.

7. Where you live and what you like about living there
We live in the Hills District and we are lucky enough to have the bush in our backyard. It is so relaxing to just stare at the trees and unwind after work. We have a family of blue wren who visit us daily along with a collection of other wildlife.

8. A personal quality you value in others
Kindness and honesty. I tell it like it is and I appreciate the same from others but said in the nicest possible way.

9. Something you’re trying to do differently in 2022
Work hard and relax harder. Work/life balance has been so hard over the last two years and home schooling was a real challenge, so I am focusing on separating out work and play. This is made so much easier when school and home are separated.

10. I’m happiest when…
I’m outside doing something active with my family. Preferably exploring somewhere new on holidays. It’s been a few years, but we had an amazing family trip in a campervan around the NT in 2017 (pictured above) and can’t wait to do another one.