If You Have a Child Your Career Will End

I had someone once say to me, you realize that if you have a child, your career will come.

To an end. And I believed it.

The industry that I was in, there were very few females who had gone on to bigger and more senior roles and those who had had done it without having children or had stay at home husband. I go home and say to him, I'm not ready to have kids. I don't know if I want to have them. I don't want my career to stop.

Hello there and welcome to separate bathrooms. I'm Cam Daddo, I'm Ali Dado.

And this is our podcast. It is How are.

You I'm very well, thank you excited about today?

How do you feel about today's interview?

I'm excited. I'm excited. Having had a little discussion with these two already and just noting their relationship, how long they've been together. I think they've got some really good wisdom to share with us and with everyone listening.

Today we're talking with Carmela Galasso and her husband Adrian. Carmella is a highly successful execut She's the head of A and Z Banking Groups small business banking division. She's got relentless dedication to investing in the next generation of female leaders, and has earned herself several awards, including Mentor of the Year at the twenty eighteen Women's Finance Awards and a finalist in twenty nineteen. She runs A and

Carmella really is a true inspiration. Not only has she accomplished incredible success in her corporate career, she's teaching others to do the same. I just love that. And look, she's not been immune to life's ups and downs and twists, including overcoming breast cancer. She's been married to Adrian for nearly thirty years. Adriane was recently recognized as a leading silk. Now what is that?

I know?

Like silk?

I googled this because I thought, what are we talking about here? So a leading silk in the Legal five hundred Asia Specific Guide for Environment and Planning. So a silk is a high level barrister who wears the silk gowns.

Though does he have to wear a wig as well?

It's a big deal.

It's a big deal.

Yeah. He was also the twenty nineteen Planning environment Lawyer of the Year.

And consistently in Doyle's guides leading planning an environment barristers.

He's look, he's a big deal. They're both a big deal.

Currently, Adrian is environmental Counsel to the Environment Protection Authority. So why did we bring Carmela and Adrian into our bathroom today?

Honey?

Well, it's not often that you hear of two really high powered people in a successful relationship. Like we just don't get enough information about that, those kind of couples, and we want to hear about how they manage their work and their life and their love and how do they balance it all out.

Please welcome Carmela and Adrian.

Thank you so much for coming and joining us in the bathroom. We're so grateful that you can come and give us some time. Because you guys seem so busy, can you tell us a little bit how firsty, how did you guys meet?

So we met over over twenty nine years ago. And the interesting thing about our relationship is you realize is that agent remembers the dates and I don't.

Eighteenth June it was nice a nineteen ninety two.

There you go, So some of you would have still been six thirty at night.

It was there. You got here, now, how.

Do you know that what happened at six thirty? It was at June, So it was set there.

Well, I'm cutting Carmela off and old do that, But we were we were set up by at that time was a client of mine.

I was a set time.

And they were friends of Kamella's parents, and it was a setup at their house in Molara. And I remember the time because I'd finished the workday and I went over to get a document signed or something or other.

So there I were, he was, and I remember rocking in and he was sort of there was a big group of us and sort of they were a bit older than we were, and it was they were a lot older than we. There you go, that was probably our age now, but he was so much older. But they had invited me over for a drink, and so we'd gone over and hindsight I realized, well we subsequently we realized that we'd been set up by my parents and her and I remember rocking in and here's this guy.

Friend was ninety two.

It was ninety two, so he thought he was very cool, and I remember thinking, oh yeah, and he was quite lovely, and we sort of got chatting and we'd sort of all went out for dinner and then afterwards and he asked me out and I said, oh, look, I need a little bit of time. I need the weekend to sort out some I can't stuff that something on him because I was dating someone else. And he said that's fine, because I can't either, And what did you do?

I did a similar thing.

So you were dating with someone else to someone else.

And then we went out, and I remember getting home my mother said to me, oh, what was it like?

Who was he? What was he like?

And I said, oh, was a nice guy. I don't remember muchbout him except he had a gap in his teeth, and that's all I remembered about him.

But anyway, twenty nine years later, we're still together. Fantastic. So your parents must have been happy singers. Though it came from a setup situation, it must have been, like I'm.

Not sure happiness was necessarily the word, but they weren't against it and it Yeah, well, yeah.

My parents I was quite young. I was twenty two and my parents are like really And I'd always said I wouldn't get married until I was thirty, and I wanted to do lots of things. And then you meet I met Adrian, and I thought, well, what are we waiting for?

Things change?

How were you Adrian?

I was twenty seven, right, so it was five year age difference between us.

No, I look so much younger.

