[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hi and welcome to this edition of the Sky Careers Podcast.
I'm your host, Mark Hodgson, and this week it's my absolute pleasure to speak with Nicole Powell.
She's the RTO Compliance and Development Manager, Leidos. And for those of you who don't know, and I didn't, Leidos is a global company of 47,000 people plus working in defence, space, aviation, government, health and a whole lot of other things.
And Nicole's other very recent claim to fame, I'm very proud of this on her behalf, is that she was recently awarded at the Australian Aviation Industry Awards in August, the Female Aviation Leader of the Year Award for Large business. So, with no further ado, Nicole, welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Mark.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Oh, you're super welcome. You're a rock star. I'm sort of.
I love people who win awards and I know you've got a great story and as I said in the preamble, we just love to learn the stories of people who've come into aviation and where they've ended up. And you've done very well and especially as it pertains to women. So I always start the same question.
Where did you go to school?
[00:01:34] Speaker B: I went to All Saints Anglican School down the Gold Coast.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Sport, I think. I wasn't, you know, I definitely had some aptitude there, but I wasn't great at applying it. When I was going through high school, I liked graphics, sport, more creative type stuff rather than the advanced maths and physics. That wasn't really my thing back then.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: Okay, so obvious. Next question. How did you go from there into aviation? What was your first role or what was your pathway?
[00:02:08] Speaker B: Oh, there's a bit of a blur of a pathway there. So when I finished school, I tried my hand at university, didn't really like that and was drawn to the military. I think I needed the structure and direction. So joined there when I was 19 and I was a combat system operator on the ANZAC Class frigates and then transferred across to air control shipborne. So we take care of the helicopters that are on the ships and bring in fighters for support or wherever it might be.
[00:02:39] Speaker A: That's Royal Australian Navy, isn't it?
[00:02:41] Speaker B: That's correct, yes. And that's where the spark sort of started for me with aviation. I find it fascinating and looked at becoming air crew with defence, but I was in a very critical role that was severely undermanned, so the transfer wasn't approved, but still sort of kept my eye on, you know, search and rescue, air crew on helos and stuff. Like that. And eventually we, my husband and I started a family and I left the Navy and went and taught some emergency response type stuff at a organization in WA which included helicopter underwater escape training and refueling and those sorts of things and just kept chasing. I was still looking to be air crew and that finally came, came through nine years ago when Leidos won the AMSA search and rescue contract. So went in there as a Drop Master and then pretty quickly went up to mission coordinator and trainer and now the RTO manager. So it's progressed well, but it's just amazing. Flying in the air and doing the things we do is so rewarding.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: Okay, thank you. I'm going to unpick a whole load of that because you know what you're talking about. I've got a little bit of an inkling about what you're doing. I'm a failed Royal Naval pilot myself.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: Are you?
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Yes. Failed Royal Naval pilot. What's a Drop Master and where did you do that?
[00:04:05] Speaker B: So on our jets up in. We've got four jets across the country, so Essen and Perth and Cairns and a spare aircraft. So on board those planes we have for five people, two pilots, a visual observer, which obviously is exactly what it sounds. They do visual search over water. The Drop Master also does visual search, but we have a door that we open in flight and sort of dispatch or parachute out some emergency supplies to people who really need them. So the Drop Master is control in control of the back area when, when we push big stores out.
[00:04:39] Speaker A: So this is what task are you doing? This is a fixed wing airplane, is that right?
[00:04:43] Speaker B: That's right. It's the fixed wing search and rescue jet ex business jet, modified extensively to have amazing sensors and capability and a very long range.
So we will get tasked by the rescue coordination center, go to wherever that need us to go and look for people over land, over water, could be anything.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And so, and so you did that and then, and then, and then take us through what specific you did after that. So we understand.
[00:05:11] Speaker B: Yeah. So after I got promoted to mission coordinator, they're on board the aircraft as well with a mission system and they operate all the sensors and they're the liaison between the rescue coordination center and almost like their eyes at the incident. So we do all that and hopefully most times we'll find, find whoever we're looking for and do what we can to help them, keep them safe and alive until a helicopter or a vehicle goes out to get them.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: Right, so you're dropping life rafts and food.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: Big deep Watering bumps and it's quite. Quite an extensive store load that we do have.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: Sounds fast. It sounds like a lot of training involved in all of that, Nicole. And I know you've got a bit of bent for training, but how was the training hard?
[00:06:05] Speaker B: It wasn't hard because it's really well designed and supported, but it's a very big change of pace for some people without aviation experience. But I can't think of the last time that somebody didn't get through the training. And I've been here for nine years.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: Okay, so. And so. And so you. So having gone from drop master to mission control, so event, you've. You've ended up as a. As a. As a trainer.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: That's right, yes.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: Yes. And so what does it. What does. What. What sort of led you to there? And what does a typical day look like for you?
