Stephanie Choong

6.15 AM

My alarm goes off and the morning sun shining through my window gets me up.  I head out for a run and a swim at the beach before getting ready to catch the bus into the office.  I’m on a 2-3 days per week in the office schedule with the other days spent working from home.

9.00 AM

On my way to my desk, I pick up my breakfast from the office café which I’ve preordered through an app.  I login to my computer and go over any new emails since last night and briefly catch-up on the news.

9.15 AM

I’m on a video call with a lawyer to receive instructions for an application to the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) for the sale of shares in a superannuation fund that I will be drafting today.  The lawyer has come to me because I gave a small talk on my prior experience as a risk management consultant in the financial services industry which would be relevant to this work.  The lawyer talks me through the documents that I will be using as a point of reference and instructs me to contact her any time if I have questions on the firm’s instant messaging service or by phone.

9.30 AM

As part of the corporate acquisition of the superannuation fund client, APRA requires that they submit a controlling stake proposal application which explains the proposed new corporate structure and the proposed operating model post-transaction.  I start drafting sections of the application by creating an organizational chart of the proposed new corporate structure.  I also draft the background to the proposed acquisition and outline how the client’s governance, decision-making, and resourcing will work under the proposed operating model.  Today is a day that my prior work experience has come in handy!

1.30 PM

I grab a quick lunch from the cafeteria downstairs and catch-up with a friend over tea in one of the breakout spaces in the office.

2.00 PM

Another lawyer I’ve been working with on an Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) merger authorization submission for a large software company asks for urgent help with preparing customer switching analysis.  I enjoy working with spreadsheets so that makes the calculations much quicker!

5.30 PM

I pack up my laptop to make the commute back home on the bus.  I log back on when I get home and continue my work from there.  I’ve got a home office set up and I’ve settled into a hybrid system of working from home and the office since we first transitioned out of the office due to the coronavirus pandemic.

7.00 PM

The lawyer from this morning’s task wants to check in on my progress with the APRA application.  I do a brief review of what I’ve done so far before emailing the draft application to the lawyer who checks that I’m on the right track.  The lawyer tells me that she is happy with how the application is looking and to continue working on this over the next couple of days.  I continue working on it a bit more before completing my timesheet for the day and adding the remainder of the task to my ‘To Do List’ for tomorrow.

7.30 PM

I head out for an evening walk and to get some fresh air before dinner.