Maeva Elliott: Watching the Earth Melt
 Maeva Elliott
Alumni
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"MBS gave me the mental frameworks and agility to approach new or unknown situations. It was an incredible strength to have through the Northwest Passage, because there was so much that we had never experienced before. And it's an invaluable skill to have in times of change. I know it will definitely help me in my next role."
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Just three years after graduating from her MBA at Melbourne Business School, Maeva Elliott took a career break and sailed the Northwest Passage, a fabled sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans on Tyhina, her 34-foot yacht.
During this time she and her husband dodged melting icebergs, met walruses, had close encounters with polar bears, battled storms and experienced the wonder of an Artic night sky.
She says much of the confidence and motivation to do this came from her MBA leadership lectures with Amanda Sinclair.
"Amanda's lectures gave me the confidence to pursue my dreams and stay true to my values. One of them is my strong commitment to the environment."
Maeva's trip had a two-fold objective. The first was to sail her boat from Greenland to Alaska through the Arctic Archipelago, making the first East-West transit of the Northwest Passage by an Australian crew. The second objective was to witness and draw attention to climate change in the region.
The result? "We saw irrefutable evidence that the world is warming," she says. "In 1903 Roald Amundsen, who made the first transit of the Northwest Passage onboard his converted fishing boat Gjoa, took three years. Tyhina covered the same route in just 51 days, after witnessing the biggest ice melt ever recorded in the Arctic."
On her return Maeva's story was published in the Australian Geographic and she presented at several lecture series in Melbourne.
Recently, she managed the successful Earth Hour campaign across Victoria, on contract with the World Wide Fund for Nature-Australia (WWF-Australia). WWF-Australia is part of WWF-International, the world's largest and most experienced independent conservation organization. On Saturday 28th March 2009, at 8:30pm, millions of people around the world switched their lights offs off for one hour, Earth Hour, to show how by working together we can make a difference in the fight against climate change. In Victoria, 73% of City Councils participated and what is believed to be the first fully human-powered concert took place in Melbourne.
Maeva first dreamed of sailing around the world as a 12-year old growing up in New Caledonia. It took another 24 years, an MBA and a passionate interest in climate change to finally realise this ambitious plan.
For a start, she first had to finish school. On graduation she was accepted into the prestigious five-year course at Ecole Supérieure de Commerce De Paris, one of the top three business schools in France. From there she returned to New Caledonia to work for PricewaterhouseCoopers as an auditor, before winning an AusAID scholarship to study journalism at Queensland University of Technology.
"The idea was to return home with a journalist qualification, raise some capital and start up a second newspaper in New Caledonia," she says.
Unfortunately, this plan would provide a forum for the community to debate important issues, something that local politicians did not support. Perhaps as a result of this, her financial backers mysteriously dried up at the last moment.
In response, Maeva relocated to Vanuatu where she joined ANZ as its French speaking relationship manager.
"I thought I'd done my bit for my island and it was time to move on and start working on my own dreams," she says.
ANZ provided her with many opportunities and her time there was event-filled. In 2001 she was nominated for the ANZ Group Talent Program, which led to work in the bank's Melbourne head-quarters. There she applied for, and was accepted into, Melbourne Business School's MBA part-time program, where she studied for three years before finally graduating in 2005.
During that time she met Peter, who became her husband in 2006, settled in Melbourne and continued to make her way up at ANZ.
She resigned from her position as Strategy Manager in 2008, so she could sail the Northwest Passage on Tyhina.
"Before we left we won sponsorship from the Australian Geographic Society, Helly Hansen and Carmans," she says, then added, "I put all my business skills into those presentations."
"What helped me in planning the trip, is that although several of our friends thought we were a bit crazy, my fellow MBS students were quite supportive about it. They said, ‘if that's what you're really passionate about, then you should give it a go'."
Maeva and Peter returned to Melbourne in September last year. After her Earth Hour contract Maeva plans to return to the corporate world, most likely in another strategy role, hopefully with an environmental flavour.
"MBS gave me the mental frameworks and agility to approach new or unknown situations. It was an incredible strength to have through the Northwest Passage, because there was so much that we had never experienced before. And it's an invaluable skill to have in times of change. I know it will definitely help me in my next role."
Other postgraduate qualification: Graduate Diploma of Arts - Journalism (Queensland University of Technology)
