Meet Karen video transcript
[Karen, General Manager Customer & Community Group]: Every single person that works here just comes to work everyday for exactly the same reason is to get better outcomes for customers.
My name is Karen Willis. I am the General Manager, Customer and Community Group at Water Corporation.
My beginning of my day is normally running around trying to figure out whether they (my kids) have done any homework, whether they have got sport, whether that needs to be packed for the day. I'm lucky at the moment that my oldest son is driving so he can take them off to school.
My work day then starts. I try to segment my week as much as possible to make sure I've got time for all the things that are important to the business and to the group. It might be touching base with a couple of projects, leads to find out how projects are going, having a one-on-one with a section manager or a business unit head to get some feedback on what's happening in their space.
A couple of external meetings to bring some insight into the business or to provide some experience that we've got in the business to those outside committees.
I am also Chair of Southern Seawater Desalination Plant Alliance. Travelling down there to Binningup on a regular basis is a great experience, getting to see the guys at the plant down there and oversee the way Water Corporation is utilising that alliance.
We're involved in not only the way that we engage with customers from the very first time that they become a customer of Water Corporation, but also right the way through to how we educate customers from our education program and through our demand management programs.
We work not only in how we can conserve water, how we use water, but how we access and source water as well. And we have a great responsibility to make sure that message - the importance of the water cycle is communicated out to ou customers.
I've been at Water Corporation since 1998 and I can honestly say that no 2 days are ever the same. And that's just amazing. I mean that's just a wonderful environment to be in where you're constantly stimulated, and always looking for new opportunities and looking for new ways to solve issues and problems for our customers.
I started off at Water Corporation as a Marketing Coordinator, worked through that marketing's field, worked across then customer insights and customer experience really built the careers as you like, all the way through those years and then was fortunate to get this role a couple of years ago.
In the early 2000's when the drought hit WA, we stood up a project team looking at engaging with the government and industry stakeholders in terms of building the first desalination plant that Australia had ever seen to standing up some of the water efficiency measures and bringing in sprinkler restrictions as they were called then for the very first time.
One of the other ones was when we were looking at standing up community engagement to support the drive that we were seeing from our customers. They really want to be engaged with the decisions that we were making as a business.
I'm a bit of a Lego nut. So we have like a little secret Lego WhatsApp group. We do absolutely have a little bit of a subculture of Lego enthusiasts across Water Corporation.
The other thing that brings me here every day is the people. I'm just so lucky to lead customer and community group with such a passionate, really dedicated group of people. That's just a joyful environment to be part of every day.
So I'm very fortunate.