A GAME-CHANGING EXPERIENCE

2023 Cate Wood CMSF Scholarship winner, Gabrielle Blair joined the Women in Super team at CMSF23. Her application impressed the selection panel with her passion for the super industry, and her commitment to improving the retirement outcomes for all Australians. Gabby was a strong ambassador for WIS at the conference. Here's what she had to say about her time at CMSF:

I fell in love with superannuation in 2018 when I landed a job in the Hostplus call centre. Since then, I’ve pounced on every opportunity I could to learn and develop my skills in the hope of making a bigger contribution to our members at Hostplus. I applied for the Cate Wood CMSF Scholarship with that same energy; hoping that attending would give me a better understanding of some of the broader issues in our industry that I would be able to apply to my current role, and whatever roles I might be lucky enough to take on in the future.

Winning this scholarship was a game changing experience for me. I found it incredibly valuable to connect what I have learned over the past few years to the context of current events, and hear things discussed in ways I hadn’t thought about. The most impactful sessions for me focused on some of our biggest challenges like the housing crisis, an ever-evolving cyber threat environment and climate change. I found these equal parts confronting and informative; particularly when I think back to Manal al-Sharif’s address on Mercenary Spyware.

Overall, I’ve come back to my role with a better understanding of the opportunities ahead of us as an industry, and a lot of gratitude that I get to be a part of it.