Bianca Broselli

The best career advice I've ever received was to just work hard and not expect much in return, and with that, your outcome will likely be great. It's a lot of humble, grounded advice that I kind of resonate with - being an underdog and just kind of hustling through, making ends meet, and eventually things will pay off. I really connect with that approach for some reason.

My biggest piece of advice is to not be discouraged. A lot of this industry is male-dominated and there's a lot of physical labor - it's not exactly what you would see a woman in. But I would like to change that and promote this field to women, because there are a lot of angles that need women's support and organization. I think that with the onboarding of more women into this industry, we could make a lot of changes. So I would say don't be discouraged, keep on trying. If you have passion or purpose, then this is exactly where you should be.

The biggest challenge is the grit that it requires to do this work - it's a lot of physical labor, intense days outside in all different sorts of weather, using heavy machinery and equipment. It's basically what farming is, just in the water. Besides the physical labor, a lot of people don't love farmed fish and the market for farm fish isn't quite there, so the funding isn't quite there. What we're trying to do is change that message and really persuade people that farm fish doesn't always mean it's a bad thing. We farm our chickens and beef and no one really questions where that comes from, so aquaculture and fish farming is really similar to that. A lot of what I strive to do is change the messaging behind the protein sources that we have available to us. As a manager, I've also faced the learning curve into management since I never had a management position before this. Some struggles I face daily are keeping up with current research, media, policy, and economics across the globe, because aquaculture is a global industry with a lot of trading, negotiating, and stakeholder communication.

I really value work-life balance, although I don't really have much of that right now, so that's another struggle I face with this industry - it's a really big commitment. I'm kind of trying to navigate purpose versus work-life balance, because I don't have a lot of that and I'm relying on just getting up and hustling to motivate me daily. But with that, I feel like burnout will come eventually, and I see that on my horizon. I'm not sure how that will be navigated, but I do value work-life balance even though I don't have it. Right now, I'm mostly banking on passion and purpose to keep me fulfilled.