Floating on the Stock Market - Julia Ross

WORDS: LIV MORGAN

Julia Ross has to be one of the most recognisable businesswomen in Australia. The blonde beauty is not only distinctive in appearance but she has experienced a formidable amount of success for a little girl who came from a middle class family in England. To date Julia is most famous for her recruitment company ‘Julia Ross’ becoming the only female-owned business and largest sole-owner business ever to list on the Australian Stock Exchange in 2000.

Julia Ross recruitment has evolved to become Ross Human Directions over the years and

is no longer just a recruitment agency. In Julia’s words it’s a ‘holistic people provider’ answering all the employer’s needs throughout an employee’s lifecycle. With an annual turnover of over $400 million, offices in every city in Australia and in Dublin, London, Edinburgh, New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong, it’s safe to say Julia is surfing

a golden wave.

Eight years on from that stock market milestone you would think that Julia would have settled into her new wealthy environs. Not so, in fact Julia is uneasy speaking of her wealth and describes her relationship with money as “disconnected.” “It’s not really me. I’ve never done anything for the money and people say ‘that’s okay for you to say now’ but I don’t feel like that. People saying that I’m the most successful self-made woman is great but it’s the whole relationship back to money and being the woman that earned x, y and z. It sort of trivialises what your life has been about!”

Far from the affluence she can experience now, growing up as the youngest of eight in the North of England was “tough”. When you’re growing up in that environment Julia says it’s natural to aspire to making life better. “I lived in a sort of house that you scrape the ice

off the inside of the windows. We huddled around the fire at night dreaming about how we were going to make life better when we grew up. It was a desire from an early age. So

I always did want to be and I did always feel I would be something big. I sort of convinced myself somehow!!”

It was her brothers’ influence that first started Julia off in the male dominated construction industry. As the youngest she would sit with her brothers talking, about what they would be when they grew up, while her older sisters helped with the cooking. Soon after joining the Taylor Woodrow Group Julia progressed to a senior level position and was listed for the Business Woman of the Year Awards presented by The Times and Veuve Clicquot at the young age of 21. Despite making headway she found the industry debilitating. “It was

a boy’s industry and eventually I got sick of trying to make progress. It was crushing.”

Read more about Julia Ross in the October | November 2008 issue of WMB, on newsstands now