Trident trinity spears ahead with McGorian

She got a job with Trident right off the bat, coding HTML pages from scratch in the mid 1990s. "That was when web pages were starting to take off. That was very new. My first project was to set up a web page for a florist -- Apricot Flowers in Melbourne," McGorian recalls.

But after a year, Trident asked her to move across to sales when a position in the department fell vacant. "I wasn’t really the best web designer in the world, I have to admit. But it was much more cumbersome to create web pages then," McGorian says.

The sales rep who left that position -- Geoff Bentley -- is now her husband. McGorian credits him with helping her find her feet in the early days. Today he works in the solutions branch at long-time Trident vendor NEC. "I shouldn’t say he gave me a good leg up [in the industry] when he’s my husband, but you know what I mean," she quips.

They have three children -- 10-week-old Annabel, 20-month-old Harris and 13-year-old Andrew. "It took a long time to be able to have the second two," McGorian says.

McGorian says she wants four. "But my two partners at work would have a hernia if I had another child," she says.

She also seems keen to send them all to private schools (at $15,000 a year each) -- her eldest is already at one. She is also trying to complete a law degree, although she does not really envisage working in the law field post-graduation.

Some might say she is a sucker for punishment, given her current full-time-plus workload.

McGorian is somewhat cagey about her work-week schedule but admits she gets up around three or four o’clock every morning. She does not get home until at least six o’clock every night -- much later, if there’s a lot more work to do. She gets as much as possible done at home before dropping Andrew at school in time to arrive at work around quarter past eight. "But I don’t work on the weekends," she adds quickly.

She does end up studying on the weekends as well as in the early mornings, however, and it is a safe assumption that housework in the McGorian-Bentley residence isn’t off limits most Saturdays and Sundays either.

"Years ago, I did a time management and speed-reading course, which was the best thing I have ever done," she adds. "Getting up very early means I can get emails out of the way and do bits that are actually integral to my day."

McGorian, however, has not had a proper holiday since a trip to Noosa in 2001. A keen hobby surfer, along with her husband, she is currently looking forward to a reprise around April.