Emma Sckrabei is revelling in first-time motherhood, she and her partner Jess Cronin taking a perhaps unconventional path to becoming parents but one no less precious and all-consuming.
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Their daughter Ava is just one beautiful part of what has been a frenetic almost four years for Emma, moving to Canberra from Adelaide, starting a new job, welcoming their baby and then being honoured as Woman of the Year by the ACT government.
Their family stays true to the adage "it takes a village to raise a child".
Former South Australian Greens Senator Rob Simms, who went to university with Jess in Adelaide, was the "donor dad". Jess provided the egg and carried Ava. Emma and Jess are her legal parents.
Jess and Emma, who met in 2012, live in Pearce with Ava, now five months old, and dogs Pearl and Lulu, enjoying this golden time in their lives.
"Ava has been an IVF journey for us for about three years," Emma said.
"Jess and I are the legal parents of Ava but Rob is involved in Ava's life. She's the first grandchild for all three families and we're going back to Adelaide at Easter to see everyone.
"It takes a village to raise a child and this child is going to be extremely spoilt."
A "random conversation one night over a glass of wine" led to Jess, Emma and Rob starting the IVF process of having a child together.
"We were talking about having a family one day and Rob, who is a gay man, was saying, 'It'd be nice to have a child one day but it's probably not going to happen' and then it kind of went from there," Emma said.
"A lot of people say, 'Oh, can I ask you about it'. But we're really open about it."
Emma was earlier this month announced the ACT Woman of the Year by Deputy Chief Minister Yvette Berry for her "outstanding work in removing barriers and stigma for women within the male-dominated construction industry and providing training and employment initiatives which specifically support women in returning to the workforce".
The 43-year-old is the training and employment manager for SPARK, part of the huge construction project known as Ginninderry, which will deliver 11,500 homes in the next 30 years in the north-west of Canberra and across the border into the Yass valley.
Ginninderry is a collaboration between the Suburban Land Agency and the Riverview Group, owned by the Corkhill family.
Ginninderry starts from Holt and Macgregor. Three new suburbs are being created in Canberra - Strathnairn, Macnamara and a third still to be named. A fourth will be over the border in the Yass Valley. They will eventually house 30,000 people.
It's a reflection of her passion and drive that Emma has become so enmeshed in the life of a city she initially knew so little about.
"I had never been to Canberra before coming to move here," she said.
"People were saying to me, 'Why are you going to Canberra, it's boring?'. But I absolutely love living here.
"It's a beautiful place to live. Canberra has been extremely kind to me. I've been so lucky. I came here not knowing anyone.
"I love the Canberra lifestyle. I love Canberra riesling. I still like my Adelaide reds but the Canberra wines are absolutely beautiful.
"And I feel when we have visitors come over from Adelaide, I show off Canberra to them. I love the food, I love the diversity, I love the culture. I love that it's the bush capital, a massive city but still a big country town.
"I love the northside/southside rivalry, which I had no idea about when I moved here. I love the balloon festival, I love Enlighten, I love going to brunch at Pialligo Estate and Kingston.
"It's just a really beautiful place to live."
With her engaging smile and personable style, it's no surprise Emma once worked for Disney. More on that soon. But needless to say, she has taken a circuitous route to the sweet place she now occupies in her professional life.
Born in Adelaide and raised in the hardscrabble southern suburbs, Emma says she had a traditional, blue-collar upbringing. Her father Hans, a German migrant, was a carpenter. Her mum Sue worked in retail, on the perfume counter at the John Martin's department store in Adelaide. Sue left her job to stay at home after having Emma, and her younger brother Luke.
"My childhood was spent riding BMX bikes and playing football and soccer and exploring," Emma said.
"My family didn't have a lot of money. We were quite, not poor, but very rich in love and experience and things like that. We never had new toys and we had second-hand clothes
"You don't realise you had no money until you get a little bit older. We certainly always had food on the table and got little treats on birthdays. It's only when I look back on it now, we were a lower-middle income family but my parents did a wonderful job at providing all those things that don't cost money to make us good people."
Emma candidly says she failed Year 12 and didn't go to university. "Life" was her university.
"Didn't really like school a lot. Wasn't a great rule follower. I always had this feeling in my stomach I needed to go out and explore the world and do something different," she said.
Instead she went to TAFE, got a certificate three in community service and worked with people with intellectual disabilities. She saved up and went backpacking in Europe and that led to jobs nannying in London and Boston. She also worked in children's programming on Disney cruises, finding that job provided her with a good foundation for what was to come. She left Australia in 1994 and didn't return until 2002.
Back in Adelaide, she ended up working in the job network industry, initially focusing on the southern suburbs helping unemployed young people get work.
"I had no experience doing it but I knew how to talk to people, I knew how to build relationships, I knew how to sell and that's how my career in this sector took off," she said.
"I learnt so much stuff from Disney, I learnt so much from travelling by myself. But I guess the job I'm in, you don't necessarily need a university qualification. It's not about you picking up equipment or anything like that, you're dealing with people. I started at the bottom and worked my way up."
Emma eventually worked with the South Australian government on an urban renewal program in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. That led to her being approached to work in Canberra on Ginninderry.
"In 2013, this group of people came over from Canberra to tour one of our projects and they said to me, 'Oh, we really like what you're doing here, we've got this project in Canberra, if it gets approved, we'd be interested in talking to you about coming over'," she said.
And so it turned out, Ginninderry was approved. Emma and Jess, who works in the university sector, moved from Adelaide to Canberra, in September 2015.
Emma's work at SPARK is about social inclusion, working in Ginninderry's training and employment program. Ensuring Ginninderry provides job opportunities at every turn for those struggling to get work, such as youth, the disabled, women and older people. Part of this is a special social inclusion clause written into all Ginninderry contracts for capital works and commercial land sales. The clause obliges contractors to provide work experience or new paid employment positions for residents in the local area. But she also works across the construction industry, helping people to get jobs.
"As a developer, we have a social responsibility to deliver economic benefits where we can give back to the local community," Emma said.
"So to do that, we established the SPARK program where we deliver a range of different work experience, training programs and job opportunities to people in our community who are disconnected from the labour market.
"We have a key project objective of being a sustainable community of international significance in the nation's capital. To be a sustainable community, it's not just about the environment, it's not just producing a profit, it's not just about social inclusion and innovative initiatives, it's all three."
Less than four years after moving from South Australia, Emma felt "shocked and humbled" to be named the ACT Woman of the Year. She is motivated by the knowledge she is helping people.
"Awards are wonderful things but what I really love about it is people think what I am doing is a good thing and value the work we're doing at Ginninderry," she said.
"Canberra has been very kind to me."