No, well, you're actually quite similar to us, because when Allie married me, she was twenty two and I was twenty six.

Yeah, there you go, very similar.

Yeah, yeah, young, we were really.

Young when you look back on it now, like, although, to be frank, and I've said this become Ella in the past. At that time, I think because most of my friends by then had married, most of the friends that grew up with had married and had started having children and the like. I thought it was an older I thought it was an older married man than a younger one. But we'll look back on it now. Maybe by today's standard's twenty eight, it's not that old at all.

And yet I thought I was the reverse, whereas I was one of the first to be getting married, and so I was at the other extreme of like I thought, I was really young. When I look back at a lot of my friends who then all got married well into their late twenties and thirties, I was one of the youngest.

If you had a daughter, would you say get married at twenty two?

Probably not, and not for any other reason that you don't really start to get to know yourself until you're later on in your twenties, and I think that twenty two you're still developing. You don't know who you really are. That I think you need that time to give yourself space to grow. Now, if you meet the right person, who are we to say no? But I think that I would probably say, give yourself some time if the right person, and they'll hang out, they'll wait with you.

Yeah, we couldn't understand why our families weren't really excited.

We got engaged after two and a half months or three months, which was.

Yeah we was nine months. Yeah, that's seven months of that was just about letting the time run. I mean I could have married Carmella by about the third date.

Oh that's beautiful. What was it about her that you knew?

I don't know. It just fit and it was right, and I couldn't see any reason to wait anymore. Right, And so when she answered you know your question Cam a few moments ago about advocating getting married at twenty two, for me, yeah, it's good to aim for it. I would have thought it's good to aim for an age just for the sake of maturity and life's lessons. But if the right person comes along, yeah, I mean, you guys are an example of that from which you've just seen,

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean there's lots to cover in this because I mean, I can see a lot of similarities between us, given how young we were when we got married and what you said before, come about being young and you don't have that life experience, and that's what I think. There's a yin and a yang to every moment, you know, in terms of there's a good and a bad, or a positive and a negative to everything. And I think

Did you make mistakes?

Oh?

Absolutely, like you would. There are times and Agent knows this. There are times that I'm sure he thought, I don't even know why I'm here, and I thought to myself, what am I doing here? This is really hard, and have I done the wrong thing? And my friends were still partying, and I still wanted to go and party. And Agent was so good about it, like he would tolerate it. And then he'd say, you kind of need to pull your head back.

In a bit.

And he was really good about it. He was more mature than I was. There's no doubt he was living away from home. I was a good Italian girl, living at home with my parents till the day I got married.

So I had never lived away.

I had really not been away until I got married, And so he was really tolerant of that. Did we make mistakes? Yes, did crack the proverbial and he went his way, you know, and he'd run after one room and I'd go to the other and yeah, there was that, would you agree.

I think also there's a component of change that happens with time. I mean, I'm a very different person now than I was when we married. I can't talk for Carmella, but as far as I can observe, she's different as well. And we often say that if you happen to grow in similar directions, and that's a great thing. So I don't know that you work at it. I think you develop tolerance levels and patients and things like that facilitate it. But I think it's also a coincidence of direction that

Well, it's one of the things, you know, as we're coming up in our thirtieth that I actually look back on with so much tenderness because I've seen the amount of growth, because I'm watching you cam as a man and go wow, Like when I met you, you were so young, and I've watched you, you know, withther all the challenges and just go up and down and work through this and change that. And I wouldn't have been able to see that had I met you as a

You guys took your time to have your child seventeen years. Was that planned or was that just just happened that way?

It was actually all planned in the scenes that Carmella had a career, and in her career, the perception was that children might stagnate the career path. In fact I said it would, in fact you said it would or that.

So the industry that I was in, we did take a long time because as our careers were taking off, what had happened to me was they had said to me, And I was pretty insecure in my ability, as most a lot of females are, right, we don't believe that were as good as they.

As, especially in that time, in the time you're talking about you're talking about the nineties, late.

Nineties, early two thousands, there were very few females who had gone on to bigger and more senior roles, and those who had had done it without having children or had stay at home husband. So one of them stayed at home, and so they kept saying I had someone once say to me, who was a kind hearted mentor, but a male who didn't wear a female had said, you realize that if you have a child, your career will come to an end. And I believed it, and so poor Adrian I go home and say to him,

Well, I said, I mean kids would be nice, but in the sort of historical, assumed way. But I was there because I loved Carmella, and if that's the way it was going to go, that was the way it was going to go. So I'd resigned to us not having kids. So the answer first party question cam is yeah, it was planned in the sense of there was a conscious decision by Carmella and a sort of subconscious decision

A kid, we had a kid, you seem bad.

