Finding true north

Isabelle McHugh (2019) has always kept her North Star simple: `Help people, help the world in some way, somehow.’

It was just knowing where to start that was the problem.

Isabelle was gifted an expansive worldview by parents who took her on colourful international adventures and regularly had the car tuned to ABC Radio National during the 4am drives to BGGS rowing training.

`World leaders, summits—I was fascinated by the puzzle of it all,’ Isabelle remembers. `I will never forget the look of horror on my career counsellor’s face when, at our very first meeting, I announced I wanted to go to Afghanistan to write the stories of women.’

Spoiler alert: She ended up in Canberra, not Afghanistan, via the University of Queensland, Australian National University, Fiji, the University of Sussex and the British High Commission in Canberra.

Isabelle now works as a policy officer in the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, where she is inspired knowing she can help drive change on an issue that will impact everyone on Earth.

`You hear a lot of negatives about careers in the public service, but I am lucky to see its best side, full of people who genuinely care and turn up every day to do hard, unglamorous work because they believe it matters.’

While staying focused on her personal North Star helped Isabelle navigate to her current role, it wasn’t a straight shot, which is why she has gone above and beyond, travelling from Canberra to Brisbane four times, to join this year’s 2026 Grammar Women-Grammar Girls Mentoring Program. The program connects students in Year 11 with Grammar Women under 30 in aligned career fields.

`I want the girls I mentors to know it’s okay to not have it figured out at 16—or even at 26,’ Isabelle says.

She has a visceral memory of the confusion and weight of choosing a career path in high school.

`I still remember being 16, standing at the edge of what felt like this huge, exciting, terrifying abyss called `what am I going to do with my life’. `Looking back, I know how much I would have benefited from talking to someone who’d been through it.’

That’s particularly true of work in climate, development and humanitarian arenas.

`Careers like this don’t have a signposted path the way engineering, medicine or law does. Nobody hands you a checklist or tells you what to do. You have to build your own map as you go, and that means staying wildly curious and seeking thing out rather than waiting for them to come to you.’

For Isabelle, the breakthrough was switching from an Arts degree at UQ to a more targeted double degree at ANU studying International Relations and Development Studies.

`It was the perfect marriage of everything I cared about: global politics, climate change, crunchy global challenges and I felt as though I was on track to staying true to my dreams of helping people.’

The course combined high-level academic rigour with practical opportunities to travel and learn, seeing the impact of climate change firsthand in Fiji, spending a semester at the University of Sussex, and interning with the politics and climate team within the British High Commission in Canberra.

These opportunities to move outside her comfort zone had a profound impact on Isabelle both professionally and personally.

`You realise quickly that everyone is fighting for something they believe in, often shaped by circumstances completely different from your own and there’s real value in sitting with that rather than rushing to judgement.

`If you approach people with genuine curiosity and care, and listen more than you speak, you’ll be amazed at how it expands your mind in ways you never thought possible.’

Another learning has been how much mentoring can help the mentor. `That has surprised me the most,’ Isabelle says. `Mentoring keeps me honest. It reminds me where I started and how far I’ve come.’

Her advice to others? `Say yes to everything, even when its uncomfortable. At university I signed up for every opportunity I could find and applied myself to everything. It was overwhelming at times, but I learnt that nothing worthwhile comes without putting the work in.’