Actively managing your personal brand is critical if you want to significantly impact the areas of your life important to you.
What you say and what you do influences how people perceive you, so take note that your personal branding will determine how successfully you’ll be able to make an impact in life.
Emma is a principal consultant at Derwent, which helps businesses thrive by identifying and connecting with high-impact talent, bringing to the task more than 30 years as a journalist and communications professional.
Reporting in Australia and as a foreign correspondent, she developed a wide network of relationships across several industries.
Emma honed her people skills at the country's three major media businesses during the most innovative time in digital news and information delivery history.
Leading teams to cover important world events, Emma was popular with audiences and gained the confidence of key talent who trusted her with their stories.
Before joining Derwent, Emma spent a year advising leadership teams at the intersection of marketing and issues management, helping them create engaging content and to leverage a dynamic media environment.
Emma is a strategic thinker who thrives on solving complex challenges.
Passionate about diversity and inclusion, she is excited about using her skills in research and analysis to match terrific people with excellent opportunities.
How Emma Identifies Herself As A Brand
Emma said we must see ourselves as representatives of our families, the businesses we work for, and the communities we live in.
Every interaction is a representation of who we are. In that regard, she believes there’s a brand element.
Although she can’t say that she’s always thought about herself that way, she knows that she’s been a public figure in the past.
She’s aware of how she is perceived and its importance in other elements of her life.
Emma is an ambassador for Camp Quality and has been involved with them since 1999.
She wants to be a public figure when it rocks around raising money in September for them.
She wants people to be aware of children battling cancer because it's been very hard for charities to gain attention and the requisite funds to continue doing their extraordinary work for the last few years.
To that extent, she’s still a public figure regarding the things she wants to support, her professional life, and her relationships.
How Others Perceive Emma
Emma left ABC in 2020 after being there for 18 years and being a Channel 9 reporter for nearly ten years.
She started her career at News Corp with a byline in the Herald Sun newspaper for over three years.
She was publicly recognised, and her departure from ABC in 2020 was also public.
Emma mentioned, “In fact, the press knew about it before I knew about it, which was particularly hurtful.”
Her departure from ABC has been ventilated in an unkind manner.
She shared that when she left and started a corporate career, Emma talked to a chairman in the top 10 list of companies she had gotten to know well over her 30-year career.
She interviewed him in various iterations as a CEO, as a chairman, and as an advisor.
She also used to call him for advice on stories and things she heard.
When they discussed what Emma might do next, she shared with him that she was pretty upset about how things were reported.
But his response was, “Emma, I generally believe what I read.”
His statement stung her.
She said, “I don't think he realised he'd stung me the way he did because obviously, so much was written about the manner and reasons for my departure from the ABC that was so awful and wrong, and malicious and terrible.”
For her, people believe what they read, and it's very hard to get ahead of that.
There’s so much nuance to things because they are never exactly one way or exactly another way.
Getting out from under bad publicity can be very difficult if you’re a public person.
Emma met one of Australia's leading barristers in the defamation space on the advice of some of her lawyer friends.
When she went to his office, he had all the newspaper articles with notes. She recalled what he said, "I've been in this business a long time and journalists suing journalists never ends well.”
We can feel so aggrieved about people saying things that are not true or hurtful.
Climbing out from under is tricky because we're all human, so it's our instinct to fight back somehow.
It's hard to know how to do that in a dignified way and how to do it in a way that protects those around you.
Dealing with crises in your personal brand is like having children. Unfortunately, it doesn’t come with a manual.
One thing that Emma didn’t resolve is that she did speak publicly through her own social media channels to say what she wanted to say.
She attempted to write a few of the wrongs that had been said about her and then shut it down.
People in corporate Australia, in the media, and on the sidelines said that she didn’t have to say anymore.
But for Emma, sometimes you just have to vent. It's not always the best thing to do. But you've got to do what you feel is right.
The Importance Of Reputation For Emma
Reputation has always been important for Emma. She said that when you're publicly recognised, it follows you everywhere.
So to work, you need to be trusted in the workplace, and you need to be not only a trusted colleague.
You must be a trusted face to carry your brand and business.
Even if you’re not a salaried employee, you still represent yourself, your family, and your community.
You must think about who you are and what's important.
