A gift that continues education's transformative power
Education’s transformative power is behind this proud sister’s bequest to Monash. Julie Ligeti leaves a lasting legacy on behalf of her late brother, Peter, an ongoing gift that continues to support promising students from low socioeconomic and refugee backgrounds who deserve an outstanding education.
When Julie Ligeti was accepted at Monash University in the early 1980s, she remembers feeling “amazed by the opportunity”.
“Admission to law gave me the opportunity to transform my life through education, in the way that my refugee parents had hoped,” she says.
It’s this transformative power – the chance to be included in the higher education system – that’s behind her bequest to Monash. It’s also a chance for Ligeti to honour her oldest brother, Peter.
Today, Ligeti is the global manager, public advocacy, for Cochlear Ltd. But, when she started her law degree, she was following in the footsteps of her two older brothers, Peter and Tom. They had both graduated from Moorabbin High School, winning Commonwealth Scholarships to attend Monash, and regaled her with their stories of the University.
“Tom and I were so proud that our oldest brother, Peter, was accepted into medicine in the mid-1970s. In his first year he excelled, finishing among the top students in his year,” Ligeti recalls.
However, at the beginning of his second year, mental health issues meant Peter was unable to return. “Even in those days, where student welfare programs were far less evolved, the student and teaching community at Monash did their best to wrap their arms around Peter and tried to help him get back to uni. But his illness meant he was not able to.”
She says Peter, who passed away in 2002, was proud of the role Monash had played in his life. “Achieving admission and doing well in his first year was one of the greatest sources of pride in his life, and in ours.”
Through her role on Monash University’s council, Ligeti has been inspired to learn how Monash still supports students from disadvantaged backgrounds, helping them overcome challenges that may exclude them from higher education.
Her bequest, dedicated to her brother Peter, will help Monash carry on that role with programs that assist students from low socioeconomic and refugee backgrounds.
In this same vein, Ligeti has also left a bequest to Western Chances, a not-for-profit organisation that provides scholarships to disadvantaged high school students from Melbourne’s west. “The scholarships are aimed at fostering individual talent to help students succeed, whatever trajectory they choose,” she says.
Her passion for work with a social justice element started at home with her parents. That passion grew through the subjects she studied at Monash, the friendships she made, and has continued throughout her career in advocacy and advisory roles within state and federal governments.
Her role at Cochlear, which designs and manufactures life-changing hearing technology, is no different. “I love being involved in advocating for better policies and access for deaf and hard-of-hearing people. I’ve had a good grounding in social policy and government policy roles that have equipped me for a job in an extraordinary company with a global mission to transform lives by enabling people to hear.”
In early 2020, the role took Ligeti to Belgium, one of Cochlear’s main European bases. However, COVID-19 took hold, and at the time of writing she was conducting her global awareness and advocacy work from a hastily constructed home office in Melbourne. “The year has been turning out quite differently from how it started,” she says.
