Eileen Breen has labored as a college secretary in Humpty Doo, a panorama gardener in Melbourne, a therapeutic massage therapist in Darwin, and a civil development employee in Northern Eire.
In between, there’s been stints on her dad and mom’ apricot and asparagus farm, in floristry, as a calligrapher and an optometrist’s assistant.
There’s additionally an eco-retreat in Bali she co-founded with a neighborhood younger lady, and years with a social group that mentors aspiring small enterprise homeowners within the Northern Territory.
If that is not sufficient to make a life’s work, Ms Breen’s newest enterprise is increasing a recycling program within the development business and giving weak younger folks a begin within the workforce.
Her profession path has been mapped out by an insatiable curiosity, a trait she inherited from her sailor-turned-farmer father.
“Folks really feel stress to suppose: ‘What’s my objective in life?’ However once you comply with your curiosity, it opens up a complete world of prospects,” Ms Breen instructed AAP.
“You continue to have to consider how you can survive; you do not have to go and begin a enterprise, however you may carry belongings you’re enthusiastic about into what you do.
“That creates much more private satisfaction.”
Ms Breen was final month obtained the Northern Territory AgriFutures Rural Girls’s Award for her venture SustainAbility, which advises companies on environmentally-friendly practices.
She hopes to take the thought of ​​turning waste into wealth to distant communities, the place key heavy industries can diversify and develop round economies.
Though it seems like a spectacular rise, Ms Breen and her husband Gerry needed to stroll away from their development enterprise in his native Northern Eire when the worldwide monetary disaster pushed the nation right into a deep recession in 2008.
“I stated to my husband, ‘the truth is we’ll be poor for some time. We may be poor and chilly right here, or we may be poor and heat and transfer again to Darwin’.
“It is all the time been a spot of alternative.”
They returned to the territory, the place Mr. Breen established the development firm NTEX.
Ms Breen got here on board through the coronavirus pandemic to guide the growth of its recycling program, which takes concrete and asphalt and turns it into materials for street bases.
“Development and demolition are actually damaging and wasteful industries. With demolition works, every thing goes to landfill,” she stated.
“As a substitute of that as an issue, it may be a possibility.”
The enterprise has partnered with Indigenous organizations to make use of younger women and men, a few of whom are navigating the juvenile justice system.
“Everybody deserves a second probability,” Ms Breen stated.
“If these younger folks do not see alternatives and haven’t any hope, how is something ever going to alter?”
The nationwide rural girls’s award winner shall be introduced in September.