Circling back to the social media posts she wrote after leaving ABC.
She said they were about protecting who she thought she was, which was being maligned and misrepresented.
Ultimately, she believes that what it boils down to is not about the minutiae but about your character and who you know you are.
How Emma’s Reputation Was Established
Emma found that she wanted to be a journalist from a very young age, but it was not easy.
Her parents didn't think it was a sensible career path because, back in Italy, only men of a certain age and stature from a certain family rose to the ranks of distinguished journalists.
So, as a young woman from a migrant family in Australia, it seems like there's just no chance.
But Emma was determined to study hard and succeed, so she did.
When she became a television journalist, there used to be a lot of murmurings in the newsrooms she was in because the leadership ranks were always men, commenting about how women worked.
Emma worked in newsrooms where women weren't allowed to wear skirts.
She knows television reporters who've gone on to become news directors, but she doesn’t know any female reporters who've gone on to be news directors.
She doesn’t know many female reporters who've gone on to be in management because people see women in front of a camera as news readers and men in front of a camera as being quite authoritative.
She believes that those need to be addressed.
For her, the way people's preconceived ideas of you can interfere with your ability to protect or carve a reputation.
Emma thinks that many people (both men and women) are ingrained with an expectation of what it means to be a man and a woman.
The expectation is mired in this idea that women, generally, if they had it their way, wouldn't work.
They work because they have to, and men work because they need to support the family.
Emma finds it unfortunate that a leader will say they’re looking for a woman who can lead but won't create an environment where a woman could thrive.
Emma’s Values Being Different From Others
Emma has written a chapter in a book called Through Her Eyes which is about female foreign correspondents because she’s the generation of the first female foreign correspondent in Australia.
In its then 80-year history, she was ABC’s only second-ever mother who was posted overseas to London.
She shared two anecdotes from another book she made into almost a comedy skit because it was farcical.
Emma got this big promotion where she was chosen as the Europe Correspondent for ABC.
She met a beater field of six, all the others were men. She was very proud of herself and what she’d achieved.
She was going in as a financial journalist in the middle of the global financial crisis.
She stood on Canary Wharf as Lehman Brothers closed, and people were streaming out of that big building.
Emma was there at a very momentous time in history with her three children, who were all under three.
At that point, she was still on maternity leave when she got the job.
One time, she was trying to meet with her director of the International news division to ask where her kids go to school, how all the other ancillary stuff works, etc.
She had none of the basic logistics sorted. She thought that since they’d been posting people overseas for more than 50 years, surely there was a division for it.
After two weeks of haranguing her director to get a meeting, someone finally saw her.
Emma recalled what he said, “All these questions you're asking me, I don't know the answers. Normally, the wives work it out.”
The chapter from the book Through Her Eyes is about the circumstances around which she left Channel 9 in 2021–2022 because of a misalignment of values.
She was sent to report on the arrival of the tamper, which was the boat carrying 470 asylum seekers from Afghanistan.
They were fleeing some pretty dangerous and devastating circumstances in their own country.
This was when the previous Conservative government was adamant that no one should come to Australia unless they'd filled out forms and done all those things required.
The boat was intercepted by a Norwegian frigate, and the captain wanted to escort them to Australia, but they weren't allowed.
So a deal was made with the island nation of Nauru to accept the asylum seekers. Emma rushed over there for A Current Affair on Channel 9.
They were the first broadcast crew to film the arrival and interview then Foreign Minister Alexander Downer as he was inking the deal with the Prime Minister of Nauru.
Under the great challenge, they had to stop someone on the side of the road and give them $200 to give them his car so they could get around the island.
The camera broke down, and they had to get a fan on it because it was overheating due to the temperatures soaring close to 50 degrees.
They didn't sleep for 36 hours to get this story to Australia for The Monday Night.
Back then, they were getting a million viewers on the show.
They decided not to run the story, even though they had the first pictures.
They had a story on a revolutionary sweat cure that they wanted to promote, so their story got shelved.
Emma said unseemly to her boss and resigned, but he wouldn’t let her leave.
He told her to take a few days off, and she also recalled, “I didn't get sent to New York for that story, but I would have been because it was my turn, but I was in Purgatory.”