[00:06:40] Speaker B: What got me there? I've all. I've always been in instruction. I was instructed in the Navy as well. I've worked at a variety of other RTOs in this sort of space, marine and aviation, and I just love it. I enjoy seeing someone come in really fresh with no experience and get them through the other end and they're just so happy, you know, it's very rewarding for them and me. So I don't think I'll ever walk away from that. I do enjoy it. I like having a voice in the content and, you know, nurturing people through it and watching their eyes when they do all this cool stuff like throw stores out of a jet at 200ft. It's. It's great.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: Sounds cool.
My favorite quote about leadership is that the role of a leader is to bring out the greatness in others.
[00:07:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I like that.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: It sounds like exactly. You got the same bug in helping people sort of achieve.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: Yeah. What was that? There was a second part question.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: So what is a typical day in your talk? A typical day in your role?
[00:07:44] Speaker B: Okay, I'll add. So now I'm obviously the RTO manager.
Typical days. I don't know if there is a typical day. It's been fairly different this Last sort of 18 months as we developed the certificate 3 and 4 in aviation or airborne operations.
But at this point, now that that's rolled out, I'll basically, we've implemented the training, but we're in a stage of monitoring it and making sure the implementation is compliant and valuable and relevant and people are understanding it. So that. That's where I'm at now for probably the next couple of months. But I do still get involved With a little bit of flying, a little bit of training.
Yeah, it's very diverse. I couldn't, I couldn't actually tell you what a typical day would look like because they're all so different.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Yeah, that's, it's. I mean, I've interviewed a lot of people, obviously through the podcast and early with our Sky Careers, real life, real stories, videos and, you know, your response there, I think is very typical and one of the reasons aviation is such a great career, everyone's oh, well, there's no such thing as a typical day. I do this, I do that and everything changes all the time in response to requirements. Because it's a dynamic environment, isn't it?
[00:08:55] Speaker B: It is, yeah. It's very.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: That's fantastic. So maybe let's switch now. So you won the Female Aviation Leader of the Year award, Large business. What's that all about? How did you do that?
[00:09:10] Speaker B: It was actually quite unexpected to even be nominated because I think when you're entrenched in a big program like I was, it becomes normalised and you maybe don't see the value of what it's bringing to everyone. So what we did, we've been an RTO for 25 odd years and we were probably under utilising it a little bit. We didn't have. We only had a handful of units of competency on our registration and we'd sort of been talking about getting full qualifications for our air crew for a number of years. But due to a number of other projects there wasn't capacity as in personnel while we set up some other important things.
But when this.
We kept kicking it down the road, kicking it down the road for a couple of years and it came to a point where we just need to do something because there's always something big going on and when is there going to be time to take someone out of their current role to do this, then put them back into their role. So they bit the bullet and we started the process of seeing what was on the national register that we could use and there was nothing. Every aviation emergency response type arena, it was all helicopter specific. There was no way that fixed wing could ever accomplish it. And that included people like, you know, Fire and Rescue and Police wing and Border Force and Search and Rescue, fixed wing that all these people who do amazing work every single day, they could, they had no access.
So we approached Industry Skills Australia, who are the gatekeeper to all the nationally recognized qualifications and said, hey, there's an issue here.
We had a meeting about it and they agreed wholeheartedly. That it was maybe not acceptable.
So we rallied up a few other operators and got support from bigger agencies and eventually they said, yep, let's do it, let's write something. Let's rewrite the qualifications so it can be applied to both rotary and fixed wing aircraft.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:17] Speaker B: And over a process of would have been nearly 10 months, myself and some other specialist personnel from all those other companies met what were we called with a technical committee for the project and we'd meet up and we'd rewrite things and try and write it. So it suits everybody. And also that it's future proof because as you know, aviation is changing drastically and we don't want to have to go and rewrite next year because we're short sighted.
So it was done and went through all the government process, which was quite.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: Lengthy, I was going to say.
I've had a few sort of experiences in the RTO world, in the accreditation world. And for those, those who don't, it is, it is, it's arduous, isn't it? It's a very detailed process and necessarily so. But it's, it's not. You don't just write something over the weekend and submit it and you get a tick. It's.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: It's.
Right, yeah. If only. But no, that, yes. A lot of government, government bodies are involved in that process and they obviously have a lot of things on their plate as well then.
But it's finally there and it's interesting because when we first started this project, you know, you tell the air crew, which are all the people working in the back of the plane, we've got a border force plane as well, so both planes.
