Anya Phelan joined Green Cross Australia to manage our major public event for the year – The People’s Assembly. She is a mechanical engineer with twelve years experience in the pharmaceutical and oil and gas industries in New Jersey and Texas.  Anya and her husband Joe has three kids aged 9, 11 and 13. She joins Green Cross on leave from Hatch Engineering for 2008.

 

How did you hear about Green Cross?

I watched the film “Before Sunrise” in Houston around 2000, and the leading French actress turns to Ethan Hawke and says “I work for Green Cross”. It was the kind of romantic film that gets under your skin, because their connection was about environmental values. From that moment I clipped every Green Cross media reference in the US. I arrived in Brisbane two years ago with my family and to my surprise Green Cross began its Australian journey with Michael Gorbachev’s earth dialogues.

 

What inspires you about Mikhail Gorbachev?

Courage and vision to challenge the system. I was born in Leningrad in 1969. My family immigrated to the US in 1979 under refugee status. I care deeply and identify with my Russian heritage and I want to do whatever I can to contribute to Gorbachev’s vision for as sustainable and peaceful future.

 

What’s it like being a young woman engineer working in heavy industry?

When I started as a 22 year old college graduate in a team of twenty male engineers. We worked with forty skilled workers who did the hard yards. I would give the plumbers, builders, and electricians the layouts for plant upgrades and they would laugh and teach me quickly how things worked and how it really should be done. They taught me how to be an engineer.