Beach-lover carves out a niche

“It used to be that talking about data recovery during a PC sale was likened to a car sale. The dealer never sold a car talking about a potential tyre failure and computer sales reps never sold computers with the ‘your computer is going to fail’ mentality,” says Brauner.

As a business, CBL operates on a 24 hours a day, seven days a week way of thinking.

Brauner says she may try to go home at 10 to five and then in walks a job that keeps her at work until the wee small hours of the next day.

“We are often the end of the line, but as I always say there are different degrees of death – we will try and resurrect it. Once we help the client out they tell us ‘We hope to never see you guys again’.

“That’s OK because it means we’ve done the job,” she says.

Despite the seriousness of data recovery, Brauner says there is a lighter side to her job.

She has had one client call up to say her boss’ laptop didn’t work because he’d thrown it across the room. “You do your best to tell the client you will try and help them.

“But once they hear a strange clicking noise and if the disk is scratched then there is nothing we can do,” she says.

Despite her long hours and hard work, Brauner tries very hard to maintain a healthy balance in her life. “I am living my dream. My goal was to come to Australia to live and I have achieved that,” she says.

Brauner made it her lifelong ambition to come to Australia because her brother had migrated to the country in the 1990s. “He would call me up and talk about the beautiful weather, while I was freezing in minus 50 degrees.

“I came down a couple of times for a visit and just loved the country because the culture is so close to the Canadian way of life,” she says.

“But it goes a bit further because the US isn’t pushing at the door.

During this time, Brauner owned and operated her own travel agency, but couldn’t move down under because there wasn’t much of a call for travel agents.

What Australia needed at the time were IT workers.

In early 2000 she sold her business and went Toronto School of Business to do an ISP programming course.

While this may seem left field for a travel agent, Brauner was going back to something she enjoyed.

“My background is programming. I could have become a hardcore programmer but I found it to be a very reclusive field and enjoyed interacting with people. Web design appealed to me because it had marketing appeal,” she says.

“While I was operating the travel agency, I was also working on websites as a contractor. That is how I was introduced to CBL. I was building their site and the president saw that I had a flair for marketing and promotions and offered me a job,” she says.

When Brauner was given the opportunity to start up in Australia she had to spend every Saturday in CBL’s labs because that is where the company’s strength was – fixing hardware.

“I think it’s important to work on your strengths, to be able to perform tasks such as starting a business from scratch.

“It was a challenge and something I had never done. However, it has turned out to be similar to starting up and running my own travel agency,” she says.

“Now instead of listening to people complain about the palm tree obstructing their hotel view, I listen to clients complain about their lost data.”

However, there is a notable difference from working in Toronto. In Australia, women don’t apply for jobs as technicians working in labs.

“I just advertised for a junior lab technician – it’s a hardware-related position – and I have had 45 applicants.

All of them were men.

“You have to wonder is it because women aren’t interested in tinkering with machines? Or do they prefer Internet-related positions? Is it something not encouraged at school?”

In the time she has been in Australia, Brauner has found that not many women work in technical positions; however, a larger number are running IT organisations.

“There is a perception that women are better organisers and so they tend to go for the marketing or managerial roles in IT.”

Whereas in Asian manufacturing plants women work on building products because of their steady hands.

“There is not a field women can’t get into,” says Brauner.