This is Sarah. A hippy from the hills of Lismore, she moved to the big smoke of Vegas to study law/ journalism. She got her first job as the social media manager for Virgin ‘because I knew how to use Twitter’ but then moved to Melbourne for a corporate job where…
You brought a bed into the office?
I bought an adult size camping bed so I could sleep under my desk at my government job. My manager took a photo of it and put it on Twitter, which is when I realised it was ok to just do what you want.
HERO. Other weird places you’ve slept?
- in the roof of a cafe in Sydney
- on a cruiseship with Archbishop Desmund Tutu
- 27 couches across San Fran
- with scorpions in a hut in Cambodia
- the Fairmont penthouse where Obama sleeps ($15,000 a night – above)
- a lux mansion with 10 mates, but there were only 4 bedrooms
- Mission to Seafarers on the Yarra where old sailors came to get wasted each night for $2 a pot
Bro tell me how you are a CEO?
I Googled ‘What does a CEO do’ and it’s three things: 1) Tell the company’s story 2) Hire and hang onto great people 3) Make sure there is always money in the bank. When I realised I can do those things, I got CEO printed on my business card. Haven’t looked back.
You set a world first, innit?
We were sick of going to tech events in dank basements and being fed beer and pizza for 3 days straight. So in 2014 my mates and I put on an all-women hackathon starring sunlight, cupcakes and yoga where we made tech and friends. Literally, no one else had done it before.
Now you’re the CEO of Girl Geek Academy.
We thought “well, what ELSE hasn’t been done before? Now we teach girls coding and run career incubators for women in the games industry and work experience at tech companies and all this stuff that we decided should exist. So at Girl Geek Academy we teach girls coding, run career incubators for women in the games industry, work experience at tech companies and all this other stuff we decided should exist.
So Geek tell me, how do you internet?
A Geek is someone who loves to get really passionate about something. We love to get our net Geek on. We realised you need 3 skill sets to build the internet: hackers, hustlers and hipsters. Hackers code, hustlers sell sh*t and hipsters make things look good.
Finalist for Woman of the Year for Cosmo last year AND you’ve got a book series out too – binch SLOW DOWN
YES! We were approached by Penguin Random House to write a children’s book series. Girl Geeks comes to all good bookstores on July 2! It’s like the Babysitters Club but for girls in tech
What’s the future like from where you see it??
We have to fight for our future. So whatever you want to see, it won’t arrive without effort. At the moment the future for me is about equality for women, and a climate future. I’m going all-in on that right now!
I feel like you can do no wrong, is this fact?
I feel like this is a trick question to get me to reveal how bad my eating habits are? I used to only eat dessert for my meals – cake for breakfast, ice-cream for lunch, mudslide for dinner. When I hit 27 I started to force myself to eat veggies (The Sprink once taught me that microwaving broccoli in a plastic bag isn’t cooking, it is wrong), but thankfully I found me a man who loves to cook!