And there wasn't as much interest as I thought there would be, but once they were approved, everybody was absolutely thrilled. I think, I think the way I read into that was that people who do what we do don't generally do it because they want a qualification, they do it because they want purpose and they want satisfaction and all the action that comes along with it.
So it was interesting to see the shift from we're doing this and now it's done. It was surprising. I think in the end they did appreciate that they deserved the qualification and the recognition for all their training and service and whatever else. So it's super rewarding getting to the end of that process.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: I think that's so powerful, Nicola, because they're the kind of get shit done people who kind of don't. They diminish the. Oh. Of just that thing. Oh, yeah, we just, we just, we Just winched down or we just threw out or we just. Yeah, we just threw through kind of terrible weather and a great. And did this. It was nothing kind of. They sort of very self. Self effacing and don't, don't necessarily or probably most don't want to be in the limelight. So I think it's such a great that you put together, put together an endeavor to put together a qualification that recognizes because it's such a broad suite of skills, there's specific skills in terms of equipment and process and so. But also there's. I don't know, I kind of got a keeping calm kind of skill and being agile and adaptable and able to retask and refocus on the fly without panicking or seeking lots of approval levels that may be not available due to. Due to the situation.
So I think it's an incredibly wide ranging set of skills and competencies and mindset that you're recognizing.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: Yeah, not everybody has that but they've normalised it over the years that they've been here, so.
Interesting.
[00:14:25] Speaker A: That's fantastic. So what has anything changed on the back of the. Of winning the award or how do you see the award being used, as it were, for furthering what you're trying to do?
[00:14:42] Speaker B: I think it's a good mechanism to prove that women can do what they do anything in aviation. They've just got to put their foot through the door. Maybe there's some hesitation through misconceptions in the. In aviation, I'm not sure.
So I think as a company we'll leverage that to say, you know, you can do this and Nicole knows this and she's done it well and you know, she's made effective change from a personal level. I don't love the spotlight stages and lights, it's fine.
But I don't do it for the recognition, if that makes sense.
Amazing to do obviously, and a great experience, but I don't know, I don't know what we'll do with it really. It's. Yeah.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: Maybe I'll suggest an answer for it, I think. And one of the things we're trying to do, we're doing with sky careers, I mean you become without seeking, you become an ambassador and a role model for what is possible. One of the main things we're doing with Skype careers is to elevate the participation of women in the broad aviation program.
What I love about this conversation is it touches on so many things. Touches on training, touches on flying, touches on air crew, touches operations and, and Operations and so. And so many different things. And that, to me, what the industry is about is about teamwork. It's about adaptability. It's about a great mindset. It's a great mindset.
And what I'm loving about what you're doing is you are, as you say, you are a role model, unwittingly. I mean, I don't necessarily want to shine a spade in the limelight, but you are an ambassador that shows other people what is possible in the industry and with a bit of perseverance. Right?
[00:16:37] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: Fantastic. So what do. What do you. What do you do. What do you do when you're. You're not.
You're not. Not at work. What other interests you have?
[00:16:45] Speaker B: Well, it's changed over the last few years, actually. I used to be quite into triathlon.
Yeah, basically just triathlon, really. But I had a very bad injury last year which had me off my feet for about five months. I'm still recovering from that, so switched gears and I'm riding a bit of a dirt bike just on some side tracks.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: I know a couple of people who ride dirt bikes and they're always at the chiropractors.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: Oh, no, I'm very hesitant. I think aging a little bit takes that fearlessness out of you. So it's. It's just a means of getting out into, you know, the rainforest. No phone, no people, just a bit of a disconnect. That's the joy I find in it. I'm certainly not ripping around and risking breaking a hip or anything, so controlled as much as I can be.
And what else do we do? We go away as a family a fair bit, camping and things like that. We've got some properties down south which, you know, beachfront stuff. But everything I do out of work, I think, is just to disconnect and relax and just take a bit of time out. Because I think when you go too hard over the weekends for too long, I find that I get to work, I'm like, oh, it's going to be a hard day. And I don't like doing that because you want to be proactive and, you know, do all these things. We do, but definitely slowing down. Right. As I get a little bit older.
[00:18:13] Speaker A: Yeah. And tell us a little bit about your teeth. So you're in Cairns. How big is your teeth, Lidos in Cairns?
[00:18:20] Speaker B: Oh, well, we've got the Search and Rescue crew and we've got the Border Force crew, engineering and mission support office. So, I mean, I would be guessing, but probably about 100130 of this base.
We've got bases there's Adelaide, Essendon, Cairns, Broome, Darwin and Perth.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: Wow. Okay.
And any idea what's next for me.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: Or for Leidos or the rto?
