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Working hard and playing hard in Adelaide

Juggling international tech careers with a love for adventure, Adelaide newcomer Andrea Conn and returnee Chris Ball tell the Adelaide Connected podcast why they now call the city home.

Mar 30, 2023, updated Mar 30, 2023
Pictured at Lake Hawea, NZ, tech professionals Andrea Conn and Chris Ball have put roots down in Adelaide

Pictured at Lake Hawea, NZ, tech professionals Andrea Conn and Chris Ball have put roots down in Adelaide

Andrea Conn and Chris Ball met in Tasmania in early 2021, each having returned to Australia after living abroad.

She had been in Seattle with Amazon, working in the legal team on Kindle and other products; he was in accelerator programs and startups, operating mainly out of Sydney, Bali and Silicon Valley.

After meeting, they travelled around Australia for nearly two years, living and working remotely while assessing each place for its suitability as a permanent base.

“We had a shortlist of different places we wanted to check out that combined lifestyle with interesting [business] opportunities,” explained Conn on the latest episode of the Adelaide Connected podcast.

“[Adelaide and South Australia] ticked all the boxes,” she said, and since November last year, they have put down anchor in the Adelaide Hills.

Ball grew up in Adelaide and upon graduating with a business degree moved to Sydney – earning him a podcast designation of a ‘boomerang’. Conn is from a farming family in New South Wales and had not previously visited South Australia – making her an ‘arrow’.

Conn called herself the state’s “number one fan” and Adelaide “Australia’s best kept secret”.

“The more people come and check [Adelaide] out, the more people will see that they can really set up the life that they want here – without making those big trade-offs that you’d have to make in some of the other regions that we’ve considered,” she said.

Those regions included international coastal hotspot Byron Bay, which the couple discounted due to its distance from an international airport and what Conn called “a centre of gravity with a population mass”.

Proximity to outdoor adventure is another reason, the couple said, why they loved the state and they have already taken in the Flinders Ranges and Yorke Peninsula.

Career-wise the move has been positive all-round. Ball is a director at Tourism Sentiment Index, using AI to measure visitor happiness for government-funded destination marketing organisations across the world, while Conn has transitioned into business development at Amazon, working on “some really interesting strategic projects”.

Ball said he felt “a real positive energy” permeating through Adelaide.

“I was attending the _Southstart innovation festival [and] seeing a lot of people that I know from [Australia’s] east coast come over here,” he said.

“[They are] awesome people doing amazing things, changing the world … and seeing through their eyes how they see this place and the conversations that were being had – it’s truly cool to see.”

The Adelaide Connected podcast is hosted by Peta St Clair and Jarrod Walsh. Season 2 is live and features fortnightly guests.

Podcast guests are designated as ‘arrows’ and ‘boomerangs’: those who have come to Adelaide from somewhere else, and those who have left to work elsewhere and have now returned home.

Adelaide Connected is a key program of the Committee for Adelaide that is helping to break down the barriers for skilled migrants, expats, international students and South Australians who have recently moved or returned home. The program connects people with like-minded individuals, businesses and job opportunities.

Listen to this and earlier episodes of Adelaide Connected.

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