My last, large, in-person networking event I went to in Australia since before the pandemic was the 60th anniversary celebrations for the Australian of the Year awards in Canberra on 25 January. We had a luncheon at the National Gallery of Australia, where three previous Australian of the Year Award winners were interviewed.

Then we had the Awards Ceremony at the National Arboretum Canberra.  To celebrate the 60th-year occasion, they invited all the previous Australian of the Year winners to the stage to celebrate. It was totally epic to see 10+ previous Australian of the Year Award winners take to the stage!

National Arboretum Canberra

It was great to meet Aussie maths teacher Eddie Woo and all-time swimming legend Dawn Fraser.

The legend Dawn Fraser

Ash Barty was named Young Australian of the Year remotely in Melbourne. Former Young Australian of the Year Pat Rafter presented her trophy in person. She then went and played tennis the next night in the Australian Open - and won! Amazing! She later on went and became the semi-finalist for the Australian Open that week!

Socializing and seeing other people seems like a long, long, long, long, long, long time ago now.

Here’s some cute dog photos from the dog park from before Covid, to make you smile. :)  (Note: not my dogs!)

Lockdown is certainly a change of pace for me. I used to fly around the world twice a month! Now I’m stuck inside my 768 sq ft apartment for months on end - apart from the occasional walk or grocery store trip. I miss my friends, I miss exploring, I miss doing something different, I miss leaving my house and neighbourhood.

I’ve realized how important it is for me to have things to look forward to and to experience different things - whether it’s a new bricks-and-mortar grocery store or a new online grocery store.  (I'm easy to please!) :) 

All the uncertainty around what would happen with all my plans was also very stressful in the first few months of the pandemic. But I’ve come to terms now that I won’t be going anywhere for a long time and that’s given me a lot of peace to just focus on making things happen from the confines of my apartment. Just trying to do my bit and stay inside so healthcare workers can do their bit. Thank you healthcare workers for caring for us all.

On the positive side, I’ve learned how to make pizza during lockdown, and I’ve made many delicious pizzas, and successfully looked after a basil plant for many months. It’s been fun discovering my green thumb!

Me and a friend I made during one of my lockdown walks

Through speaking on stage together at Vogue magazine’s Vogue Codes event together in Sydney in 2018, Sandra Sully invited me to take part in her Agenda book alongside Cate Blanchett and 12 other remarkable leading Australian women. The AGENDA 2020 book is the result of a project partnership between photographer Danielle Harte, publisher Phil Harte, and journalist Sandra Sully. Its aim is to raise money for charity and to raise awareness of equal rights for women.  The book launched during International Women's Week from 1-8 March across Australia.  Here's a photo of me taken for the book:

I spent the last few days of February in Washington DC attending the Nexus Global Summit as a Nexus Impact Accelerator Fellow.

NEXUS is a global community founded to bridge communities of wealth and social entrepreneurship, to do good in the world.  I had a great time meeting awesome change makers from around the world. I attended all these great talks and experiences.

On the last day of the conference, the other five Fellows and I pitched our companies. I pitched Aubot and our Jevaroo robotic arm. Nexus wrote an article about me: https://nexusglobal.org/2020/04/24/marita-cheng-founder-of-aubot/ 

The day after the conference, the Fellows stayed around for an extra day to get to know each other.  The other people in my cohort of the inaugural accelerator includes:

• Sam Teicher, who is growing coral in The Bahamas to revitalize reefs around the world, through his nonprofit, Coral Vita
• Katharina Sophia Volz from OccamzRazor, who is using machine learning to identify cures for brain-aging diseases such as Parkinson's
• Felix Böck from ChopValue, who is up-cycling chopsticks from Japanese restaurants into beautiful coasters, chopping boards and wall displays (he gave each of us our own coasters with our company logos!)
• Ivelyse Andino from NYC who is working on Radical Health, which combines meaningful conversations with AI-enabled tech that helps people understand their health care rights
• Emily Best, from Seek&Spark, a crowdfunding platform for storytellers
• Blayne Ross, who has created technology to reverse coastal erosion that aids in maximizing a beach’s capacity to dewater quickly and retain sand, with his company ShoreLock

My aubot coasters from ChopValue!

We meet weekly over Zoom to share our progress and attend Zoom sessions with guest speakers on marketing, leadership, brand management, storytelling, recruitment, etc.  It's been great to have this structured certainty amongst the world's increasing uncertainty with Covid-19.

The fellowship will conclude in July with a pitch about our companies onstage in New York City at the Nexus USA Summit. Can’t wait, bring it on!

Some of the Fellows and I at the Summit!

From September to December 2019, Al Jazeera English followed me around and filmed an update on all my projects: Robogals, Aipoly, Teleport, my speaking and my latest robot arm Jevaroo. They launched it worldwide on 9 March 2020. It’s lovely that Al Jazeera were able to come and capture this moment in time. The theme for the documentary series was Women Make Science and featured 5 stories from around the world.