It is that, like the one about.

Affecting your career.

Irony was that a woman or a man man said that to me, and multiple men had said that to me. Is you know who were all people who were all kind and wanted to give you some advice and don't you know, and wanted you to do well and one of us their intentions were all very honorable. But the view there is is that they looked at it from their perspective, not from mine. And yeah, so so agent's right.

Of the irony of it all is that going back to the original part of the story, which was the information should be given by her quote mentors end quote about children affecting her career is since we've had the child, Camella's career is boomed.

Well, that was my next question you had.

And whether it's I'm sure she would put it down to the compassion that you get from having a child.

The compassion you receive, or the compassion you as a mother you give, the compassion, the.

Compassion within yourself, not externally, but your way of thinking and your way of looking at things. That has meant that she's been a bit much more from what I can tell a much better leader. And that's just meant her career as skyrocketed. Whether it would have gotten to the same place had she had a child earlier, you never know, because you know, having it earlier, you're in a different stage of your career path.

And it doesn't matter because I know that you've done yes story.

So, yeah, seventeen years and we've got a ten year old son who's pretty special, and he'll be eleven in August, and he's good.

It's pretty awesome. Carmela. You actually mentor women in business, don't you. So what's your advice now to women in that way when they want to get pregnant and have a family.

Well, that's a lot of what I talked to them about because I always said that if ever I was in a position where I could affect change, I would And that was my conversation with a lot of them that come to me and say, what do you think I should do it? I'm like, absolutely, do not let a career or a job dictate your future, because I always say that the legacy we leave behind is not the work we do, is not this. It's not the jobs that we do. It's our children and the quality

Is it difficult for the both of you because you have very full on jobs and you work very hard for both of you to find that family work time balance.

No, I don't think so.

No, Oh God, how do you do it? Then?

I think it's simple for me. It's a simple thing like during the week, make sure that I'm home before dinner and we have dinner together. We've always had dinner together. As silly as and as fundamental as that sounds. We try to have breakfast together in the morning, and weekends are as much as possible handed over to family. I mean, if it's Benjamin's sport or Benjamin's interests or Camello's got something on, we try to do it as a family. I think you've got to make a conscious decision for it,

And for us, because we did have him so late, we were very conscious that we were going to make sure that he became our number one priority on weekends, that we would spend quality time with him rather than quantity, and that for us is really important. He's blessed, he's got two parents, one child. He gets all of our attention, but we make it work. And look, maybe it's because we're a bit more seeing that we can make those calls now.

It's much easier for me at my age now than had we had a child. I mean, you know, the discussion's got now gone full circle. Had we had a child twelve years earlier or fifteen years earlier than we did, it would have been more difficult because my seniority would have meant that I didn't have as much control over my time then as I do now, So it's easier.

I've always been an advocate of and I say this to people, pay for what you can don't get hung up on the cleaning of the house. If you can afford to have someone clean the house or do the ironing, do that because it means that you then put that time back into either your own personal well being or

Do you think part of the success of your marriage is because you've both got such strong work ethics that that's also played into your marriage. Be both successful, so you both hard workers. Does that like the two of you on that same level workways, Has that really assisted your marriage? Do you feel I do?

I think that what it's done is it gives us an ability to have a line life and a hard working life away from the family and so our careers and when we come together, you know that it gives us something to talk about. We have our interests are different but similar in some ways.

Our careers are different.

So where's it is really interesting? And it also gives us an opportunity that if he's working really hard. I understand. I may not understand the total intricacies of his job, but what I do understand is that the days are long, that they're hard, that he's exhausted, he's spent. By the time he gets home. You know, he's spent, and he's it's been a long day in court. You know he's

What's the biggest issue that challenges your marriage?

Do you think?

From my perspective is I think Agent may comment before that I take the line's share of things that are happening with Benjamin. So there are times that I don't restrg I get home and then there's dinner on, and then dinner finishes, and I'm getting ready for the next day because I always think to myself, well, I don't

So he doesn't think, well, tonight came.

But other than that, I think twenty eight years where you are great friends and we got to spend so much time together before Benjamin.

That we're the best of friends.

Like I've got best friends who are girls, but Adrian's There isn't anything I wouldn't tell Adrian, you know, there isn't anything that's happened in my life that he doesn't And even just.

Hanging out together, I mean we you know, in an answer to an earlier question, we were talking about spending time as a family unit, but also spending time as a couple. I mean, we were recouple for a lot of years before someone else came along and on the on life's path, he's going to leave the nest, if that's the right metaphor, in due course and we'll be back to the couple again. So we we try to do things which are a couple based things not not

That, that sounds we sound really boring, and I'm sorry.

