Welcome to Quick Q – Monday Media’s weekly Q&A series dedicated to finding out more about the personalities that matter most in the Australian media landscape.
Every week, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age asks key figures across corporate media, business, sport, federal politics, radio, television and culture to answer a series of questions about their life, careers, hobbies and news habits.
This week’s questionnaire is with Jodie Hawkins, former general manager of the Sydney Sixers and non-executive director of Judo Australia.
Jodie Hawkins’ guilty streaming pleasure? Succession. Credit:James Alcock
How did you get your big break?
I got into sport at the Parramatta Eels back in 2005 after starting my career in tourism at BridgeClimb. I knew I wanted a career as a sports administrator pretty early on so wanted to make sure I gave it a good go. After a year at the Eels I headed to the Sydney Roosters as the media and PR manager and while it was a pretty steep learning curve from there it absolutely set the foundations of my career.
What are daily news media habits?
Social media is my main go to for news and Twitter is definitely the breaking news platform. I always tune into the morning news bulletins on breakfast TV and for anything in depth I log onto the news websites.
Which living person do you most admire?
For me, it’s not about a person but the behaviours I see in people. I admire people who want to make meaningful change. I’m very lucky to have worked with a number of athletes and administrators who want to be a force for good, and they drive me to be better.
Your guilty streaming pleasure?
At the moment I’m powering through Succession….very enjoyable!
Which phrase do you overuse?
All good……even when it’s not!
What did you want to do when you grew up?
I wanted to be a vet. I loved animals, still do, but I was never one for biology in school, so the writing was on the wall.
What was your first job?
I was a party entertainer at Kids Sports. 30 minutes of games, 30 minutes of eating, 30 minutes of playing in ball pits. And you always hoped that wasn’t followed by 30 minutes of cleaning up after the kids who weren’t well in the ball pits!
