Introduction

I have been giving a lot of thought as to what makes my services and what I offer unique and different. I unashamedly describe myself as a “generalist”, with a broad range of skills and experiences. I don’t have one unique area of specialty that I can claim as my own – rather, I am extremely capable in many areas. What makes this unique and special to me, is how I pull all those different skills and experiences together and draw on that knowledge to provide insight and work with a client to come up with the right solution for them.

My key areas of focus and passion are working with people in agriculture and rural communities to build capability (particularly around leadership and community governance), strategic planning and organisational clarity and project design, supported through facilitation and stakeholder engagement.

I aim to share with you in this blog series some more insight in those areas based on my 30+ years of experience working and living in agricultural communities.

To give some context before we launch into that, let's start with a little bit about me.

I am based in the beautiful Adelaide Hills, where I have been running Susie Green Consulting for the past 5 years. I've worked with a number clients right across Australia and every day brings new opportunities to help make a difference to organisations and their people.

The area where I live is the heart of apple, pear and cherry production in South Australia and the horticultural sector is one that is very close to my heart. Prior to starting my own business, I ran the Apple & Pear Growers Association of SA and Cherry Growers SA for a number of years. This gave me tremendous insight into what it takes to run industry organisations - the complexity and continual challenges of understanding and dealing with many issues, the importance of stakeholder engagement and communication, managing volunteers, crisis management, advocacy, wearing many different hats and juggling endless competing priorities. It became really apparent very quickly to me how critical it is to remain strategic and purposeful to be able to create real impact with limited resources. This was an incredibly rewarding period of my life, to be able to support industries that were so integral to my local community. I also lived for 30+ years on an apple and cherry orchard and gained first-hand experience into what it takes to run a commercial horticultural enterprise.

Earlier in my career, I was fortunate to work for many years with a South Australian AgTech company that was innovative and ahead its time in its soil moisture monitoring technologies - and this was before AgTech was even a big thing! Through this period I also wore many hats - agronomy, training, distributor support, sales and marketing and project management of commercialising new product lines. I managed a global distributor network and travelled extensively across Asia, Europe and North America, gaining incredible experiences in different cultures and production systems.

And this followed on from where I first started out in more applied, technical areas of postharvest research, irrigation monitoring consulting and soil survey and land evaluations, which provided opportunities to work in many different production regions across Australia. Over my career I have worked hard to develop my skills across many areas, investing in ongoing professional development to ensure that I can deliver the best possible outcomes.

When I'm not working, I love physical activity and being outdoors. I'm a passionate bike rider, riding and racing mountain bikes, and going on adventures on my gravel bike. I enjoy exploring the trails and many back roads that weave across the Adelaide Hills and beyond. This has seen me tackle many endurance type events, including the World 24 hour Mountain Bike Race and multi-day bike packing trips. I love the joy of long days and nights on the bike and pushing myself through fatigue with grit and determination. This type of activity has allowed me to really dig deep to find myself and understand what the human body is really capable of with the right planning and preparation - learnings that I also bring to my professional work.

I'm excited to share some more of my own experiences and insight through this coming blog series.