FAN GIRL FRIDAYS: Vivien Twyford, PI

 

Vivien Twyford defied the expectations of her time. When women were typically expected to be typists or shop assistants, she envisioned a different path for herself – starting her own business, initially named Vivien Twyford Communication. An early engagement pioneer, Vivien’s career has seen her ease tensions on a number of high-profile Australasian projects – before the profession had theory, guidelines and legislation in place.

Having played key role in bringing IAP2 into Australia, Vivien’s work has shaped Australia’s engagement landscape and continues to hold the sector to best-practice standards.

We speak to her as part of our new “Fan Girl Fridays” feature where we zero in on those impressive humans who just make our collective jaws drop.

1960s England: A bright young woman aspires for more

I grew up in England and left school in the early 1960s at the age of 17. Other than teaching and nursing, there was really only one portable career for women – office work – in particular as a ‘secretary’ in the typist and note taking sense. I went to secretarial college in London but was not terribly inspired by a curriculum of shorthand, typing and bookkeeping.

I knew I wanted to travel and Australia was somewhere that intrigued me – however, my family said it was too far away as I was still under 21. So after a year working in London, I immigrated to the USA. I travelled across the states, working in Chicago, San Francisco and New Orleans as well as taking a summer job in Yellowstone Park in 1963 as a maid.

I returned to the UK after two years. But back home, I was a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. I had lived an exciting life, and I wasn’t ready to stop! I went back the USA’s West Coast for two more years, then travelled to Europe, the middle east, Bangkok and Singapore, before living and working in Hong Kong,

By 1968, I decided it was finally time to go explore Australia.

A new country, a love story & a new business

My Wollongong based business, Vivien Twyford Communication, started with a love story.

I was working in Sydney for a shipping company when I met my husband, a widely travelled English master-mariner. He joined the NSW marine pilot service and after two years together in Sydney he was moved to Port Kembla, an industrial port south of Sydney.

Despite dire warnings from our friends, I fell in love with the region. After living in many big, bustling cities with masses of people, the life offered in this regional city was different. Some of this difference was positive, some less so – women’s liberation had not penetrated into the culture of Wollongong. My options for a career were very limited.

To avoid clerical work or retail sales, I initially sold real estate and after that radio advertising. Then, I started both an advertising business and a family, with my son arriving in 1978.

Before my son started school, the Prime Minister at the time, Gough Whitlam, made a university education free for all, including for those of us euphemistically called “mature-aged students’. This amazing opportunity was too good to miss so as my son started school, I started my seven years of University study, enrolling first in an arts degree and then in an MBA.

Once I had my first degree, I looked around for career opportunities that would build on my new qualifications. But I didn’t see many openings in either industry or commerce that would stretch me. So, enter Vivien Twyford Communication, initially in the basement of my home, then into an office with some very loyal staff. Many people say that starting your own venture is a daring life choice, but I felt I was best to back myself and be confident in my own skills and energy, hoping I could learn as I went.

Early days of a new business

I started with what I knew and offered communication services to business including business presentation, office skills training, public relations and even event management.

At the time, there were many changes going on in health services in Australia. The CEO at Wollongong Hospital, run by the Illawarra Area Health Service, wanted to communicate a clearer and more attractive image of the various services available.

I was contracted to create a series of brochures about the services offered initially in Wollongong Hospital, but then across the Illawarra Region. I had many conversations with medical specialists to understand their work. I visited the services at the different hospitals with a photographer, and we took photos of medical staff and patients in real situations. I spoke with nurses, technicians and doctors as well as their patients and captured the genuine and positive relationships between health professionals and their patients.

One brochure was on the palliative care unit. I and my photographer were asking patients at the end of their lives to take part in our sessions. I remember one patient involved really enjoying his time with us which made a big impression on me. It was one of those truly special projects in my life that I look back on with pride.

The brochure series that Vivien worked on for the Illawarra Area Health and Wollongong Hospital in 1990.

Fundraising as community empowerment

The work that I had done as a full-time employee of NSW Health back in 1996-1997 raising funds for the linear accelerator taught me a lot. I put this experience and those skills to use again in 1990 when the new Cancer Care Centre, to house the radiotherapy department with the new linear accelerator, was under construction.

My new company took on a second project to raise funds to provide the Cancer Care Centre with a comfortable and efficient chemotherapy unit where out-patients could come for their regular treatments. This required another $1.3 million dollars. Once again we went to the generous Illawarra community to ask for their help … and once again they gave it! They bought Art Union tickets hoping to win a house that we built with the help of the Illawarra construction industry, and its tradespeople. Employers supported the project by setting up payroll deductions so employees could donate $1 a pay. Local sporting and social clubs ran events and our local TV station, WIN Television ran a second telethon.

What was most rewarding about these two fundraising projects was the way they brought the community together. People believed that they could make a difference – and they did! The Cancer Care Centre was built with a Chemotherapy Department included, carefully designed and decorated with the patients’ experience in mind. The first linear accelerator, bought from the first Cancer Appeal-a-thon, was later paired with a second one in a magnificent Radiotherapy Department.

The Cancer Care Centre has helped many cancer sufferers for 30 years. A group called the Cancer Carers was set up by community volunteers to support patients through their sometimes painful and challenging treatments. So our work was not just to buy equipment and build a building, it was about bringing the community together for a common goal, and I’m very proud to have been part of both projects.

Twyford steps into community engagement

My expansion into the engagement scene began with a request to chair a public meeting in Gerringong, south of Kiama in NSW. The government wanted to build a new major highway from Sydney to the South Coast and had problems deciding on a route around Kiama, Gerringong and Berry villages which were traffic bottlenecks particularly on public holidays. Someone had a revolutionary idea that perhaps they should ask the locals about the various route options and the impacts they would have on traffic movements.

I chaired this meeting in a community hall, with the transport team on the stage, and community members listening and inputting. Afterwards, I asked the team if they wanted me to write report on the session, which they thought was a brilliant idea.

After that event, I started to get requests to do more public meetings…

 

Stay tuned for next Friday’s edition of Fan Girl Fridays, where we hear Part 2 of Vivien’s story. In the next instalment, Viven shares her engagements insights into the Australia community’s diminishing trust in government, the advent of social media and the rise in misinformation, and her hopes for the future of engagement.