do you just pick up the conversation where it left off.
As a barrister you’re on your own. So you’ve got to have that appetite for exploring the unknown, together with a certain belief that you’ve built the skills to cope with it. When I was appointed Queen’s Counsel in November 2015, Pat’s was one of the first calls I received, and one of the first people whose call I returned. I really see that no matter where my career in the law goes, the genesis of it was with my early days with Pat. It permeates a lot of how I think about the law, and how I conduct myself.
There are an enormous number of people who have worked for and been mentored by Pat, and gone to the bar. He has affected so many people’s careers because he takes an individual interest in each person.
My advice to others wanting a mentor is this—if you’re interested in mentoring you need to seek it out and approach the person you want as a mentor. It doesn’t have to be a formal arrangement, but put yourself in a position to soak up everything you can. You have to be very open to whatever they’ve got to share, whether it’s what you expected or not, or whether you agree with it or not. Just be there to listen and learn and take from it the things that apply to you.
Reflections
For mentors
How can you call out gender bias or discrimination when you see it occurring in your mentee’s experience?
How do you choose the mentoring style appropriate for the situation? In which circumstances would you choose to urge your mentee to take a particular career step versus allowing them to discover their own path?
Where can you find opportunities to throw your mentee in at the deep end but provide safeguards to ensure she swims, not sinks?
How can you encourage your mentee to trust her instincts?
For mentees
Where can you find opportunities to ‘play where the ball isn’t’ in your career?
Which situations make you feel confident? How can you apply this confidence across other situations where you lack confidence?
What are your self-confidence-busters? Which ones would you like to work on with your mentor?
In the absence of a formal mentor program who can you seek out and approach as a possible mentor?
What courageous steps or decisions have you made? In what ways have these decisions built up your courage?
Ruby Anandajayasekeram
Ruby Anandajayasekeram is a Senior Legal Counsel at Shell Australia and works virtually from Melbourne with culturally diverse teams from around the world supporting Shell’s global downstream acquisitions, divestments and post-closing team in the Asia Pacific region. She has been with Shell since 2004 and has worked in both their Melbourne and London offices supporting a variety of Shell’s businesses. Prior to that, she worked at Allens Arthur Robinson (now Allens Linklaters). Ruby is passionate about and actively champions diversity and inclusion initiatives both within her organisation and externally, with a particular focus on the legal profession. She has had many successful mentoring relationships over her career, both as a mentor and as a mentee.
Keerthi Ravi
Keerthi has recently completed a Judge’s Associateship in the Supreme Court and has recently co-founded the Diverse Women’s Mentoring Association, a non-profit association which matches diverse women with mentors from professional services backgrounds, largely based on her experiences of being mentored by wonderful people such as Ruby.
Ruby’s story
Education, sacrifice, family
From as early as I can remember, my parents instilled three core values in me—the power of education, the significance of sacrifice, and the importance of family. It is impossible to understand who I am without understanding my parents’ story. Both Sri Lankan, they met and fell in love at university. Their love story and marriage challenged both the religion and the class distinction norms of the day. Despite their different backgrounds, they both recognised the power of education to provide opportunities in life and sought high educational success for all their children.
Sacrifice and family values are an integral part of their story. When my dad received a scholarship to study his PhD in Canada, my parents needed to choose whether to go their separate ways or marry and move overseas so my dad could pursue his doctorate. Recognising the long-term value of this opportunity for their future family, they left their country of origin as newlyweds with only 75cents to their name and a strong determination to build a better life for their children—a typical migrant story but also a decision which required my mum to sacrifice her own education and career. At this time, the civil war had started in Sri Lanka, so my family continued to follow my dad’s career and the different countries it took him before we migrated to Australia.
How I see myself and how others see me
I am often asked the question ‘Where are you from?’ I respond by saying I’m Australian, which then triggers the next question ‘Yes, but where are you really from?’ How do I answer that question when although my parents are Sri Lankan, the first time I visited the island was only two years ago? Let alone that I was born in Canada, grew up in Kenya and Tanzania where I went to international schools, had short stints in Mexico and Jamaica, all before coming to Australia at the age of thirteen.
These conversations have made me realise that there are two realities in life—your own image of yourself, and then how others see you. Navigating your career, and life more broadly is about understanding and reconciling these two realities. Mentoring affords an opportunity to both mentors and mentees to facilitate this understanding and reconciliation.
Others will often judge you first by the way you look and, if you look different to them, will assume you come from a different cultural heritage and possess different values. Yet whilst appearing different to many around me, I don’t define myself by this outward difference. Instead, whilst celebrating my cultural heritage, I define myself as Australian and believe that hard work and merit have been the basis of my achievements, and that I have been judged on those factors alone rather than on the colour of my skin or my cultural heritage.
That is not to say I have been immune from biases and assumptions in my career, but from my perspective, these probably stemmed from my gender rather than my cultural heritage. After having my daughter, people (with good intentions) sometimes assumed my commitment to family would be at the expense of my career, without necessarily asking me whether those assumptions were valid. In some ways, I similarly applied my own unconscious biases, values and assumptions when I became a mother. Having been brought up with a mother at home and a father who worked, I naturally assumed it was my role to be the primary carer. But I also wanted to have it all—seamlessly balance motherhood with a successful, uninterrupted career. When I tried to return to full time work, I really struggled and this dream hit a reality check. My wonderful husband stepped in and offered to work part-time to care for our daughter, and when we discussed it, it never occurred to me that we could have had that conversation earlier—I had simply assumed it was my job to care for our child and juggle my career while he continued to work full-time. Everyone has a different journey and needs to work out what works best for them as a family. Once he stepped in, I have really understood the value of letting go, to ask for support and not attempt to control everything.
Balancing
