6/19/2023 0 Comments Be you beyond blue![]() Amid the flotsam-jetsam of her break-up, work was a source of meaning, purpose and stability and was a mainstay in her recovery. She was offered the option of taking time off, but she chose to keep working because that’s what felt best for her recovery. I would get up every day and go to work and put the smile on … my energy went into ensuring that people thought I was competent,” she says.Īfter being “found out” – her words, not mine – she sat down with then chairman Kennett to open up about her struggle. “I masked it really well, and that’s what people do, they put energy into hiding what’s really going on. Harman explains that the turning point came six months into the episode when her deputy chief executive and a close friend both told her in the same week that they could see she wasn’t herself. I tell Harman I’m astonished that her private implosion occurred inside Australia’s best known mental health organisation and that it took months for anyone to ask RUOK? The CEO was crumbling. She is proud of the fact that she played a key role in developing the 2011 legislation to introduce plain packaging of tobacco products. Once here, she was a public servant in the Northern Territory and then in Canberra for the federal government. She worked in AIDS advocacy and fundraising before a relationship – yes, that relationship – brought her to Australia in the mid-1990s. It would be a pivotal moment in her life. Turning down her firm’s offer, she then found a paid role at the charity. Harman says she never inherited the science gene, but she did catch the travel bug from the experience.įresh out of university, she took a job as a paralegal in a swanky London law firm, a gig that helped finance her travel habit, even if the subject matter left her cold.īut it was the day the firm offered to pay for her articles and her progression to junior lawyer that became her “sliding doors” moment, forcing her to realise her passion lay in the voluntary work she was doing at a pioneering AIDS charity, the Terrence Higgins Trust. UK-born and Cambridge-educated, Harman grew up in Singapore after work took her scientist parents and their three children – Harman is the middle child – abroad. ![]() I tack some xiao long bao soup dumplings onto the order. ![]() Harman says the duck pancakes are a must-do, as are the king prawn and pork dumplings topped with the cordyceps flowers. In the past few years, Harman, 53, has watched as the type of services Australians need has shifted as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.īefore we talk about that, and her skills as a carpenter, we decide to order since we’re running behind schedule. Its chairwoman, since December 2014, is former Labor prime minister Julia Gillard. It provides a range of mental health services, including counselling, support and education, as well as funding research. The bulk of its funds come from governments.įormer Victorian premier Jeff Kennett founded Beyond Blue in 2000. In financial year 2022, Beyond Blue pulled in about $27 million in donations, about a third of its $93 million revenue. It’s terrible,” she notes.Īlmost a decade on from that nadir, Harman looks trim, is sharply dressed and has the self-assurance that is characteristic of a seasoned chief executive and fundraiser. “When you Google me, you still get my fat photos. I quickly discover that her frankness isn’t reserved for public speaking. Amid the suit-and-tie lunch circuit of forgettable addresses and corporate platitudes, her honesty was invigorating. ![]() In a short speech, she described how a relationship breakdown in her first months after taking the Beyond Blue job, in June 2014, triggered a slide into depression, near-alcoholism and weight gain of almost 20 kilos. Harman came on to my radar in 2018, when she electrified a room at an event in Melbourne. What’s worse, is that the plain-talking public health expert has been on my dream interview list for five years. I’m three minutes late after hitting three dead-ends trying to find the place. The Melbourne-based Harman picked the corporate staple in a rabbit’s warren of alleyways because it was an old haunt, which she still misses after a decade of living interstate. It’s a humid day and the Beyond Blue chief executive has arrived at midday on the knocker at Mr Wong, an upscale dumpling house behind a heavy door in a lane off Sydney’s Bridge Street.
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