Our new CEO

By Joanna Cave, CEO GIA
 

I am thrilled and excited to be joining the team at Greenlife Industry Australia (GIA) as its new CEO.

I offer the Australian horticultural community over 25 years’ successful leadership experience as CEO of a variety of peak bodies, member organisations and not-for-profit associations, firstly in the United Kingdom (UK) and from 2009 in Australia. In addition, I have experience working as a Strategic Consultant for the nursery industry at a senior business level.

Leading organisations into new eras has been a theme of my career as a CEO. I have a track record of successfully building capacity combined with extensive experience of operational management, strategic planning and stakeholder engagement. All my roles have required me to engage in advocacy at the highest level in government and across the political spectrum. I hope that this experience will prove useful to GIA as we embrace the next stage of its development.

I am writing this after only a few days in the job but already one thing strikes me: for a peak industry body to represent such a large and diverse community is rare. Whilst there are certainly challenges in meeting the needs and expectations of so many different parts of the supply chain, the GIA family is undoubtedly something to cherish and celebrate. I use the word family intentionally: working together is the most effective way to achieve change, maintain stability - and how we will sustain one another.

Going back to my own family for a moment, I was born in the UK, in the northern county of Yorkshire. There my two sisters and I grew up on a small farm where we produced our own food, chased recalcitrant flocks of sheep around the paddocks and rode fat ponies in the local gymkhanas. We took for granted entirely the abundant gardens surrounding us that were created by my mother, a green-thumbed school teacher who really should have been a horticulturist.

There is no doubt that growing up in such a green environment inhabits my DNA and emerged later in life when I graduated from Ryde School of Horticulture, first in Horticulture and then in Landscape Design. This followed my move in 2009 from London to Sydney where I settled with my Australian husband Brett. Five years ago, our family, which now includes our son Sam, relocated to the Southern Highlands region of NSW, claimed by many as the gardening capital of the state. In many ways it does feel like a homecoming, albeit in the much more exotic setting of the extraordinary Australian landscape that I have come to hold so dear.  

Being appointed as GIA’s next CEO is a great privilege. Clearly, GIA occupies a unique and important position in the Australian horticultural industry and has achieved a lot for its members in its short life. I am also mindful however that GIA is in its infancy with much more to learn and do and was born of a long history that needs to be respected and understood.

Many of you have already reached out to welcome me: thank you! COVID permitting, my priority in coming weeks and months is to meet the GIA family in person and I am looking forward to that opportunity with delight and optimism. It has been said to me that, of all the English clans, the people of Yorkshire have most in common with Australians in their absence of pretention and straightforward manner of communication. I do not know if that is true. However, please know that I welcome and encourage honest and open dialogue with all GIA’s members and stakeholders as we move forward together. It will be an honour to serve you.