Staff Feature: Maren Lavery
Maren has worked for Wheatbelt NRM for almost eight years and while her official title is Talent and Assets Coordinator she is known around the office as ‘the Filing Cabinet’ because if you need something chances are that Maren is the woman to help you find it.
It was a love of community and environment that first inspired Maren to join the team.
During her time at Wheatbelt NRM the accomplishment Maren is most proud of is helping to develop the awesome team of staff.
“I’m so proud of the goals they have kicked, the emotional intelligence they’ve developed, the holding back when things got tough.” Maren said.
One of the things Maren has learned that has helped her grow professionally while part of Wheatbelt NRM is understanding that mistakes will happen but it is how you handle them that is much more important.
“Take responsibility, find solutions and see who can help you and who you can help as well,” Maren said.
Her work philosophy is to be ‘Kind and Firm’ and if you can do something in two minutes, don’t put it off.
Maren said one of the weirdest things about her job was that sometimes she find’s strange things in the freezer like bags of dirt, dead animals and live viral strains.
When not at work Maren has plenty of side projects on the go including brewing fire cider, crocheting a massive sweater, stage management for Highschool Musical with the Perth Academy of Performing Arts, she also sings in a guitar band and is writing a collab story on the Ottoman empire.
Often Maren is wrongly accused of being Canadian when she is in fact American.
“I know I sound Canadian but I can pronounce ‘about’ correctly, just not aluminium.”
Her most memorable moment to date with a Wheatbelt NRM coworker has been during Jacquie Lucas’s 10 year anniversary where she somehow ended up singing her a “happy anniversary” song that went on entirely too long.
“I think I damaged her ears, but she never filed a WHS incident, so I can’t be sure,” Maren said.
When asked which three people she would invite to a dinner party, dead or alive Maren said they would have to be Tina Fey, Zelda Fitzgerald, and Pedro Pascal.
“Zelda would finally get to meet a man she deserves, and Tina Fey is my BFF, she just hasn’t met me,” Maren said.
Looking forward Maren said she is most excited about working with Wheatbelt NRM because of the work the project teams are undertaking, with so many cool projects coming up in the pipeline.