Meriton’s Margaret Rahilly Wins Prestigious Udia Nsw Woman In Leadership Award For Excellence 2015

Working at Meriton for over 35 years and having a career that spans over 5 decades, Margaret Rahilly is not showing any signs at all of slowing down. She knows the property business and has worked closely for a large part of her life with one of the most successful people in the country, billionaire Harry Triguboff.

At a special awards night on Thursday 29th October 2015 to celebrate the contribution women make to the property and construction industry, Margaret was a finalist in amongst some exceptionally talented women. Hosted by the Urban Development Institute of Australia at the Westin Hotel, Margaret was beforehand very humble at even being nominated. She said that there is no way that I am going to win tonight because there are many other fantastic women in this category.

Her statement was proved wrong and she graciously, emotionally and with the utmost respect accepted the honour and the award with a very strong and grateful speech thanking the one person who gave her the opportunity as a woman 35 years ago – Mr Harry Triguboff

Harry said that Margaret has played a great role in the success of the Meriton Group, one of the most successful companies in Australia. She was and always will be a very loyal person in our company.

During her time at Meriton, Margaret brought up 4 lovely children on her own. Two boys and two girls. Mark, Amanda, Chris and Vanessa. Even though Margaret was well educated, she really had no profession. In those days women were paid very low wages. So it was a brave move. Because Margaret took her children and brought them up herself. Harry said she was really like a father and mother to them. To this day Margaret is very close to her family.

At the beginning, Margaret managed a block of apartments in Annandale when Harry first met her. She managed the block for a while, but that was really not what Margaret would end up doing in her long spanning career. Meriton at the time was small, but 30 years ago, Harry had ideas and a dream. Harry got to know Margaret well, how she operated and what drove her.

Harry used to put a sales person on each block. The same thing happens now. So Margaret was soon given the opportunity as the first woman sales person on a site to look after her own block and became a very successful sales person. Margaret did this for a number of years until Meriton started to have sales people who were also dealing with outside agents. This was the field that Margaret pioneered.

At the beginning, Margaret regularly travelled to Indonesia, Hong Kong, Singapore and later China in order to invite buyers to view Meriton apartments in Australia. Once Meriton’s reputation was established, Margaret then ran the operation from Sydney. Soon outside agents started to sell more than Meriton’s own sales people.

In the last 10 years, the Chinese became a great force in purchasing Meriton apartments. And the Chinese buyers were usually introduced to us by Chinese salespeople. Margaret got to know most Chinese agents in the city and over time all the outside agents started to respect Margaret and her position in Meriton. Even today, her phone never stops ringing and she directs and instructs many of the new Chinese agents.

Margaret worked consistently and tirelessly every day for Meriton. Definitely her relationship with the Chinese agents had a huge effect on the whole development field. And from the way the economy is going at the moment, we all know how important that is for the whole country.

Mr Triguboff acknowledged Margaret on the night by saying I have never met anyone more deserving than Margaret of receiving the UDIA Woman in Leadership Award for Excellence 2015.