WHEN Kayla Evans was 10, she wanted to be a vet, when she was 15, she wanted to be a doctor and when she was 20, she wanted to be a public relations executive strutting down St George's Terrace in a power suit and stilettos.
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But life has a way of surprising you and life certainly surprised Ms Evans after she returned to the industry she thought she'd left for good.
She grew up on a 2000-hectare mixed cattle and grain property in the Darling Downs, about 400 kilometres west of Brisbane, Queensland, and while she loved her upbringing in the country, being a part of the agriculture industry was never where she saw her career going
"We were never inside, when we got home from school it was about 4.30pm and we were outside playing until the 6pm news, then we were allowed back in the house," Ms Evans said.
"We were riding about on quad bikes, I learnt to drive at age 10 around the paddocks, I would go out mustering, check the fences and troughs - it really was the best.
"Then I went to university and decided I wanted to work in an office in a highrise building with views of the city, but I think that had a lot to do with the fact I grew up with the exact opposite because it was just dust for miles my whole childhood, so I wanted a corporate career."
These days, Ms Evans heads up the Grain Industry Association of Western Australia's Careers in Grain initiative, but the road she took to get there was not a straightforward one.
After graduating from high school, she deferred an offer to study biomedicine at Bond University and took a gap year in the navy.
It was this experience which changed her life and showed her communications and PR was where her passion lied, so she moved to WA and started a communications degree at Murdoch University.
After university, she ended up working for her alma mater and eventually fell into a role which involved talking to high school students about tertiary education options.
It was in this role Ms Evans discovered a love for helping young people realise their potential and figure out what they wanted to do with their own careers.
"I didn't know I was going to be passionate about young people until I landed in the role," Ms Evans said.
"It wasn't until I started meeting the kids that I realised how much potential sits in a young person and I believed I could have an impact with the one or two touch points I have with them."
When the job with Careers in Grain was advertised, Ms Evans felt it was speaking directly to her and couldn't pass up the opportunity to combine her country upbringing with her newfound passions.
Careers in Grain aims to attract young people to career opportunities, to upskill people who are both entering and working in the industry and to employ more high calibre people in the grains industry in WA.
"I try to give students a little taste of agriculture that they might not be able to get otherwise," Ms Evans said.
"For example, last year I took 12 university students to an ag tech conference for three days, all of them bar two had never stepped foot on a farm and had no plans of going into agriculture.
"Now I get emails from them saying they wrote their thesis on water management in agriculture and if we hadn't given them that exposure they never would have known ag involved more than being on a farm."
But for Ms Evans, one job within the grain industry wasn't enough and a serendipitous meeting with agricultural social media specialist Lavinia Wehr last year led to the pair starting a podcast in October.
GenerationAG's mission is to provide a platform for people of all ages, areas and backgrounds to share their story of agriculture to create change, educate and grow the already strong community to become something even bigger.
"For me the podcast is about providing a virtual meeting place for people to connect with issues that matter to them and it's about celebrating people's story, not pushing an agenda," Ms Evans said.
"We've had about 3500 downloads in just over three months, we have listeners from all over the world including the United States, New Zealand and Germany and about 60 per cent of our listeners are in that 18 to 35 age bracket."
When asked what her dream for the podcast is over the next five years, Ms Evans had one answer - world domination.
"We'd love to do our own events and workshops, we'd love to teach other agricultural businesses how to start a podcast and maybe do some live shows," Ms Evans said.
"But right now we're just enjoying the ride, on Monday we had an episode with Agriculture and Food Minister Alannah MacTiernan and they reached out to us which is wild, so we just want to see how far we can grow it."
In terms of her overall career plans, Ms Evans isn't 100 per cent sure where her future will take her, but she is confident it'll be within agriculture.
"If you asked me two years ago what I wanted in five years, it wouldn't have been this, but now I'm here I couldn't imagine doing anything else," Ms Evans said.
"Careers in Grain is such a unique and precious resource and I would love to take it nationwide or even see it develop into something that covers all careers in agriculture because as a community, we need to do so much more to get kids excited about where their food comes from."
