From a corporate career to an award-winning fitness student

After 20 years in senior roles at some of the world’s largest tech companies, it took a change of scenery to shift Evelyn’s perspective. At 57, Evelyn enrolled to study fitness at UOW College as a mature age student. Despite initially feeling intimidated by her lack of experience, she soon discovered she had valuable transferable skills.

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Evelyn was able to build her skills from the ground up and pivot her life toward a fulfilling and successful career in fitness, changing lives in her community - and her own.  

Her commitment to improving community health through fitness has already earned Evelyn significant recognition, including Vocational Student of the Year for Illawarra & South East NSW at the 2026 NSW Training Awards and an AUSactive Student of the Year nomination. 

Help at hand

After 12 years working in a senior role at Microsoft, Evelyn was made redundant and forced to weigh up the importance of focusing on health struggles as they crept into her daily life.   

She and her wife Symone left Sydney for Gerringong, where it was easier for Evelyn to put her needs before her career.  

‘I started taking my own fitness more seriously,’ says Evelyn.  

‘Through exercise I felt included in my community; I instantly had access to people like me who wanted to stay fit and have fun.’ 

‘I had a real desire to help the more vulnerable people in our community.’ 

Evelyn believes that exercise is a tool for long-term wellbeing, including connection with others, and began carving a pathway to this vision.  

Motivation for movement

Evelyn made it her mission to gain qualifications that would allow her to deliver safe and inclusive fitness programs that foster community well-being.  

Having already co-founded Soul for Life to fund qualified movement programs in regional communities, Evelyn still needed the qualifications to lead the fitness programs she envisioned. 

‘Living rurally, there are less services available for people who could benefit most from accessible fitness programs. From my fitness study, I learnt how to design exercise programs that better suited my community.’ 

Evelyn learnt about UOW College’s SIS30321 Certificate III in Fitness through Korin, a personal trainer in her local community and fitness trainer at UOW College.  

‘I’d looked around at few different vocational courses, but I chose UOW College because it gave me access to the UniActive gym where I could go in and network with professionals face-to-face.’ 

‘There were job opportunities at UniActive so students could gain experience and a professional skill set while studying at the same time.’  

‘I was able to take elements of my previous career into what I’m doing now, so the journey of being a beginner again didn’t worry me at all.’ 

‘Before it was more like, ‘how can we connect devices to maximise profit for this company?’ Now I think, ‘how can we make connections that will help people live healthier, longer lives?’’ 

Connections for life 

UOW College’s Certificate III in Fitness gave Evelyn the chance to connect with like-minded professionals face-to-face whilst gaining the necessary skills and knowledge to design exercise programs, conduct screening and safety tests and learn theory for evidence‑based practice.  

Most of all, this qualification enabled Evelyn to do what she loves.  

‘I was able to learn new skills around how to write programs and deliver them to clients on campus at UniActive.’ 

‘The ability to influence and help others is my end goal. I want to encourage people to get active and stay healthy for longer,’ she says. 

‘I now have a platform to talk about Soul for Life and connect to people who can enable this mission, and UOW College was essential to that.’  

Learn more about pathway programs offered at UOW College.