No, we don't need the friction. We don't have love belove, but we.

Need examples of this.

The thing, it's the idea of you know, someone's perfect or whatever. I mean, Look, everyone's normal until you get to meet them. Sure we'll get to know them. Rather, we all have our challenges and also some seem to have less challenges.

Than others.

But it's also when you meet someone who has less challenges, it's something to aspire to and go, Okay, what's your secret? How This is why we started this podcast really was because people were putting us up on a pedestal going couple goals and you guys have no idea because.

In your industry it's good. I mean, it's classic to say that it's the exception rather than the rule.

Isn't it to be together this long for that long probably.

Means to physically?

Not?

Probably, I mean it definitely would definitely be the case.

Yeah, I probably.

Yes.

I mean if I.

What's your biggest challenge? Then I mean I shouldn't be asking you questions, but there's one.

Where do I start?

Seriously?

Yeah?

Yeah, so you can't mention that. You can't mention thirty years and have a big list of Yeah, oh gosh, its possible to do so.

That I know. It's it's so true. I mean in some of them, some of them are small. And it depends in the moment too, doesn't it what we're what we're working with. I mean, currently it's financial stuff, but it's not but it's not with each other. It's just a life.

It's dealing with it and then and then how I deal with with lack and the whole idea around lack and where that sends me down a down, a whole rabbit warren, and then Allie's way of dealing with it too.

So that's the.

Challenge because sometimes I'll tend to withdraw, and then in that withdrawal, I'll often spit.

Out, you know, But that's the Frital fly league, you know, flight reaction though when you which.

We all do.

And so please don't think for a moment.

Money issues are not foreign to us either. I mean they and the other thing about it is, you know, in twenty eight years, the money issues are wide and varied. You know, sometimes they're good and sometimes they're not so good, and sometimes they're self inflicted and sometimes otherwise. But yeah, it's always it's always a pressure component.

I can remember in the early days of Adrian's career, we'd sort of we'd gotten married. And I talk about this because I think it's if I may is he'd changed. He was a successful solicitor and he was a partner, and then he goes off to become a barrister and he'd gone from earning some good money to then all of a sudden not and he's coming home and saying to me, I don't want to do this.

I hate it, I hate it.

I just don't want to do this. And he would have sleepless nights and he didn't have the work, and he would he it was just a torture for him. And I remember saying to him, it's okay, we'll get through it. But I can understand also as a man who's a very proud man who says, well, I want to provide for my family or my wife at the time,

Stereotypical, if I can use.

That word, where the man feels they must and the woman and it doesn't like it doesn't. And I think that we're in it as a team, as you guys are. We're a team and it will work it out and whatever that is. And sometimes it becomes really hard and other times you talk through it and you realize we can get through it, and you just make those decisions.

Yeah, And it's always better when you work as a team, isn't it. Like whenever we're trying to solve things and we're butting heads, nothing gets solved. But as soon as we joined together as a team, we can we make things happen.

So yeah, and you set it, talk through it, communicate and that's one of the things that we do. And in the past, how do we get that couple time. It's been getting in the car and heading off on a road trip, even if it's for an hour.

Away from the kids and no one else is talking.

To just the two of us. And then and that's I always fall in love again on a road trip. I just I always do. God, this is what it is. This is who we are, you know, and you're listening. You might put a CD on, you know of a La Love It or a Jump High It or something our music that we fell in love to.

But that's the thing you're going back to where you started and while you got together, and while you are together, I mean the children, the lovely and they're an important part of the family unit. But at the end of the day, the core is you as a couple. The time is important that and the discussion is important. But I think for me to fundamental things are tolerance and respect. I think I think the minute you lose respect and the minute you don't exhibit tolerance, and.

You may as well go your separate ways. And I think that respect thing. And I've got to say that that I've never once felt that I don't have. I feel like an equal in our family and our relationship. And it's and I have a number of friends who aren't in that position and they talk to me about it, and I do feel like he's equal. I don't. He has never made me feel like anything but his equal, and I think that that's an important part of any

Would that be right?

At the end of our podcast because we loved having you two in, we do something called a two minute shower because we're all about the environment here. Okay, right, so we do.

Sure I have one of those little water saving.

It does it does? It does? It's for two minutes and they're in the shower together and it's only two minutes. It's quick, quick, quick fire questions, quick fire answers.

Right for it.

So question one favorite moment together?

Quick help.

Favorite moment Watching Hoodie and the Blowfish on Long Island, New York.

