Episode 147. Blythe Calnan – The Changemaker
It’s a warm summer’s day – you’re standing at a sheep market in a Middle Eastern country as tens of thousands of people descend upon the city in preparation for the upcoming celebration of EID. The atmosphere is palpable – excitement, joy, and stress – picture your local shopping centre on Christmas eve.
Your job? To communicate the significant rules changes as to how these people can transport their sheep from the market to their home – namely, that sheep cannot be transported in a car boot.
You’re in another country, where you don’t speak the language or share the culture, and your job is communicate these changes that have been imposed by another country.
So, what do you do?
Well, this is the situation today’s guest Blythe Calnan found herself in the very first time she worked in the live export industry.
An industry that is highly contentious and known by its failures rather than its successes.
But there have been successes, and Australia has achieved things that no other country in the world has.
That is in part due to people like Blythe, who have invested significant amounts of their time and energy to build relationships and drive change in countries where Australian livestock are sold to.
In this episode Blythe speaks candidly about the 5 years she spent working overseas in the live export industry, her decision to move on, and how she found her new normal after such an all-consuming, challenging, and rewarding job.