Lucinda Boffa

7.30 AM

My alarm goes off and after snoozing it twice I get up and consume my first coffee of the day before jumping in the shower and getting dressed for work. 

8.00 AM

After another great experience with Melbourne’s Metro I arrive at the spectacular 700 Bourke building. Side note: the last part was not sarcasm, I do openly gawk up at the geometric beehive every time I walk in.

8.30 AM

I settle in with my second cup of coffee and sort my inbox and calendar for the day. I respond to any overnight emails and plan to action the rest accordingly while gearing up for the day ahead.

9.00 AM

Time to crack on with my main project; finding a way to automate the Monthly Business Reports in NAB’s new Cloud Environment. This is an interesting piece of work as the entire Technology & Operations division will use this to ensure they’re meeting their Risk Controls and Obligations on time. However, as the Cloud platform is still new sometimes not everything goes according to plan with migration, so I need to write test cases to validate it’s all working accurately before we release it to the senior business leaders to manage.

10.30 AM

After making good progress on my work, I head up to the Level 14 garden café for a coffee with some IBLs (Industry Based Learners) to try and recruit them to an initiative I help with called IT@Work. NAB runs three all-day workshops targeted at Year 9 girls from different schools every semester with the aim of encouraging more young women to pursue STEM related studies and careers. I’m thrilled to play a role in this, and we’re always looking for more volunteers.

11.00 AM

Back to my BAU (Business As Usual), I polish up a pack I prepared last week for my People Leader to present to an executive stakeholder. My team ran an experiment to see if we could implement Machine Learning models to categorize customer complaints, and I’m just finalizing our recommendations based off the results. After a quick review and update with my PL we rush to present to the stakeholder who is impressed with our work and is now considering next steps following our POC (Proof of Concept).

12.00 PM

My growling stomach indicates it’s the most important part of the day: Lunch. I pop out to grab a bite with some other grads where we unwind by comparing our weekly stresses, I mean excitements! 

1.00 PM

Returning from lunch, I grab my laptop and head down to a working session on my Graduate Business Challenge. I’m working with three other graduates from different streams to improve NAB’s Indigenous Internship. We’re approaching our presentation date so need to collate all the information we’ve sourced over the last two months.

2.00 PM

Feeling more confident now with our progress on the Business Challenge I head back to my desk to continue working on updating our Reporting Template. I’m joined by a colleague with experience in this field and ask his advice. It looks like we’re on track to meet our deadline, which is a relief, so I make a note on our Confluence page to reflect this. 

3.00 PM

With another coffee in hand, I head to my final meeting for the day with my fellow Learning & Development Coordinators from the AAIP Grad Committee. The African Australian Inclusion Program (AAIP) exists to provide a six-month internship within NAB to skilled African Australians who face difficulties entering our local job market. We’re hosting an all-day workshop tomorrow to provide them with exposure and insights to various areas around the bank and help them to manage their careers. I love my role as an L&D coordinator as we too learn so much along with our participants, however it is not without its work in planning!

4.00 PM

I close out any outstanding tasks for the day and update my team members on my development with the project. I send off the latest version for their feedback and make the necessary changes to the spreadsheet. 

5.00 PM

Approaching the end of the day I check my inbox to make sure there aren’t any urgent requests. I triple-check that I’m all prepared for tomorrow before packing up and heading out for some well-earned R&R.