Episode 27 Collective Conversations | Talking Property with Nancy Chen

Collective Conversations | Talking Property with Nancy Chen

In this week’s topical Talking Property Podcast, host Suzanne Jones is joined by one of youngest women to have risen as a powerful voice in Australian infrastructure, Nancy Chen, consultant – infrastructure advisory, Arup. International Women’s Day has shone the spotlight on the need to attract more women into STEM. Nancy at just 24 years old, is a wonderful example that girls are interested in infrastructure.

Nancy reflects on how her parents landed in Australia with absolutely nothing and worked extremely hard to afford the best possible education for their daughter. Working as a waiter till late in the evenings, Nancy’s father put her through a private school education.

In this inspirational podcast, Nancy opens up about her personal journey and talks about how when at high school she identified a natural flare for numbers and decided to pursue accounting. While at Melbourne University she began to develop her passion for the tangible nature of infrastructure assets and after starting her working life as an accountant, then auditor she moved into in-depth analysis of infrastructure asset classes, relocating from Melbourne to Sydney with PWC.

Dispelling the myth that girls are not intrigued by infrastructure, Nancy enthusiastically talks about how its really about the foundation of our modern society and the cohesive pulling together and transportation of people from one location to another. She is proof it is just as interesting to girls to investigate the connection of a population to vital utilities – airports, rail, electricity networks, water, desalination plants and even real estate registry systems. And given the rate and amount of privatisation that has occurred in Australia, it’s vital for the future that decisions and knowledge is gender diverse and representative of our entire population.

In such a short space of time, Nancy has worked on major projects that have attracted substantial media interest. She shares about the challenges with achieving work/life balance when working on tenders till 4am in the morning. She highlights the extreme pressures on young women to go the extra mile in order to succeed in their careers and how being the only woman in the room she was once assumed to be an admin assistant and required to bring cups of tea and water. These experiences drove her to flip the selection process on its head – she began to evaluate companies whose values and culture aligned with hers. She proactively reached out to Arup, after researching the company and believing it was a wonderful fit for her career aspirations and has not looked back.