Network Magazine spring 2015 | Page 6

PECTIVE REFLECTIONS OF INDUSTRY LEADERS For Australian Fitness Network’s Author of the Year, Four P’s have driven her career success... WORDS: JENNIFER SCHEMBRI-PORTELLI (JSP) eing honoured as Network’s Author of the Year was a proud moment for me: well, actually it was more like a double fist air punch combined with a giant leap! It’s really cool to be rewarded and recognised for doing something you love – especially as I was the remotest thing from ‘cool’ growing up. My parents migrated from Malta in 1950 – for fitness professionals born in the 1990s, that was just after the extinction of the dinosaurs… I attended a ‘good’ school, alongside kids with surnames like Smith, O’Neill and Ferguson. When I rocked up to class on the first day each year I was automatically placed into ‘special ed’ class. I had the ‘weird foreign’ name and that seemed to fit B 6 | NETWORK SPRING 2015 the criteria way back in 1960s Australia. To be honest, it was fun, it was easy and it allowed me more time to muck around. The funny thing was that I could actually read and write well, but if the educational institution thought I couldn’t, I was happy to play along. So what has been my motivation to take me from ‘special ed’ to Network Author of the Year? Passion, purpose, practise and persistence: passion for aqua activity, purpose in turning people onto the benefits of aqua, practising what I preach and persistence in attracting the kudos aqua rightly deserves via education and publications. Learning, exploring, creating and sharing aqua information gives me great satisfaction. It’s one of my life goals to enlighten government departments, industry bodies, community members and fitness gurus about the benefits of exercising in water. I practised planning what I wanted to say, reading what others said and how they said it. I tried writing,