Science that makes a difference

*Names have been removed from this post to ensure anonymity as this post was for internal purposes only.

Growing up in Brazil, [job position] [name] cultivated a healthy respect for the ocean and its surrounding environment.

Summer holidays spent in a fishing village called Ponta Negra (Black Point), 45 minutes

north of Rio, with her parents and sister, cultivated the seeds of passion and direction for her career today.

“So much of my adult life has been shaped by how I grew up, I spent a lot of my holidays as a kid at the beach, swimming, snorkelling and exploring,” [name] said.

“When I finished high school I wanted to study oceanography, but my parents steered me away from that option, so I studied chemical engineering instead.”

After completing her chemical engineering degree in Natal, [name] headed to Paris to do her honours and PhD in marine geochemistry at the University of Paris (now Sorbonne).

After Paris, this high achiever headed back to Rio for a post doc, followed by another post doc at La Trobe University in Bendigo where her life in Australia began.

[name] came to Adelaide in 2002 to work at the [business] and then joined SA Water in 2010.

“SA Water provided me with the opportunity to make a difference by not just working on blue sky research but be involved in real solutions to make real decisions that can protect our biodiverse coastal ecosystems for the future.”

[name] now leads the work on understanding the impact of our wastewater along the coast, how we can mitigate that impact and explore innovative ways to restore habitat and seagrasses in particular.

“We’re partnering with external research organisations and universities to deliver a range of projects, modelling impact and looking at how we're going to manage discharge,” [name] said.

“We use remote monitoring satellites, aerial photography from planes and drones and field surveys to measure and make sense of the information we’re gathering.

“At first it was difficult to prove our environmental improvement programs were making a difference, but we were looking too close to shore, further out there’s thousands of hectares of seagrasses naturally recruiting, in areas that were lost in previous decades.

“This is exciting work that’s constantly changing and through the efforts of a great team of people we’re answering specific questions about how we can continue our operations in a sustainable way.

“We’re actively improving ecosystem health through proactive environmental leadership and real action.”

As [name] continues her important work for us, she also continues her important work at home with [name] raising their daughters [name] (15) and [name] (12) with the same healthy respect for our environment by hiking, bodyboarding and her new passions for stand-up paddle boarding and volunteering for Trees for Life A true champion of our Environment Corporate Strategy through and through.

Ponta Negra beach

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