Our Water Connection, with Jess Bohorquez

[00:00:00] Piers Clark: Welcome to this special edition to one of our Executive Exchange podcasts. Today, I am talking with Jess Bohorquez from Australia about her podcast called Our Water Connection. Jess, brilliant to connect with you.
[00:00:15] Jess Bohorquez: Thank you Piers, and thanks for having me today.
[00:00:17] Piers Clark: So I guess the question we should start with is what is Our Water Connection? I suspect that "Our" is doing some heavy lifting here.
[00:00:25] Jess Bohorquez: Yeah, I think the "Our" is a very important part. Our Water Connection is a podcast that was created to share knowledge and to provide a platform for people to connect within and outside of the water industry. Really a way to give it visibility to the all the amazing things that happen that are often invisible to the common kind of people and people outside of the industry to try to bring that knowledge out a lot more and try to connect people inside the industry as well, when you probably have one role and you're focusing one thing, but then water is such a wonderful and open area that there's so many angles that we can work in this sector and I just wanted to bring out the voices for that and really connect people because we all have place to play there.
[00:01:08] Piers Clark: Excellent. So, it's for both professionals within the water sector and for people who are not in the water sector, the general public, is that right? It's for both groups?
[00:01:21] Jess Bohorquez: It was created initially with a target audience inside the industry, probably young water professionals to start in their careers. But it's one of those things that you put out in the internet and you never know what's gonna happen. And I've heard of people listening to it from outside the industry, maybe not all of the episodes, but like, oh, water treatment plant. I wonder how it more actually gets treated- and because the way that I conduct the conversations is asking those very simple questions that start from the very basics, it allows people from the general public, should I say to actually learn some of those concepts.
[00:01:53] Piers Clark: Brilliant. Alright, Tell me a bit about your journey.
[00:01:55] Jess Bohorquez: Yeah, so I live currently in Australia but I'm originally from Columbia, so I'm a civil engineer by training, but with a little bit of a different kind of path from the traditional engineering field. So I worked for a number of years in research and I came to Australia to do a PhD. I worked in leak detection techniques and machine learning. And around three years ago, I made the jump out into consulting. So I work in a consulting company right now helping water utilities in the planning space of infrastructure projects for water
[00:02:25] Piers Clark: Excellent, And I don't think we're going to name your employer because this podcast, Our Water Connection is something that you, Jess, have set up on your own in a sort of entrepreneurial spirit to spread the word.
[00:02:37] Jess Bohorquez: That's right. This is year two, but probably been three years already thinking about the idea from like "Oh, it would be great if I can talk to people that are experts in something and ask them the basic questions" all the way to talking to you here and having people every fortnight coming and talking to me about all different things to give a voice to the industry.
[00:02:56] Piers Clark: My next question was going to be how many podcasts have you done and how frequently they released but I think you've just said two years and every two weeks?
[00:03:03] Jess Bohorquez: I've done two seasons so we are currently on the season two, I believe by the time we're recording this, probably around episode 33 is already up and I'm aiming for maybe 42 by the end of the year. So I'm running them between February to October, which is when National Water Week is here in Australia to give it more attention to that week as well.
[00:03:25] Jess Bohorquez: So yeah, they come out every fortnight. Every second Monday, I've got a new conversation there for people to listen.
[00:03:30] Piers Clark: Excellent. And what sort of people are you interviewing?
[00:03:33] Jess Bohorquez: I've been very fortunate to have a wide variety of people. I started with Karlene Maywald, the water ambassador who is in South Australia, someone with a lot of experience in policy and she has been actually in government. And then I started asking, "Can you refer me to three people? So I've had managing directors of water utilities, people working in other associations like related to regulation and other aspects. Lots of technical people, both consultancies and water utilities as well. I think I did an episode last year, about careers showcasing different angles that people can have in the industry.
[00:04:07] Jess Bohorquez: So yeah, a little bit of a mix of everything, a mix of topics that I would like to touch on or people that are really interesting that have connected me to, and then I can't miss the opportunity.
[00:04:18] Piers Clark: Excellent. That sounds good. And bearing in mind your target audience, as you said at the beginning when you started, was those new people into the sector actually having someone who can paint a broad canvas of what's going on is incredibly useful.
[00:04:30] Piers Clark: Alright. Tell me how do you feel the new voices are shaping the sector?
[00:04:35] Jess Bohorquez: I'm very, very proud of the new voices and young water professionals, how we call them here in Australia because we are often very passionate people. And we are ready to tackle on a lot of the challenges that are come in and like really questioning some of the ways that things are done.
[00:04:51] Jess Bohorquez: One of the things I do as well is I'm volunteering a lot of my time for the Australian Water Association, in some of the local committees and organizing events and seeing that community growing and seeing the importance that people are giving to water is something that fills me with hope because we have a lot of challenges ahead and we need a lot of skills and we need the experience of course, but we are sort of the ones that are gonna be here in the next few decades hopefully. And we really need to get together, to tackle those challenges. So it's been great, like to hear from people learning from this podcast and also from some of the young people that I've had as guests in the podcast.
[00:05:25] Piers Clark: I think you're making such an important point. We are on the cusp of a never seen before environmental crisis. We've got an industry, certainly in certain parts of Northern Europe that is being vilified in the press, and that's meaning young professionals are wondering whether they should join the water sector or whether they should actually join other sectors.
[00:05:44] Piers Clark: If you're a similar engineer coming out of university, you don't look at the water sector in the way that you might have done 10 years ago and providing something that will give support and encouragement because the only way we're going to come back from this environmental precipice is with brilliant people working incredibly hard to solve those problems.
[00:06:05] Piers Clark: Alright, now you are a Colombian based in Australia. Is the podcast for broader than just Australia?
[00:06:12] Jess Bohorquez: Yes, the podcast has always been focused globally. Like I've had a couple of guests, that have been based in Europe. I actually did an episode in Spanish this year as well because there was a water restriction process going on in the city where I'm from Bogota. So, I wanted to touch on that. Some episodes, for example, regulation or policy might be a little bit more relevant in the first place to Australia, but they still provide a learning opportunity for other countries to get inspired into doing certain things differently.
[00:06:41] Piers Clark: Brilliant. Jess, it is wonderful to speak with you and if we can help spread the word about Our Water Connection I'd love to do that. In case people are just listening, what would the link be? How would they find your podcast?
[00:06:53] Jess Bohorquez: Yes, Our Water Connection is present in all podcast platforms so all you need to do is type "Our Water Connection". We are on LinkedIn predominantly at the moment in terms of social media, so you can go and follow the journey there. And the podcast is a video podcast, so it comes out on YouTube as well.
[00:07:10] Jess Bohorquez: So wherever you get your podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, we are there, ready to be listened.
[00:07:17] Piers Clark: Thank you very much. You have listening to this little special addition to the Executive Exchange where I have been talking to Jess Bohorquez about her podcast called Our Water Connection. I hope you can join us next time.
[00:07:32] Piers Clark: Thank you.