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,