Sharing Your Stories

A Blast from the Past.................... 

I was recently asked to share some of what the world has looked like for me since I left Swinburne in 1985. Maybe someone out there will remember me, having been away for 20 years and only just recently returned to Malaysia.

I recall turning up, as green as they come, to a new country, a new culture and people in February 1983 - I got off the plane at about 6:30 am at Tullamarine and by 10:30am found myself facing one Jackie Berry to get my enrolment papers completed. Jackie was - and will always be - my first impressions of Swinburne. She was caring, accommodating - and seemed to know exactly what was going on in my head. She was a great ambassador.

I commenced a BBus that semester. Had fantastic people like John and Liz Gerrand at various times in my 3 years, of course the inimitable Bruce McDonald, John Batros  ('Admin Studies" year 1 !), Dennis Vinen,  Ann Chamberlain and a whole lot of other people whose name I forget but whose faces are permanently etched in my memory.

My 3 years in Swinburne seemed to just fly by, all too quickly. At some point I became president of the Malaysian Students Association and sat on the committee for the Overseas Students Association, the Jazz & Blues Club, was a DJ on 3SW a couple of times a week, worked in the Swinburne "Cafe" upstairs. I played on the hockey team, read my newspapers in the Alumni, developed a taste for VBs which I indulged at the old "Gov Hotham" (thanks to John Gerrand) and had barbies at Central Park. Life was simple and satisfying.

I stayed on in Melbourne after completing my degree, got married locally (Swinburne gal!) and tried to find my niche and a better understanding of what job satisfaction was about vs earning cold hard cash. I spent about 3 years with Deloittes in Melbourne and then about 2 years with Westpac - doing Asset Management - working on a portfolio of non-performing loans in the late 1980s. Along the way I also completed the Masters in Enterprise & Innovation at Swinburne (by then a 'University of Technology") with Murray Gillian. Fantastic program and a real alternative to a standard MBA.

In 1993, I joined Shell Australia in their Internal Audit team. It was a place to "see" and "be seen". I spent about 2 years and then moved on to become Shell Australia's Risk Manager & Project Finance Manager - managing a bunch of foreign exchange, interest rate and money market dealers, raising debt, issuing eurobonds, undertaking structured / project financing of large projects etc. It was very exciting and the learning curve was steep in what was then one of the largest Corporate Treasury departments in Australia.

Two and a half years later, in early 1998, we left Melbourne to take on an assignment with Shell in Beijing, China. Armed with a two and half year old daughter and a 10 week old baby, we arrived in Beijing (-15 Celsius welcome). I was initially the head of finance for the downstream oil business for China / HK / Taiwan / Korea. After about 15 months, I became the head of Portfolio & Strategy for the same region, still out of Beijing. Dealing with provincial governments was a different kettle of fish from dealing at federal level. It is hard to share how we developed - professionally and personally in the two and a half years we were there. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves there, got to understand the people and culture and made great friends.

The success in China led us to Shell in London. In the summer of 2000, I was appointed a manager for Mergers & Acquisitions team for the Liquefied Petroleum Gas business, globally. I had the opportunity to visit and/or lead acquisitions and divestments in almost every country in Eastern Europe, Western Europe, India, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Malaysia....yes, a lot of air-miles along the way and very satisfying.

In late 2001, I found myself faced with an opportunity to lead the Finance and IT function for one of our most complex business regions - the 35 countries that make up the Central America and Caribbean cluster.  Helen was five months pregnant then with our 3rd child - but we both saw this as an exciting, new challenge. We would be based in the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean and as the Executive Vice President - Finance & IT (Adriaan Whelan taught me Intro to Data Processing in 1983 - she would be proud...) I would have about 285 finance and IT staff and a business with a turnover of about US$2 billion.

It was a tough assignment but a successful endeavor nonetheless. Baby Isabella was born in the Dominican Republic (we had to learn Spanish real quick to be able to talk to hospital staff...) and so the oldest city in the Americas - Santo Domingo - will always hold a special place for us.

At the end of last year, I turned down the opportunity to stay on in Latin America, in Rio de Janeiro with a view to heading back to Melbourne. Having been away for almost 6 years, we were getting a tad homesick. In true Shell fashion, another exciting opportunity arose - an opportunity to establish a finance and management consultancy business for the Asia Pacific region for the Shell Group. Another exciting region - everything east of the Suez - across to Japan - down to New Zealand. And most exciting of all, a chance to live and work in Malaysia, after having been away for 20 years.

And so we arrived in KL in mid January 2003.

KL is such an exciting place and the calibre of people locally is world class. I reflect on my time at Swinburne and realise that it is more than straight academic pursuits that make a success of an individual - it was the "whole package" of studying in a university that was small enough to remain personal, to remain caring - and most of all where academic excellence was not compromised.

We are a lucky bunch - being from Swinburne - and I am sure the alumni will do justice to the wonderful lecturers and tutors we had - and justice to us as we live the vision of Swinburne locally.

Ramesh Kana
Head - Asia Pacific
Finance & Management Consultancy
Shell Finance Services