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 building employee in Northern Eire.
In between, there’s been stints on her mother and father’ 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 organisation that mentors aspiring small enterprise house owners 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 building 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.
“Individuals really feel strain to suppose: ‘What’s my objective in life?’ However whenever you observe your curiosity, it opens up a complete world of prospects,” Ms Breen informed AAP.
“You continue to have to consider the way to survive; you do not have to go and begin a enterprise, however you’ll be able to carry belongings you’re keen 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 challenge SustainAbility, which advises companies on environmentally-friendly practices.
She hopes to take the concept of turning waste into wealth to distant communities, the place key heavy industries can diversify and develop round economies.
Although it seems like a spectacular rise, Ms Breen and her husband Gerry needed to stroll away from their building 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 will be poor and chilly right here, or we will be poor and heat and transfer again to Darwin’.
“It is at all times been a spot of alternative.”
They returned to the territory, the place Mr Breen established building firm NTEX.
Ms Breen got here on board through the coronavirus pandemic to steer the enlargement 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, the whole lot goes to landfill,” she stated.
“As an alternative of taking a look at that as an issue, it may be a chance.”
The enterprise has partnered with Indigenous organisations to make use of younger women and men, some who’re navigating the juvenile justice system.
“Everybody deserves a second likelihood,” Ms Breen stated.
“If these younger folks do not see alternatives and don’t have any hope, how is something ever going to vary?”
The nationwide rural girls’s award winner can be introduced in September.
