When Veronicah Mumira travelled to Australia, all she wanted to accomplish was her studies in healthcare but never envisioned that she would one day lead a brand known for recruitment of healthcare workers.
Mumira who hails from Mombasa runs a successful healthcare recruitment agency, Auscare Group in Australia and is also a reputable real estate developer in Western Australia.
In a past interview with Alex Chamwada’s Daring Abroad, Mumira admits that she decided to venture into a recruitment agency because healthcare jobs in Australia are competitive.
After completing her O Levels in 1998, she flew to Australia in 2001 where she enrolled at Notre Dame University for a degree in Nursing Science. Four years later, she graduated and landed a job with Australia’s Department of Health.
“I started my journey in Bentley Hospital and I did mental health and general nursing for a year. From there, I got an opportunity to work in Sir Charles Gairdner – it is one of the biggest tertiary hospitals in Western Australia,” she says.
After this, she decided to go back to school for a year and take a diploma in midwifery which is when the idea of starting an agency was borne.
“I was doing agency. Agency means you work with different agency casual and they send you to a different location. So I did that for around five years and I thought what can I do to be like an agent and that’s how Auscare Group was born in 2009,” she narrates.
Auscare Group based in Perth City recruits professional nurses in the healthcare sector as well as qualified personnel in the hospitality industry such as chefs who ensure that day to day operations of a hospital go on.
The firm has 400 employees, a quarter of them being Kenyan natives who are all qualified.
Doing well in her healthcare portfolio, she diversified and got into the real estate sector. She develops and sells properties in Australia.
Mumira has replicated this back in her motherland where she is developing contemporary apartments with an Australian feel in Kenya through “Georgia Apartments” as the project is known.
“It’s 28 apartments, it’s three-bedroom, three bathrooms and each apartment will have a servant quarter,” she says of the project along Mombasa-Malindi road which is expected to end in June 2021.
Mumira adds that the level of compliance in Australia for running such a business in stringent compared to Kenya.
Her advice to Kenyans looking forward to travelling abroad for greener pastures, they should be aware that jobs are scarce and very competitive.
“All the Kenyans who want to take the kids to Australia or want to migrate to Australia for greener pastures, you have to be very open-minded because the things which you think gonna happen in a week is gonna happen in years,” she advises.