Dr Julia Baird is the keynote speaker for the Drinks Association’s International Women’s Day event. She is an author, broadcaster and journalist, and current host of The Drum on ABC TV. She was formerly Deputy Editor of Newsweek in New York, has written for publications in the US and is also a columnist for The New York Times.
Baird began her career in journalism at The Sydney Morning Herald, where she worked as a columnist, oped editor, education reporter and election editor. In 2006 and then again at the end of 2011, she was the host of the in-depth interview radio program Sunday Profile for the ABC. In 2012, she covered the US presidential campaign in Iowa for The Monthly, the ABC, and the Sun-Herald.
She is the author of Media Tarts: How the Australian Press Frames Female Politicians, in 2018 she released Victoria: The Queen a biography of Queen Victoria and most recently the national bestseller, Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark.
The Guardian (Australia) said of the book: 'Julia Baird's new, beautiful consideration of the things that glow through the murk... a book such as this one - one that aims to provoke delight and wonder and comfort, that is at its heart trying to find answers or modes of connection, or light - is of the moment in the best possible way.'
The principles she explores in Phosphorescence will form the basis of her keynote address and her address will be followed by a one-on-one discussion with the Embrace Difference Council’s Chair, Simon Durrant.
Phosphorescence is an intimate and inspiring investigation into how we can find and nurture within ourselves that essential quality of internal happiness - the 'light within' that Julia Baird calls 'phosphorescence' - which will sustain us even through the darkest times.
Over the last decade, we have become better at knowing what brings us contentment, wellbeing and joy. We know, for example, that there are a few core truths to the science of happiness. We know that being kind and altruistic makes us happy, that turning off devices, talking to people, forging relationships, living with meaning and delving into the concerns of others offer our best chance at achieving happiness. But how do we retain happiness? It often slips out of our hands as quickly as we find it. So, when we are exposed to, or learn, good things, how do we continue to burn with them?
And more than that, when our world goes dark, when we're overwhelmed by illness or heartbreak, loss or pain, how do we survive, stay alive or even bloom? In the muck and grit of a daily existence full of disappointments and a disturbing lack of control over many of the things that matter most - finite relationships, fragile health, fraying economies, a planet in peril - how do we find, nurture and carry our own inner, living light - a light to ward off the darkness?
Please contact Drinks Association’s General Manager, Rachel Wormald, for information on how your company can access the event.