[00:18:55] Speaker A: Whichever.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: Okay, what's next for the rto? Like I said, we're just monitoring this latest implementation to make it run efficiently and it's a marked improvement on some previous training. So we did use the CERT for development phase to also just redo everything we have. So it's modern and, you know, more E learning and all these different learning styles is included. So just sitting on that for a moment, but we are looking at some other viable qualifications which we may bring on board, but not settled or anything yet.
For me, it's interesting, obviously, still in the rto, seeing which direction we take, but now that the bulk of that work's done, I'll probably go back to more flying because I just love it and it's been hard not to be in the air as often as I would like.
And Lydos moving forward, we're always looking at new contracts, so I'm not part of the business development team, so I'm probably not the right person to speak to that. But we're always moving forward.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: Okay, let's let.
As we, as we start to land the plane as we're on our chat and thank you so much.
You just talked about flying. Tell me what, what would take. Take the list of. What's your, what's your sort of favorite recollection, your, Your best, your best flying story, the mission that you be part of.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: I honestly cannot pick one. I've been involved in some very big search and rescues where there was, you know, we were the aircraft up high and there was, you know, 10, 14 other aircraft below us searching for a. Yeah, paraglider that had been missing. So that was probably the biggest one I've done in terms of the volume of air units.
So that was busiest.
I can't think of one that stands out because there is so many. But my favorite thing, broadly across all the jobs, is that when you maybe you're searching for somebody over water and you spot them and they might not have any batteries or can't communicate with you and you open the door up, send out a package with a radio and a satellite phone, whatever else they need, and the second you call them, you call up recipe 330 on the plane above you. Are you okay? And the passion in their voice and the emotion and the gratitude is just makes my skin crawl every time.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: Oh, that's cool. Dear, are you okay? Probably not.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: Probably not.
Yeah.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: Just sort of go for a swim. 400 kilometers out.
[00:21:40] Speaker B: That's right. Yeah. They're never okay, but I mean, I think they just need that human compassion and the relief that they're talking to somebody. And a lot of the time you don't get the facts initially because they're quite overwhelmed and obviously a bit emotional. But as you start to work through that and you hear in their voice they're starting to relax and we're telling them somebody's coming. And it's just the human interaction is fantastic.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: For me, that's such a prize.
That's fantastic. So, Nicole, the last question I always ask, and I'll make this better than when I said the first question I was asked and messed it up. But the last question.
What advice would you give to other young men and women, and particularly women, I think in this conversation, looking for an aviation career.
[00:22:32] Speaker B: I probably recommend starting off going to the aviation shows and you can see what everybody has on offer. They can give you pathway opportunities. You can find someone who grabs your attention. You can get information on what role suits you best. If you don't have any qualifications, that shouldn't stop you. There is always someone out there willing to take people from scratch. We're one of them.
We're taking a lifeguards and cabin crew and not, not all aviation people, people from retail, from tourism. There's always a way in and you can work your way up to whatever you want to be. And I think as soon as you get a taste of the aviation industry, you might get pulled multiple different ways. As you start to see things that take your attention, just do it. If it's not for you, you're not trapped there. There's no one tying it to the, to the table, so to speak. But I wouldn't necessarily believe some of the misconceptions that everybody's grossly qualified and experienced. If that is not the case, everybody starts somewhere.
[00:23:39] Speaker A: That's gorgeous. Thank you. And that. And as I said, I've asked that question to probably 50 aviation professionals, many of them women. And I think pretty much everyone said the same thing. Make your own way.
It's snakes and ladders, Lots of ladders, the occasional stake, but mainly ladders.
And have a good mindset, a good attitude, work hard, meet people, network.
And every time I hear people talk about it, it always sounds like where people arrive and where you've arrived now via the Navy and other things, and now you're heading up an RTO but you're flying and who knows what's next?
And it's not boring, right?
[00:24:27] Speaker B: No, no. And there's a great deal of passion in the industry as well, so I think it grows on you and you enjoy your job, which I think is really, really important for everybody. Not to say aviation, but very supportive. It's inclusive.
It's just a great space to be in.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: Fantastic. Well, Nicole, thank you so much for being a guest on Sky Careers.
Yeah. Congratulations again on the. The award, and modestly for you, but also for the team. And I think, you know, I think it's such a great project you've done to create. To create a qualification and recognize all that amazing work that those people who don't seek, like, limelight in the back of. In the back of aircraft probably doing a whole load of stuff that most of us never know and perhaps hopefully never need. But when we do, it's good to know it's happening. It's good to know they're being appreciated and they're given training. So thanks so much for your time.
[00:25:22] Speaker B: No problem. Thanks again.
[00:25:24] Speaker A: Thanks, Nicole.
[00:25:31] Speaker C: Thanks for listening to the Sky Careers podcast.
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