Emily Thorpe started going to AHSS in 1996 in Kindergarten and stayed through seventh grade at the school before moving back to her home country of Australia. Emily got a Bachelor’s degree in writing, then a Master’s degree in teaching English, then an editing accreditation. Today she works in the Australian Government as a communications specialist.
Emily works in the welfare department of the Australian Government, covering services like social security, government payments and health security systems.
“My role is to help build trust in that government department. We do a lot of communication pieces about the different work that we do across the country,” Emily said.
Her staff works with a wide variety of people in Australia’s diverse population. Some work in specific roles communicating with First Nations People, some in different languages with multicultural communities, others with people in Australia’s larger cities.
“Our role is to tell the public about the work that we do that they may not know about,” Emily said.
Emily also served as one of the two editors on developing the writing style guide for the Australian Government Offices. Every government office in Australia now writes in the style and on the guidelines that she was instrumental in developing.
In a recent visit to AHSS Emily credited the beginnings of her command over language for reading as much as she could at the school.
“Me and my friends I think read our way through the whole resource room, we loved finding the really random books,” Emily said. “So read everything you can read. School is a really good time to do that.”
Emily said walking the halls of AHSS last month felt the same, but different to her. It brought back a lot of memories. She remains fond of the family-style at AHSS, recalling her first day of school here and befriending one of the late Dr. Sue’s granddaughters, Yasmeen.
“Yasmeen and I met in kindergarten on day one and she said, ‘should we be best friends?’ And I said that ‘sounds great! Because I only got here from Australia like two weeks ago, so if I could have a best friend that would be really cool.’” Emily said. “We stayed really good friends until the end of school.”
Emily remains very fond of her time at AHSS and made friendships that have lasted a lifetime for her.
“I still have really good friends that I met here. My very best friend in the whole wide world we met in grade three. We still keep in touch every day.”
