Marietta Courtney is so passionate about education and children that she lights up when she’s talking about her school. Marietta, the 43rd person I’ve met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, is principal of Cameragal Montessori School. I was really drawn to Marietta’s warm personality and the enthusiasm she showed for Montessori’s unique [...]
What do you do if you’re in sales and your customers are playing hard to get? That’s the challenge that’s recently fallen into the lap of Vien Luong, the 42nd person I’ve met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers. After a successful career in operations and pre-sales, Vien was appointed sales director of [...]
Earlier this year, I read a profound quote from Michael Port: “Many business problems are simply personal problems in disguise.” This is something Shilpa Kulshrestha sees regularly in her work as a life and career coach. Shilpa, the 41st person I’ve met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, says the reason people don’t [...]
I’m in the process of having lunch with 500 strangers for fun. But Peter Hocking, the 40th person I’ve met, does something similar for a living. The reason Peter is a prolific networker is because he owns the Australasian franchise for EGN (Executives' Global Network), an international organisation that holds tailored peer groups (similar to mastermind [...]
It was a real eye-opener to spend time with Tony Ferguson, the 39th person I’ve met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers. Tony, who’s been in the NSW Police Force since 1987, made me realise just how physically and intellectually demanding it can be to serve as a cop. The intellectual stimulation comes [...]
Scott McCallum, the 38th person I’ve met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, is doing retirement the right way. Scott retired from his university job in early 2019, after spending the previous 30 years teaching computing at Macquarie University – and the previous 25 in the same office! Despite officially leaving the workforce, [...]
When Adelaide royalty tell you they’re visiting Sydney for work and they’d like to meet, you don’t turn down the invitation. That was how I found myself hanging out with Santo Arabia, the 37th person I’ve met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers. You know how sometimes you just hit it off with [...]
Captain Nadeesh Gulawita, the 36th person I’ve met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, has had an action-packed life. When he was 29, Nadeesh became the youngest sea captain in Sri Lanka, just 11 years after starting his maritime career. His first job was a 12-month assignment as a junior cadet officer on [...]
Cullen Haynes, the 35th person I’ve met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, must be the busiest person in Sydney. He wakes up at 3.30am. He reads. He exercises. He arrives at the office just after 7am. He spends his days rushing from meeting to meeting (our lunch was his fourth appointment of [...]
Imagine this. You organise to meet a stranger for lunch. You say hello at 12.30pm. You say goodbye at 5pm. Sounds like a good lunch, no? Adrian Lea was the 34th person I’ve met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers. And, yes, it was a bloody good lunch. Adrian is a force of [...]
