By NICOLE VALICEK
SAMANTHA Wan’s interest in agriculture started from a young age and now she’s on her way to becoming a future leader of the wool industry.
The Altona North resident moved from Blacktown in Sydney’s western suburbs in June 2012 to accept a job as a wool technical officer at Elders National Wool Selling Centre in Brooklyn.
Samantha values wool that comes in and appraises it for growers.
“We’re a wool broker that sells the wool to buyers on behalf of the grower, so kind of like a stock broker for wool,” she said.
She was recently amongst 22 participants at the professional development course known as Breeding Leadership.
“It gave me more perspective on what growers are facing and the improvements and innovation in industry,” she said.
“It wasn’t strictly sheep and wool,” We did farm tours, (meet with) entrepreneurs … it was a good time to network and to increase perspective and development.”
Samantha, who is a first generation Australian-born Chinese, said there was strong development in the industry for the next generation of future wool leaders.
“It’s a great industry to work in everyone’s very supportive, if you work hard everyone’s willing to give you a go and see what you’re made of and you can only develop yourself further.”
She said she has a lot to learn but looks forward to her career in the industry.
“I’ve got a lot to learn, they’ve (Elders) have such a great network of people in wool and livestock that if I can keep learning that would be great.”
