Consultant with compassionate vision

May 2009

Alumna Siân Owen (BA(Hons) 1981) is an industrial relations consultant. Grateful for her Monash experience, she is passionate about ensuring others have the same opportunities so she has been a donor to Monash University over a number of years.

In 1996, Ms Owen and two colleagues established an industrial relations consultancy – WorkSight. After 10 years in the union movement, the trio felt they had enough experience to offer balanced advice about the rights and entitlements of employers and employees.

“Running my own business has been great. It has given me so much freedom in my working life and fantastic opportunities to work with many different and interesting people,” Ms Owen said.

Ms Owen began studying history and law at Monash but eventually deferred law to complete honours in history.

“I loved history and that was all I wanted to study when I got to Monash. My main focus was modern American history – 1960s onwards – maybe not so modern now but it was then!” she said.

“Monash was a really significant part of my life. It was where I made some great life long friends and also met my partner [Dr Robert Moore (BSc(Hons) 1978, PhD 1982)].”

Ms Owen enjoyed her student experience and feels lucky to have benefited from the Whitlam era of free higher education. This meant she felt it important to give something back to Monash.

“American universities have a great tradition of alumni philanthropy and I see no reason why we shouldn’t adopt that approach here. We can’t allow our university standards to drop. If governments are not willing to fund universities appropriately then individuals need to help out.”

Ms Owen has given to a variety of areas at Monash over the past seven years including the Library and refugee student support. But she is most passionate about giving towards scholarships.

“There are so many good causes that should be supported that I don’t limit myself to one! So each year when I write out my cheque I go with whatever I feel deserves my support at the time.”

“Equitable access to university is really important to me. I come from a middle-class background so going to university was natural for me. However, for many people, no-one in their family has ever been to university. It’s important that Monash gives more assistance to these people to widen their student socio-demographic base. Scholarships are an obvious way to do this,” she said.

Links:

WorkSight website