Celebrating our colleagues: Dana Rawls
Dana Rawls, Manager, Communications, Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML)
I came to Australia after meeting my future husband at the US Embassy in Baghdad. I was working there as a contractor for the US Department of State, and he was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Australian Army.
We met at literally the last place on the planet that I would’ve anticipated meeting the love of my life, and yet here we are! It just goes to show that love can be found in even the strangest places.
From Baghdad we moved to Canberra. The Bush Capital has its virtues but overall, it was a tad too sleepy for us, so we made the decision to move to Adelaide, where my husband and his family are from. We’ve been here for seven years now.
So the route was: Washington DC, Baghdad, Canberra and now Adelaide.
I often wonder how different I would be if I could’ve grown up in a city like this. The parks, the swimming pools, the bowling clubs … it’s idyllic in so many ways. I just can’t think of a better place to raise children: Adelaide is clean, it’s safe, and it’s beautiful.
In 2023, I was approached by some of the staff in the Australian Institute for Machine Learning to write an article based on the question, “If AI practitioners in Australia had a billion dollars, what would they do with it?” I interviewed several AI professors across multiple universities in Australia, and I wrote the article which was a great experience. Afterwards, I was asked to edit a report written by an emeritus professor of economics at the University of Queensland, on AI’s impact on the economy. So I had formed a relationship with some of the AIML staff, and when the position as Communications Manager opened, I was encouraged to apply.
I’ve been in the role for six months, and it’s been a heck of a ride! My background is in journalism. I started out working in television news in a town called Macon, which is about an hour away from my hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. I have always loved writing – after graduating from college I started as an intern at CNN and they soon started CNN.com and asked me to join what was, then, this whole new way of communicating over the internet. Fast forward a few years and I moved to Washington D.C. and started working at the website of The Washington Post. While in D.C., I started a Masters degree at Georgetown University and explored the role of information and communication technology in international development, combining my trio of professional passions in media, technology, and international development.
I’ve dealt with some very interesting work environments since coming to Australia … but coming to AIML, and being around this highly professional, really supportive group of people has been like a balm to a wound.
The supportive team in AIML has encouraged me to find bits of myself that were long gone, and I am immensely grateful to them for helping me reconnect with bits of me that I thought I’d lost. I highly recommend the work environment here. It’s nourishing. Part of its beauty, for me, is that the AIML family is comprised of people from literally all over the world – it is truly multicultural.
The average working week is so busy – sometimes I feel like I’m juggling a thousand different things while wearing twenty different hats! My main focus is to make sure that the world, not just Adelaide and not just Australia, knows about the incredible breadth and scope of work that is being done here. And the kind of work that happens here is mind-blowing: it literally is world class, and it proves that there is really interesting, really valuable, and potentially world changing work happening right here in South Australia.
Read more about what's happening at AIML in a recent article published in The Chronicle.
Congratulations to Professor Simon Lucey, Director of the Australian Institute for Machine Learning who has been awarded the 2024 AmCham Alliance Award in Artificial Intelligence.