Emma then went to the subsequent election in October 2001 and reported from the tally room for Channel 9.
They were trying to keep her happy by getting her to stay, but she’d be too upset that they didn’t tell their story.
She believes it's a truism in journalism that you don't tell the story of the flood. You tell the story of the person in the flood.
No one felt real, genuine empathy until they saw the little boy who was dead in the sand.
There are real people in the story.
If we were in that circumstance, what would we do? Wouldn't we get on a boat and try to take our families to safety?
Emma wanted to show those faces. But she was actively denied the ability to do it by her employer.
The chapter in the book is called What's News. It examines who decides what's news in a newspaper or on a television program.
It's about which pictures are the most powerful. If you have good pictures, they will tell the story.
In the situation of the tamper, she could have had great pictures. But they still didn't want to tell that story, for whatever reason.
She thought it was highly political because it led to an election. However, that's not a reason not to do it.
Emma’s Values Were Established
When asked where she established her values, Emma answered that it was from her family.
Her dad used to joke that he came to Australia with two pounds, so he wasn't a 10-pound pommy. He was a two-pound Italian.
He grew that into a fairly sizable business without speaking the language and became the biggest store holder at the Victoria markets in Melbourne.
Emma and her sister went to private schools, and he bought their first cars.
Her dad worked hard for his family, and her mother worked hard at home.
Emma often shared with younger people that up until 1966, you weren't allowed to work once you got married as a woman in Australia.
When I asked her if her values changed over time, she said they developed as her mind broadened.
It's from reading, but it’s also from being open to hearing other people's points of view.
Now that she has a daughter finishing school, Emma starts to question why it's so important that younger individuals keep studying as long as possible.
She told her children that when you go outside of your sphere, whether going into further study or employment, you will meet a whole new raft of people from all sorts of regions and areas.
It's about continually questioning what you thought to be true.
The reason why Emma wanted to be a journalist is that she’s always keen to learn new things and learn about people.
Stories are powerful, but you must question them rather than just accept them for what they look like.
Don't believe everything you read. Question it.
Going back to expectations, Emma believes that we must think of child-rearing and housekeeping as jobs that need to be done by someone.
The Victorian Government did a study that Emma exclusively reported on for the ABC because she heard about it at a function.
It looked at the replacement value and the opportunity cost, the two measurements of unpaid work.
In the Victorian example, the government, through Deloitte Access Economics, did a study that found that unpaid work in the Victorian economy made up 50% of GSP, or gross state product.
Since 1985, more women than men have graduated from university in Australia.
That’s 37 odd years, and yet, when you look at the 500 top companies in Australia, 97% of them are run by men.
A couple of generations is a long time for women to demonstrate their keenness to actively learn and further their opportunities.
Even in our legislation or paid parental leave from the Gilad government, it says that the primary carer is the mother, so it even describes the woman's role.
Emma believes we need to stop thinking that women must always do unpaid work.
The Importance Of Relevance For Emma To Others
When talking about the topic of relevance, the first thing that popped into Emma’s head was her children.
She thinks that the older the children get, the less relevant they see you, and she’s finding that the most challenging.
So she’s still writing a lot, and she’s just written a chapter in a book.
Emma also has her memoir bubbling away in the background, which she will finish eventually because she thinks she has some things to pass on to the next generation.
Emma thinks that relevance is an interesting term because you have to ask relevant to whom and for what purpose.
It’s the same with many people who unfortunately tied their identity to their job and lost it.
Because Emma was publicly recognised, she thinks that it’s a bit worse because people have an expectation of who you are.
So when you're not that anymore, who are you?
It's also true in that micro setting if you are an executive and lose that job.
In her current role in executive search, Emma feels very privileged that people want to talk to her about their careers.
She feels a great obligation to help them in any way that she can, even if they don’t get the role she might be talking to them about.
Emma said, “You can think your life's going in a certain way and life being your career, and so many of us let our lives become dominated by our careers.”
There was a while where she questioned her relevance as to why people would care now that she didn’t have the ABC brand behind her.
For her, the purpose is more important than relevance.
She wanted to know that what she was going to do had a purpose.
Emma feels that she was very fortunate that she joined a company when she first left ABC, a division of auto in general called Compare The Market, which compares financial services.
