Clear vision from a proven achiever

LAST week, the Committee for Geelong hosted our annual leadership breakfast with Victorian Governor Linda Dessau as guest speaker.

Despite her busy schedule, Ms Dessau made time to visit Geelong and admitted to having a soft spot for Victoria’s second largest city. Although she has a deep respect for the Geelong Football Club, she has not yet been recruited as a Cats supporter.

Ms Dessau was the second woman ever to serve on the AFL Commission and her allegiances to the Essendon Football Club saw her establish the Essendon Women’s Network.

Her life beyond football exemplifies diversity and social cohesion. The Committee for Geelong attributes those qualities as core not only to personal, but wide-ranging commercial and regional success.

Ms Dessau’s extensive community engagements through sport, the arts and heritage protection — together with her involvement with a wide cross-section of the public during her international legal career — stand her in great stead to comprehend opportunities for societal development.

During her presentation, she articulated that organisations like the Committee for Geelong were an example of “members coming together to achieve long-term strategic improvements”. She highlighted the importance of the committee’s role in actively providing thought leadership for Geelong.

“The essence of what makes us ‘us’ is likely to come from ‘us’,” she said.

Ms Dessau said that, rather than complaining and waiting for others to solve Geelong’s challenges, tangible action to address our community’s needs was required. From this, it is evident that Geelong will continue its transformation only through identifying long-term strategic objectives and building collaboration.

“We cannot expect our communities to flourish if we simply expect that our elected officials … do every single thing on our behalf,” she said.

“What I like most about the Committee for Geelong … is that it is innately about ‘doing something’.”

The Committee for Geelong has indeed been “doing something’’ for our region.

With support from the Commonwealth Bank, we collaborated with the United Nations Global Compact — Cities Programme and RMIT’s Centre for Urban Research to undertake international research on how other global cities have made transformative changes in the face of challenging economic climates.

The committee’s Winning from Second research paper was commended by the Governor.

“When I consider the important work initiated by the committee on what Geelong can learn from International Second Cities — a collaborative undertaking in itself — I see that a consistent finding was of the importance of a unified or collaborative approach to the development of the cities,” she said.

“(There) must be a strategic vision, embraced by both the public and private sectors, and the bringing together of government, industry and knowledge institutions … to achieve unity and co-operation in economic development.”

Using the experiences of other cities similar to Geelong, our research has already underpinned the City of Greater Geelong’s Our Future longterm plan.

While the committee is optimistic that this work can support our city’s future successes, a “One Geelong” collaboration approach remains key. Rebecca Casson is the Committee for Geelong CEO. Twitter @Comm4Geelong.