It took 612 commuting trips from Berry to Sydney, the conversion of a garden shed into a failed home office and one too many mid-week wines with tree-change widows juggling kids while husbands commuted back to Sydney before the penny finally dropped for WorkLife founder Kate Dezarnaulds.
Deciding there had to be a better way to support the juggle work and life, she created the solution she craved for her own life and founded WorkLife- the South Coasts first coworking space in 2017.
Kate has a background in the arts, events, sponsorship and advocacy and figured that, coupled with her husbands skills as an award winning builder, if anyone could make a go of a network of regional coworking spaces, it should be her. With the help of founder of Work Club Global- Soren Trampendach- as both mentor and advisor, WorkLife members have benefited from the beginning from reciprocal visiting rights to Work Club’s three spaces in Sydney and two in Melbourne.
In 2018 with WorkLife Berry nearing capacity, Kate and her team turned their attentions to the stunning seaside town of Kiama and established WorkLife Kiama in a double-sized space in 2019. After weathering the disruption of fires and COVID in 2020, she decided to make the most of the work from home revolution occurring and expand their operations into a third site in the heart of the thriving northern suburbs of Wollongong at Coledale.
With a mass exodus of professionals leaving the city to live out their tree change and sea change fantasies, future locations on the South Coast are just around the corner…..