Like many young people, Nicolette Maury wanted to change the world when she was a teenager.
Initially drawn to engineering, she had a vision that she’d be able to create new products that could help make a real difference to people’s lives.
“What I learned by doing the engineering degree was that a lot of the work at the time, in Australia, in engineering and science, was in quality control and cost reduction of different products,” Maury tells Women’s Agenda.
“I found that I wasn’t really doing what I had expected,” she says, which is what pushed her to move in a new direction– management consulting.
Following her chemical engineering degree, she worked with Boston Consulting Group, who were recruiting engineers and scientists at the time “because they liked the problem solving mindset”.
“They figured they could teach us business and strategy, [which] for me, was a really great opportunity to do a career shift”, she says.
This opportunity gave Maury a variety of experiences across different industries and types of work. She was able to get a flavour for what she did and didn’t enjoy, and says the only downside of working in consulting was not getting to experience the outcomes of her work.
“Often, we were providing a recommendation to a client, and the client then could choose to or not to implement those recommendations.”
“I found that I’d gone from doing very tangible work, but not very innovative, to where I was doing quite innovative work that wasn’t always tangible.”
It was technology that eventually gave Maury a happy medium between the two, and it’s where she’s been for the last twenty years.
Currently, she’s CEO of Avani Solutions, an IT consulting service helping make sustainability targets a reality within businesses. Through this work, she’s been recognised as a 2024 honoree for YPO’s Global Impact Award, meaning she’s among top innovators and leaders in Australia driving a significant, sustainable impact through their business.
“Everybody needs to be seeing climate and sustainability as the forefront of everything that they do,” says Maury.
“For many businesses or individuals, it’s still considered a nice to have, but that’s changing very quickly.”
When it comes to implementing sustainability targets into the business’s framework, Maury says that “a lot of people are waiting for the mandates or requirements to do things, rather than acknowledging that everybody has a role to play.”
“I still hear too many people who are making decisions that perhaps are a little short sighted or short term, rather than acknowledging that there’s a long term benefit to investing in climate solutions.”
The good news, Maury says, is that there’s no longer a trade-off between financial impact to a business and climate impact. At Avani, she says they love bringing clients on this journey, and showing them how to save money at the same time as becoming more sustainable.
And when it comes to getting started on a new journey–whether that be making your business more sustainable or stepping into a new space as a leader– Maury says it’s important to “get an understanding of what you do that’s unique to you” and then “really focus on how you can use that to make a difference”.
“If I think about the first CEO role that I had– from the day I started till the day I moved into a different role– I had to evolve so much as a leader,” she says.
“And so a big part of the lesson for me is to regularly take a step back and say, ‘What do I need to do differently?’”
“Get feedback from people and say, ‘how is this working? What’s working, what’s not working’, and learning from other leaders to be able to test things out,” she says, adding that “each one of us needs to find our own style and what makes us most effective”.
“That sense of curiosity and openness to learning is a constant need.”