We caught up with one of this year's Emerging Leaders cohort, Sally Bartlett, Information Management Lead - Operations at City of Charles Sturt to find out how she's finding the program so far.

What made you sign up for the Emerging Leaders Program?

Following a transition to a new team and team leader position, I saw the Emerging Leaders Program as an opportunity to increase my knowledge and understanding of local government and further develop my leadership skills and confidence, in order to become a more effective and valuable leader within my portfolio and the wider Charles Sturt team.

The most recent module focused on ‘A Rural Perspective’ – what were some of your takeaways from this module?

Firstly, as someone who has only worked for a metropolitan council, it was interesting to learn about the different challenges facing rural councils and how they manage these through sharing of resources with neighbouring councils.

I was also surprised to hear that regional communities place higher expectations on senior leadership staff representing council at community events etc, whereas in my experience this has predominately been the role of the Elected Members in metropolitan councils (in most instances).

Lastly, I really loved hearing about all of projects (development, open space and recreation improvements etc) that the Rural City of Murray Bridge has and is continuing to deliver to improve liveability in their area and achieve their target of boosting population to 25,000 by 2030. What are you most looking forward to as the program progresses? I am looking forward to working more closely with the members of my project and module teams, investigating our project topic in further detail, delivering an interesting and engaging module session and most importantly, at the conclusion of the program, bringing back my learnings to my portfolio and the organisation.