Oh yeah, that was very cool.

Caught the train from New York up to Long Island and jumped in a cab with the with the they're actually the travel agents for the band, and really watch them. Watch them. Was a stage that was only probably as big as three or four of these studios with a with a rotating stage, and it was out of control. It was amazing looking at each other game, which is awesome. I only want to be with your who.

Everyone's trying to do.

Darius R actually walk.

Past the Metro on George Street just yesterday.

We've got two minutes.

And we watched them there was, but it was a great answer.

And what a band.

I love it. I love it. What do you miss when you are not together about each other?

Waking up next to him? So I think that that moment of that, that security and safety that I feel when we're together.

Yeah, for me, it's just lonely without her, like I just just miss her.

So yeahs beautiful.

What's the way you show each other kindness?

There wouldn't be a day that I wake up or he doesn't give me or I don't give him a kiss good morning and goodbye.

And yeah, that for me and a hug, kiss, hug.

Without a doubt.

It's so simple but so meaningful.

And also, you know, when it's an opportunity to have a say, you give them the right to have their say.

That's pretty important.

Who's the best joke teller?

Adrian?

Okay, I have to be humbled and admit.

It.

Humility requires me to deny that. It honestly requires that I agree with it.

So that's good. Write that one down.

Biggest pet peeve taking the plates out the night before ready for breakfast. I don't know what the biggest pet pee what's the biggest.

It doesn't have to be about each other can be planetary planet.

People who don't say so. If for me, if you let someone in in the traffic and they don't say thank you, that for me is so offensive.

A little wave? How hard is it? Way to hand around the finger exactly driven.

I've driven around Europe enough to know.

That, no.

But in Australia it's out, you know, in Australia, put your hand up, say thank you.

I don't know what my biggest pet peeve is.

Global warming?

Yeah, I think probably. I think I think a wider issue and that I think, for me, this sort of uncontrolled population growth thing that's happening worldwide, and I think it's combined with global warming and put your head in the sand attitude to I think we've probably got the ability to recognize that we can all coexist with the natural world, as much as humankind has ruined it thus far. But we just need to put the brakes on a bit and do things a bit differently. I think it's

But then you also have things like as for me, it's then you have the population grows. We have men and women financially aren't aware of how to look after themselves from a financial perspective. I think they're the things. You know, we're now getting pretty serious, but they're the things that I worry about. Is as a female, how do I then support the next generation of women to say you can be financially independent, You don't have to

Last question, last question, what is speaking of vinyls, what's the best gift you've ever given each other or you've ever received from each other?

I should say, well, Benjamin for me was single handling the best gift that anyone had ever given. It was my son and the fact that we wasn't.

A gift though that was sort of a joint gift.

Go the best gift.

Agent's really generous. So what I do need to say is Adrian is incredibly generous and he knows that I love jewelry, and there is rarely does an opportunity to go where he doesn't you know, on special occasions, like really special occasions, that he doesn't buy me a beautiful gift of jewelry or he'll actually never go and picket. He'll just say let's go together and we'll go and pickets, So that for me is free.

Camella bought me a couple of flying lessons a few years I thought that was that was pretty cool.

That's it. Let's wind it up with with one word to describe each other.

Beautiful.

For me, it's values. So he is a man with high integrity, high values, and high morals, and that, for me is the most attractive thing about him.

Beautiful, wonderful. Oh, thank you so much too. It's what a beautiful relationship you both have. Thank you, thank you.

I feel really blessed and very cherished to be here, so thank you for sharing your your space with us.

Absolutely so thank you.

Come Ella, Adrian, thank you, Thank you both so much, and not go wow.

I know I say this every time, but what a beautiful couple. They're so lovely. They literally the feeling in the room, you know, when there's just a feeling in a room of sort of love and kindness that they just sort of it was sort of was dripping off the walls with those two. It's really sweet.

They were respectful of each other and it seemed to me that they're Their through line, which I really liked, was happiness and do what do what makes you feel happy be obviously because you use that word tolerance and respectful all respect So do what makes you feel happy and at the same time be.

Respectful of the other person's needs.

Yeah, and there was very supportive of each other. It wasn't about you get more than me or it was the equality, which is what Carmela talked about as well.

And you get to have in the relationship and in life. So it was like, yes, we can afford to have some help, so we will. We will take some help. That way we can better spend our time with each other or with their with their son Benjamin.

Yeah, I learned a lot too.

Thanks everyone so much for listening.

Yep, and if you want to send us an email, please do Separate bathrooms at Novapodcasts dot com dot au. We'll see you on Monday for the next one.