From Creative Hustler to Experience Designer, my three year journey at Telstra
Reposted from my Medium article written on September 18, 2020
Last year on September 20, 2019, I officially said goodbye to the big T.
I haven’t had the chance to fully reflect on my journey since leaving but now that we have a bit of more free time due to our lockdown restrictions, I decided to bring out some of my favourite moments at Telstra.
This post was written mostly last year but has been sitting in my drafts folder for a whole year so I decided to review it and add a few more pieces before publishing it.
Hope you enjoy reading about my three year journey — get ready to see some blast from the past photos!
❤ knd
April 2016: Before officially joining the big T, I won 2nd Place @ the Telstra-Microsoft Hackathon!
In April 2016, just a week after landing in Australia, I participated in the Telstra-Microsoft hackathon, where a group of strangers and I developed a fitness app and ended up winning second place (and $3000!) — insane! I thought it would have been funny to make money off winning hackathons while I was on my working holiday visa but that probably wasn’t sustainable.
If you want to entertain yourself by watching me awkwardly pitch the product and do some burpees in front of a live audience, check out our hackathon video on YouTube. Honestly, it was so much fun and the team I worked with were amazing. Like… how could you build an app within two days and get it UP AND RUNNING on the app store?! So good.
After a month or so, we were called back to present our pitch again to a group of directors and managers from the cloud infrastructure & engineering department at Telstra. Wowza!
Once again, I did my wonderful burpees in front of a group of strangers to demo our fitness app and still thought the presentation was hilarious. Surprisingly, I was approached afterwards to discuss an opportunity at Telstra to join as a Cloud Services Creation Analyst.
Since my background was in digital marketing, I had absolutely no idea what a Cloud Services Creation Analyst did but showed my interest in the position and applied to the role anyway! Fun fact: I even asked my super technical partner to read the job description and contract for me as I barely understood anything on there — fake it til you make it, right?!
And kaboom, fast forward a couple of months later after some negotiation and discussions about setting up a sponsored work visa, I did it! My new adventure at the big T was about to begin.
August 2016 — First Day Feels
Of course, a first day isn’t official until you take your first-day-selfie! So the photo above is overly happy me on August 8, 2016 looking way too excited to receive my access card and new work phone! It was my first “real job” in Australia, so how was I supposed to act!? All right, so prior to this, I was doing freelancing for seven clients or so (yay!) and that was a lot of fun but because my goal was to stay in Australia for a bit longer, I wanted to find something more stable and also learn a ton of new skills so getting involved with such a large corporation would help me achieve my goals.
It’s the little things that excite me. My name on a branded name label? Aw, yeah!
Lil selfie on my second day of work (August 9, 2016) and off to a great start to becoming a Cloud Services Creation Analyst!
November 2016: Building the Telstra-AWS Hackathon Website
Designing the website for the Telstra Cloud Hackathon and being the emcee for the event (haha — not pictured!)
As someone who is often keen to get involved with extra-curricular activities, I was tasked to help built the Telstra-Amazon Web Services (AWS) hackathon website as well as help organise the hackathon. It was fun getting involved with figuring out the problem statements for the event and working with a smart group of people.
After creating this website, I was involved with creating more conference and event websites throughout my time at Telstra.
March 2017: Learning all things AWS with our Cloud Creations team
Being CloudFormation nerds with the Cloud Creations team! ❤
In the first 8 months at Telstra, I was in a Cloud Creations team with intelligent developers, designers, and engineers. I helped facilitate internal workshops for staff members to learn about AWS and really got my geek on. However, I wasn’t too sure whether I liked the amount of technical information I was consuming and didn’t exactly feel like my skills matched the team (imagine a digital marketer joining an engineering team with no prior experience!?).
Although I learned some new information around data storage and cloud infrastructure, I yearned for something more in the creative and design space which luckily all came to place in the next couple of months due to a company restructure…
April 2017: Joining the Service Creation & Design Team
As stated in my Facebook post above, I was STOKED that I had the opportunity to join the Service Creation & Design team!!!
This was the DREAM TEAM I wanted to be a part of and it happened due to a company restructure (these could be good or bad depending on your situation), but I found this as an opportunity to learn all things in digital design and I was absolutely over the moon.
I met service designers, UX designers, copywriters… overall, completely brilliant people who I spent the next couple of years getting to know and learning about the ways of product design and human-centred design.
Fun fact: My official title was “Creative Hustler” for half a year or so because I didn’t exactly have a set job description on what I was doing. I was providing services in service design, UX design, and UI design and wearing multiple hats for different projects.
Being able to learn and dive into bits and pieces really helped me understand what piqued my interest, which is ultimately how I ended up being a UX designer today!
April/May 2017: Fundraising $3000 and participating in a 120km cycling event for Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF)
Fundraising for Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in the foyer at our main Telstra headquarters
Participating in the annual Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation OneRide with #TeamTelstra
In May 2017, I fundraised $3000 (with the help of some group fundraisers) and participated in a 120km cycling event to help support Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF).
I still remember waking up at 4am to leave my suburb to catch the first train that could take me to the city to join our group cycling training sessions from the city to Kew. The community was so supportive and each person who participated in this event was inspiring.
