Veronica joined us in November and as one of our Principal Consultants, she will lead our climate change adaptation and resilience work. Veronica’s expertise lies in systems thinking and facilitative leadership to enable transformative development. She’s also a hoot to hang out with. Read some of Veronica’s thoughts about why she chose Sustineo and learnings from her career and hobbies:
What drew you to Sustineo?
I love Sustineo’s ability to wrestle with complexity but in a grounded, practical way, moving at the pace required. We occupy a unique place in the development ecosystem, combining the best of three worlds. As a consultancy, we are nimble and responsive to the issues and opportunities of the moment. As independent researchers, we bring a depth of expertise and knowledge to bear in tackling complexity. And like an NGO, our local partnerships ensure we keep everything we do rooted in the perspectives and voices of the people who most stand to gain or lose from a rapidly changing world.
What do you hope to achieve during your time at Sustineo?
I want us to help everyone sharpen their responses to climate change, particularly adaptation! Not many people working in development (within Australia OR internationally) understand how to do things like:
- work with multiple climate scenarios and understand what they really mean on the ground
- identify interventions using systems-based approaches and leverage points
- make decisions using robust decision-making and adaptation pathways
- adjust monitoring and learning processes to be more agile and connected to global reporting
- navigate the ever-changing world of carbon markets and other emerging opportunities.
Our team is able to tap into these climate-specific methods and dig into the ‘devil in the details’, helping everyone we work with understand what adaptation and resilience truly entail. I think Sustineo has a huge amount to offer to help integrate climate intelligently in development, and avoid maladaptation.
What has been your biggest learning experience from your career so far?
It’s been fascinating to watch how positive change in the world really happens. It’s rarely from a single carefully designed project. Instead, it’s through many people working roughly in the same directions, like the way social movements progress. We should still design our work carefully. But I think we need to be patient and persistent about the outcomes we’ll achieve and adapt to emerging shared directions. We especially need to develop and sustain collaborative relationships because it really does ‘take a village’.
Tell us something we don’t know about you.
I was fairly serious about classical music for the first half of my life. I played the flute. I preferred the French horn, but my parents thought I would get tired of carrying one around. At university, even though I wasn’t a music major, I still prepared and delivered a senior recital in my final year just for fun! Most researchers I encounter have a fairly artsy side, which I think surprises many people, but it makes sense to me—good research needs to be creative!
Outside of work, what are you passionate about?
Too many things! I tend to cycle through different passions because I can’t manage to do them all at once—dog agility, teaching dog training (especially puppy classes), native gardening, veggie gardening, cooking, bushwalking, managing our rural property for nature conservation, travel, collecting art and textiles, knitting, reading fantasy, and getting drawn into new things by my teenager (including anime and manga, K-pop and cosplay).
What was the last book you read?
‘Ikigai’ by Yukari Mitsuhashi. In Japanese culture, your ikigai is your deep inner purpose—what sustains you and gives you genuine happiness. It is something you discover about yourself. There are other more popular books about ikigai and Western interpretations of it, but I was interested in reading something written from the Japanese perspective. It’s a beautiful little book that reminds us to journey through life gently and with joyous purpose.