Vicky Au: Leader, mentor and knowledge broker

Knowledge Brokering

Vicky describes herself as a knowledge broker: someone who facilitates sharing and collaboration, bringing together perspectives from diverse sectors to solve problems. 

“The role of the knowledge broker is translation and connection,” Vicky says. “It’s about adding value by bridging worlds and bringing different parts of the puzzle together.” 

The University of Melbourne Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Arts grad majored in physics, languages and political sciences, before going on to complete a PhD in Physics at the Australian National University, and leadership development at Harvard Business School. This combination of education has allowed her to put herself in the different shoes of people in diverse industries.

“Thinking about problems from a scientist’s perspective is different to the way that a business person thinks about the same problem,” explains Vicky. “If I am going to be contributing the best of my ability here, I need to understand how someone from each side looks at this, which means immersing myself in that educational experience and seeing how they get taught.” 

The Hydrogen Industry Mission

In early 2020, Vicky took on a new role as Engagement and Strategy Lead on CSIRO’s Hydrogen Industry Mission. The Mission is one of a set of innovative solutions that CSIRO has proposed in response to some of Australia's most pressing challenges. 

“Each mission is a major collaborative research program that no one organization can solve by itself,” explains Vicky. “We need to work together across government, industry and the research community to find ways to address these challenges.

“The idea of the Hydrogen Industry Mission is to build a clean hydrogen industry for Australia, which has great capacity to support broad sector decarbonization.”

Vicky is working to ensure acceptance and viability at all levels of the future industry.

“There’s the production, the storage and distribution, and then the user side, or the offtake,” explains Vicky. “If we want an industry at the end of this, we can’t concentrate on any one of them. We need to support all of them together.

Maintaining self-confidence 

Having worked across various STEM sectors, Vicky is accustomed to being the only woman in a meeting room. 

“It’s really not good from a diversity perspective,” she shares. “But I’m doing my bit to try to bring some diversity into it. It has to start somewhere.” 

On a personal level, Vicky stresses how important it is to develop self-confidence.

“Women tend to be more courteous about waiting for a pause in a conversation before making their point heard,” Vicky says. “The male voice can be naturally louder and deeper, and it just carries through. In a meeting situation, you can move forward to indicate that you want to say something, but I think it’s harder [in video meetings].”

Vicky encourages people to have the confidence to speak up and establish their voice so as not to regret holding back but also remembering not to feel unnecessarily marginalised.

“I’ve come out from Q+A sessions where the man that I’ve presented with has given an answer and I’ve thought, ‘I could’ve given a better answer’,’” shares Vicky. “It’s important to acknowledge underrepresentation, but don’t let that play in your mind as feeling like you’re on the backfoot because you are in a minority. The fact that you’re there represents something very strong.” 

Developing self-awareness 

Vicky has been a part of the University of Melbourne’s STEM Industry Mentoring program since 2019, and seeks out mentoring opportunities in her workplace too. She sees mentoring as an important facet of giving and receiving 360-Feedback.  

“I strongly believe in understanding what the image and person is that people are seeing, versus the image that you think you are projecting,” Vicky explains. “You think people see all of you, but they don’t. They see you in the role that you’re performing. Is there a mismatch between the capabilities that you think you have, and the capabilities that people see?”

As a mentor, Vicky gets her mentees developing their self-awareness early as a starting point.  

Getting a perspective on how you are being perceived from someone other than the person that you directly report to can be a valuable tool for identifying any gaps that might be unintentionally holding you back from progressing to the role that you ultimately want. 

“Once you identify those gaps, then you can start thinking about strategies and actions that you can take to address them,” Vicky explains. 

Vicky sees the role of the mentor as helping guide mentees through situations from an objective perspective.

“When you’re looking to go up into a level of seniority of responsibility that you haven’t had a chance to display before, it’s important to seek feedback from people beyond your direct reporting line. How do they see you? Are there things that you are not aware of yourself that weigh on the effectiveness of people that rely on you?”

“I try and put a structure to the problem that is not too unfamiliar to the mentee,” Vicky explains. “The challenge that they are facing is already scary and unfamiliar, so if you give them an idea about how to tackle it that is just as foreign, they won’t feel that you’ve really helped.

“As a mentor, you need to practice the same thing that you try to encourage in your mentee, which is to look at the problem from a different perspective; for a mentor, this means to see it from the perspective of the person who’s asking you for help.” 

Opportunities to improve

“Going on a journey together and coming to a better place is really rewarding. I always genuinely ask for feedback: ‘Has this been helpful?’ If the other person gotten something from the interaction, then that is the ‘yay’ moment,” Vicky shares. “You need to really care about people and work together with them through whatever it is that they’re trying to get through. You need to want to understand the person beyond the problem.” 

But aside from personal satisfaction, mentoring for Vicky is also about giving back to something she believes in. 

“I know what a difference certain words made to me at different points in my career,” Vicky says. “I just feel very fortunate to be where I am. I feel very grateful to the people that have helped me along the way, who probably haven’t even realized it.

“To be a real leader, you need to take time and effort out of your own day to day to look beyond what you need to do, and what the people around you need in their lives and their careers.”

Vicky has a fundamental belief in equal access to education and career opportunities for all. 

“I want to help people in less advantageous situations, so that everyone has an equal chance to come to something more than what people thought they could,” Vicky says.

Connect with Vicky Au on LinkedIn, and join the Science Alumni Group.