Pip Job – an agricultural trailblazer

29 August 2025

A career in agriculture was always on the cards for Pip Job. There were strong signs of what was to come when, as a 14-year-old, she started her own cattle stud. At 15 she was a representative on the committee of the Shorthorn Club of Australia. And so it went.

By the time Pip hit her 20s she wanted to add to her cattle knowledge, to open new doors and create new opportunities. She started working with national not-for-profit, Landcare where she learned about sustainable agricultural systems and how to design educational programs for farming families to help them implement change.

Fast facts

“At Landcare I learnt a lot about the challenges farming families face in adopting new ideas and best practice and that these challenges could be economic, environmental, or often social,” Pip said.

The concept of achieving sustained change rather than short-term change was what motivated her.

In 2014 Pip was the national winner of what was then RIRDC’s Rural Woman of the Year Award for her project on the social barriers to progress that inhibit farming family businesses from reaching their full potential.

“It was all based on everything I was observing at Landcare – the social issues that sit inside a family business and when something challenging happens, how they would sometimes revert back to past practices.”

Pip turned her bursary project into the ‘Positive Farming Footprints’ workshop, rolling this out across rural communities of NSW, Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania.

The NSW Government was impressed and approached her to join the then Department of Primary Industries (DPI) to expand on her work.

“DPI saw the potential in me, and I was provided so many amazing opportunities, including being appointed the NSW Government’s State Drought Coordinator in 2018,” she said.”

In 2020, Pip – who’s based in the Central-West of NSW - was awarded the Public Service Medal for her efforts in supporting drought-affected communities.

“It was a grueling and hard role but what an honour to serve the people of NSW in making sure that their voices were heard in complex decision making and that Government recognised the challenges that people were experiencing on the ground” she said.

As well as a suite of board positions and running her own agricultural consultancy business, Pip is the Senior Manager of Extension & Adoption with the Hub and overseeing and implementing its Pathway to Impact project.

As part of the initiative, Pip has developed a contemporary framework for extension and adoption. An industry first, it’s been designed to be picked up and used by everyone across the agricultural sector.

“This project is very much aligned to my purpose to being involved with things that are impactful,” she said.

“Building connections with people through this work has been a real gift; to be able to connect with all these people from RDCs, grassroots groups, government and subject matter experts in their field extension and adoption.”

Pip says her work with the Hub is the right work at the right time in her very impressive resume.

“I look back on my career and there have been many crossroads - in some cases I’ve had to pick right or left or just go straight ahead. There’s been nothing intentional in the way it’s unfolded but I wouldn’t change a thing.”