As someone who mainly trained on flat roads in Melbourne (hello, Beach Rd!), I was hit with the realisation on the day of the big event that Barossa Valley was no joke…the entire route was full of HILLS!!
Unfortunately, without the proper training, I only finished 100km out of the 120km ride but I am still crazily proud of that accomplishment!
November 2017: Presenting at CCO Sydney
Left: Presenting “Innovation through Hackathons” at the Chief Customer Officer conference in Sydney, Australia; Right: Happy service designers! ❤
In November 2017, a couple of us service designers had the opportunity to present and host workshops at the Chief Customer Officer conference in Sydney, Australia.
Anytime there was the chance to go on a work trip, I was on board! Thank you J for believing in me and providing me with these amazing opportunities to share some design knowledge with some great people!
November 2017: Participating in Tough Mudder
Participating in Tough Mudder with friends and colleagues!
On November 2017, we completed a bucket list item — surviving and completing Tough Mudder!
The day was full of hot sunshine, a muddy mess, and a lot of teamwork. My favourite obstacle was sliding into the ice cold water (of course that would be my favourite as a Canadian).
I’m still scarred from seeing so much mud in one day…and yes, I still found mud in my ears two days after despite showering thoroughly each day.
Thank you to the friends featured in the photo for joining me to complete this mad activity! It was a boiling day and I definitely struggled on many obstacles, but it was ultimately a hilarious and fun experience.
June 2018: Organising Westpac’s #BizHack 2018
Helping organise Westpac’s BizHack18 (a Westpac-Telstra-IBM collab!) located in beautiful Sydney, Australia
I was one of the main organisers from the Telstra side of things to help out with Westpac’s #BizHack2018. I recruited our leading designers and developers for the event (some are featured in the photos above!), recruited fantastic mentors in the design space, organised the logistics of flying participants over from Melbourne to Sydney, and coordinated the expenses for accommodation. We worked with the amazing team at Westpac and IBM to determine the problem statements for the hackathon and ran a hugely successful event!
Although it sometimes is fun being an organiser for the event, I also wish I could participate and have the ability to co-design and collaborate on innovative ideas. The idea of being able to create something new with a diverse team is always exciting to me!
July 2018: Leading #SprintZero at Run Melbourne
Leading the #SprintZero running squad at Run Melbourne 2018! Pushing people to complete a half marathon ;)
As an avid runner, I somehow managed to get a handful of people to join me to run Run Melbourne! We had some people running the 5km distance as well as the 10km distance… and a few people running the half marathon distance (yay!!!) including myself!
Sept 2018: Spreading #TelstraLove at Telstra Vantage
Being one out of three Citizen Reporters at Vantage 2018, where we tweeted, Yammered, and LinkedIn’d away on our social media channels to share #TelstraLove and super cool tech!
In September 2018, I was one out of three people to be nominated to be a Citizen Reporter for Telstra Vantage, an event where 7,000 Telstra customers, staff and partners come together for four days of ideas, technology and business.
Being a Citizen Reporter meant spending a few days tweeting, Yammering and posting messages on LinkedIn to showcase the happenings at Vantage.
Looking back at my time at Telstra, did I even do work?! Kidding.
If you ever get the opportunity to go to Telstra Vantage, doooo it! It’s a whole new experience to be able to see and surround yourself with cutting edge technology and learn about how the work you do behind a desk will impact the greater good. I was able to see one of our global enterprise cloud products that I helped designed being featured and showcased to our customers — it was amazing!
Fortunately, I’ve had the opportunity to attend a handful of Telstra Vantages in my past and each year blows my mind. There is amazing technology shown at this event and you realise that Telstra works with many fantastic vendors and partners regionally, nationally, and globally.
From smart devices to robots to virtual reality, you can spend hours here and learn so much. Not to mention, there’s also free food and free ice cream! ;)
August 2019: Organising Brilliant Connected Women’s Mentor Meetup
Organising the Brilliant Connected Women’s inaugural Mentor Meetup
One of my highlights at Telstra was helping organise the inaugural Brilliant Connected Women (BCW) Mentor Meetup where we matched 55 participants with 11 mentors in a casual group-based environment to discuss topics around people leadership, building your network, and building confidence.
One of my passions is helping connect those who need guidance in life to mentors so they can learn from their wisdom and lessons learned.
Throughout my time at Telstra, I was a Co-Action Lead at BCW which provided me with the opportunity to host and get involved with a lot of great events that supported gender equality.
Brilliantly Connected Women (BCW) is a group where you can share ideas, support each other and network with colleagues who champion gender equality. BCW is open to all Telstra people and exists to create opportunities within Telstra for women at all levels.
…and that’s a wrap!
Crazy me saying goodbye to the pretty plant display and headquarters on my last day
Thank you for tuning in on this quick summary of my 3-year journey!
The memories above only highlight the tip of the iceberg during my three years at the big T, so if you want to learn more, we’ll just have to catchup after lockdown or set up a virtual session to discuss. :)
Although it was bittersweet leaving the big T, I know I’ve developed a lot of great transferable skills that I could take with me throughout my career and have created a lot of cherished friendships along the way.
Huge shout out to everyone who has supported me on the journey. Without your guidance, help, and mentorship, I couldn’t have done it without you!
xoxo, knd.