Chair of Partners
McCullough Robertson
Kristan is the Chair of Partners at McCullough Robertson.
Every day is different but it is all about the people around me. I connect people to assist them in getting solutions and outcomes and I connect people within my team to ensure they have the tools and resources they need to do their very best.
What are the first three words you think of when you hear the word ‘diversity’?
1. Gender, more specially gender equality.2. Diversity of thought. I genuinely think that surrounding you with people that are different from you helps you see everything in a different light.3. Self-reflection. I think to be open to other people’s thoughts, opinions, experience and to want to learn from this you need to be able to self-reflect.
What do you think it will take to develop truly diverse thinking within the legal industry?
We need to expose this industry from both within and from outside of the industry. What I mean by that is that we need to ensure that people are able to be exposed to people that are different to them whether that be gender, sexual orientation, race, age etc. We need to see and hear differences and develop an understanding. Importantly we need to look outside legal and learn from other industries and be open to what they have done.
What was your main driver to enter the legal industry?
This really came down to the fact that I was better at English than maths. My passion and interest was definitely more in the sciences side and I was interested in all the different therapies and actually began these studies in my first year. My work experience was not in a law firm, it was in a gym!I was just better at English, I did extremely well at Uni in my first year and people started suggesting I should study law so I took their advice, found I was good at it and so the rest is history.