Carrie-Ann Wilson is a woman of many talents, one of them being her ability to juggle many things at once.
She is a mother, a business owner, and a PhD candidate.
She has certainly kept up with the times, that being the technological times.
Carrie’s love for technology and design blossomed from a young age when she studied Digital Design at Griffith University.
After graduating, she started her career as an IT specialist for Griffith University where her passion for digital creativity grew.
“At uni, I originally studied industrial design and digital design, but I was really good at the technology side of things which is why I ended up working in IT,” Carrie said.
“I was the Apple specialist and I used to look after all the Apple student computers – that’s what I did at the beginning of my career. I did that for ten years.”
Not long into her IT career, Carrie was gifted an unforgettable experience where she travelled to America for the Apple conference Macworld in 2007.
“I was very fortunate to go to America and I was there on the day that Steve Jobs launched the very first iPhone – that was amazing,” she said.
“We all knew that something was coming up – there had been all these rumours. It was quite a big moment in technology history.”
When Carrie moved to the Scenic Rim region, she felt as if the IT work piled up too much and she wanted to try to work from home.
“I had a few people around here that knew me and knew I had a background in digital design and asked me to do odd jobs like logos, websites and those kinds of things,” she said.
“I started doing that and then I decided to turn it into an actual business and scale it up from there.”
Not long after that, her business Scenic Rim Design came to life, and she was providing the local community with digital support and solutions.
“I really enjoy being creative and I seem to have a natural aptitude for technology, so it was just bringing those things together,” Carrie said.
“Our local community is very important to me, and I love giving back – whether it’s designing a logo, building a website, providing digital support, or lending a hand at an event, it’s great being able to help out.”
“I love that I can use my skills in a way that’s benefitting rural people, businesses and organisations.”
In the last few years, Carrie decided to change gears and go back to university to get a PhD in technology adoption and agriculture.
“Through my work and through supporting people, over the years I’ve become really interested in watching how people make decisions, especially around technology,” she said.
“There’s a lot of really cool technology coming out in agriculture now, but there’s also a lot of hesitation from farmers to adopt it and I want to understand more about what is going on there.”
“I really do enjoy it – the process of learning and sifting through knowledge and drawing out the interesting parts and then see where it leads.”
