INTHEBLACK December - January 2022 - Magazine - Page 38
Member profile
ELEVATE BUSINESS AS USUAL
38
DEC 2022
JAN 2023
Above: Austin with a group of staff in logistics and procurement.
Government was working towards more
financial transparency and accountability
in international markets, which warranted
a switch from a traditional paper-based
auditing system to one that met modern
international auditing standards. Austin
was hired by the UAE’s auditor general to
oversee the transition and restructure.
She also developed and implemented a
coaching and mentoring scheme for young
female UAE national graduate auditors. These
women were among the first female auditors
in the UAE and would go on to achieve great
success in the public sector, becoming role
models for the next generation of women in
finance. Austin remains in contact with them
all, and counts the program among the biggest
impacts she has made during her career.
By the time the family returned home to
Australia in 2010, Austin’s reputation for
technical financial management, as well as
international accounting and auditing standards,
had established her as a sought-after consultant.
She took on projects with Deloitte for the
US Agency for International Development
(USAID) in Kazakhstan, with UNRWA in
Jordan and with the United Nations Office
INTHEBLACK CAREER, ELEVATED SPECIAL EDITION
for Project Services (UNOPS) in Myanmar,
where she ran the largest finance team of 100
people in the largest UNOPS country office.
Apart from small group gatherings with
friends, most of Austin’s downtime in Gaza
is spent on video calls to home, reading
Australian news, watching the AFL on
TV and exercising in her home gym.
The pandemic was a game changer for
the UNRWA, the UN agency that provides
humanitarian assistance for Palestinian refugees
in Gaza, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the West
Bank. Austin considers herself lucky to have
been able to get back to Australia twice during
the height of pandemic restrictions.
As the deputy director of operations at the
UNRWA’s Gaza Field Office, Austin oversees
the back office support – finance, HR, PLD,
admin, IT, job creation scheme, infrastructure
and camp improvement – for Gaza’s frontline
programs of education, health, relief and
social services.
A direct service provider, UNRWA Gaza runs
280 schools serving 290,000 children.
More than half of the Gaza Field Office’s
13,000 staff are teachers. The office also runs 22
primary health centres, services eight Palestinian
