Julia Cookson has extensive experience in health and community support services, having worked in the broader sector for over 18 years. She began her executive career in a national genomics facility at an exciting point in time when next-gen technology reshaped medical discovery. It was this experience that sparked her passion for health services. Since she has held Executive roles in NFPs across aged and disability care, mental health, and family violence, leading their transformation through the raft of reforms. She has represented aged care businesses at the Royal Commission and been intimately involved in the Aged Care Workforce Strategy Taskforce and senate inquiries into Family Violence.
Julia has always been ambitious for her career and deliberately looked for ways to expand her HR expertise to become CEO-ready. This is how she landed in the land of interim executive roles.
Through a mix of interim executive assignments and permanent roles, consultancy, board, and advisory positions, she has expanded her expertise to include Governance, Strategy, Finance, Risk, Brand, and Digital to diversify her knowledge base. With her contacts and with the help of brokers such as Donna Burr, she deliberately moves between interim executive work and permanent executive roles. She combines this with other revenue streams in her portfolio, including non-executive directorships and Advisory work.
While interim assignments have broadened Julia’s network and exposed her to new ways of thinking and different sectors, permanent roles allow her to consolidate her know-how in a specific sector.
Listen to this episode to learn what made Julia start her portfolio career, how she gets interim management jobs and other income-generating opportunities, and her advice for executives willing to give it a go.
