12 May Staff Spotlight
What date did you join Montgomery? May 2018
What is the best and worst part of your job? The part I was missing the most about transitioning from surgery to law was the people-centric approach in my day-to-day dealings. With recruitment, I have the opportunity to once again assist people with a significant aspect of their lives, and this gives me a real feeling of fulfilment.
As for the worst part, interestingly, a significant part of being a surgeon involved having to break bad news, and we were given extensive training on how to do this. Irrespective of having received that training, it’s never any easier to tell people something you know will likely upset them, and in the sphere of recruiting, having to tell people they have been unsuccessful in securing a role is extremely tough. You of course have to turn that into a positive and provide constructive feedback on how they might be able to improve for the future, but taking someone through that process never gets any easier!
Where did you grow up? I was born in sunny Sri Lanka. My family and I emigrated to England in 1989 and I spent the next couple of decades there. Then fast-forward to the modern day when barbies, beaches, footie and Tim Tams came-a-calling, and I have made Sydney my new home!
As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? I always thought I would end-up in the military at some stage of my life, and given I had bilingual language capabilities, I very nearly joined MI6 – I would tell you more about this, but then I’d have to…. 😉
Who is your mentor or greatest inspiration? Jack Ma is someone I respect immensely. Jack founded the multi-billion-dollar, Alibaba Group, and I had the pleasure of doing some work with the Group when I was a practicing lawyer. It is widely reported that Jack failed middle school, he was rejected by the police force, and that Harvard rejected him some 10 times! What is inspirational is that he had no fear, he picked himself up by the bootstraps, evaluated what went wrong, tweaked ideas and methods and overcame the odds.
What is your greatest achievement? Completing the Three Peaks Challenge (climbing the highest mountains of England, Scotland and Wales within 24 hours!).
What is your favourite movie? Terminator 2: Judgment Day. How good do those special effects look, even in the modern day?
What is your favourite board game? Monopoly. My strategy was to buy everything I landed on first, and then once the income started pouring in, I re-developed my holdings with hotels and houses.
If you could be someone else for a day who would it be? (living or dead) Bruce Lee. I’d love to have those skills for a day and to see if I could actually send someone flying across a room with that infamous “inch-punch”!
Best holiday you’ve been on? Royal Malewane Game Reserve, South Africa. It was spectacular going on the 4am game drives, watching the sun hit the vast open planes, and seeing the Big Five (lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo), the Ugly Five (hyena, wildebeest, vulture, warthog and the marabou stork) and four of the Little Five (elephant shrew, rhinoceros beetle, buffalo weaver and leopard tortoise).
What three items are a must have if you were stuck on a desert island? Assuming a satellite phone was off the wish list, I’d go with practical items like a fishing net, a machete and a tarpaulin.
If you won lotto what would you do? Completely refurbish the orphanage I’m a patron of, donate a sizeable chunk of money to medical research, and buy a house by the sea.
On the other side of COVID, what will you not take for granted? Toilet paper! 😬