She found them terrific because they understood from the get-go that she wasn't there to have her brand aligned with theirs and to sell something.
She was there to help them communicate better.
That was a great stepping stone into new and other things in corporate Australia because she had done what she wanted in journalism.
There wasn't like some other great dream.
Emma considers herself lucky. She hosted the most prestigious news and analysis show, Lateline.
She hosted business shows. She helped start shows. She was a foreign correspondent.
She considered herself fortunate to have a career in journalism.
It wasn’t like she had a burning desire to do anything else in the media, and so she felt privileged to re-imagine herself in a corporate sense, but still felt like she wanted to have some purpose.
One thing that Emma also believes is the importance of taking care of one's mental health.
Most people who knew her could attest that she was the most optimistic person. She saw the humour in everything.
So when she had it all taken away, it was so confronting that her mental health deteriorated rapidly.
She said, “I had tied too much of my life to my work, and if there's one thing I would love people to take stock of, that is to make time for yourself, be nice to yourself, and do nice things for yourself.”
Emma On Having A Mentor
The first person that Emma considers to be her mentor is her dad.
Her dad was the eternal optimist, and he knew how to be content with what he had. His cup was always overflowing.
He wasn't a man of great means. But he was so happy with his family, and he just knew how to make the people around him feel happy.
Sadly, he died way too young, at 58. By that time, Emma was only starting the Herald Sun newspaper.
One of the lessons he taught her was to be happy and grateful for what you've got. Don't always look for something else.
Emma grew up in a Catholic family that was very much about being grateful.
It's always easier said than done, but she believes that's important.
Another person that Emma considered his mentor was Peter Meakin, the news director at Channel 9. For her, he was an extraordinary leader.
He taught her to treat everybody the same.
Peter treated everybody equally and showed respect for you, no matter who you were.
Then there’s John Bruce, who was her executive producer on Lateline.
John had been with Lateline for 25 years, but she didn’t know him before she went overseas as a foreign correspondent.
Emma shared that when you're a foreign correspondent, you're like a freelancer because you do your story, and then you park it off to the radio department, the seven o'clock news or something.
Of all the executive producers of all those shows, whether radio or TV, the next morning, without fail, you would have an email from John Bruce at Lightline saying thank you.
He would be thoughtful about his feedback about what was great.
You may have done something that wasn't great, but he never pointed that out.
Being a perfectionist, one important lesson that Emma learned is that striving for perfection can be quite debilitating.
The best thing for perfectionists is to have a deadline. If you don't meet the deadline, there's black air on the television.
You sometimes got to say good enough is good enough.
Giving Guidance To Others
There are some extraordinary young people in the office Emma is in now, and she’s been relaying the lessons she learned, especially with research.
According to her, some brilliant researchers are working in the firm, and she finds that a lot of her experiences have great relevance to the current role in terms of being able to research the business they’re working for and the candidates they’re putting forward.
She has the opportunity to mentor the researchers and those in her office doing similar work to what was happening in the newsrooms she was in.
She also recalled a story of a good mentoring with her son when she pulled their internet out so his son could print his CV.
Her son then submitted that CV and got his first part-time job at a little restaurant near their house.
Advice To The Young Professionals
Emma's single most important advice for young people starting their careers is don’t let other people's views of what you want to do, who you want to be, and what you are capable of.
The other thing is no one will ever be upset with what they did, only what they didn’t.
So seize every opportunity. Don't say no to things because they take you outside your comfort zone.
Don't take things for what they appear. Instead, question things and be a critical thinker. Don't take other people's points of view and make them yours. Create your own.
Seek other people's opinions that challenge the way you're thinking. Actively seek people who don't agree with you because that will improve you. It's going to make you think better thoughts.
Your expectations that others have had of you are nothing short of the wonderful experience you've not only had as a journalist and where you are today, but the success you've had and being able to speak out and speak up about issues so important makes you the great Australian you are.
Final Message and Outro
I want to thank Emma Alberici very much for taking the time to share her insights and experiences.
Thank you for listening to this episode. Please leave a five-star review and subscribe for more episodes if you enjoyed it.
If you'd like to learn more about developing your personal brand, please visit garrybrowne.com.au to get in touch or grab a copy of Brand New Brand You.