She's The Boss Leaders: Recent Episodes
Jules Brooke
Listen to the audio from the weekly She's the Boss Show, which showcases incredible Female Founders from around the world. This podcast series will be updated along with the weekly show on Youtube. Search 'She's The Boss' on youtube to watch the video versions!
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Many of us grew up seeing Tracey Spicer on the TV reading the news on Channel 10. These days she is an author, MC and broadcaster, with a strong focus on women.
Growing up in Queensland, she knew from an early age that she wanted to be a journalist, and after winning a prize for rural journalism, she was able to score a job at a radio station in Brisbane, which started her broadcasting career and was followed by a stint at 3AW in Melbourne..
Soon after, she became the newsreader for the Eyewitness News on Channel 10 where she stayed for 16 years and this lead her to Sky News and writing a regular column for News Ltd.
During that time she became a household name, but eventually she was 'let go' following her maternity leave when her second child was only 2 months old. She sued the network for discrimination (good on her!)
In 2015 she launched her controversial book, The Good Girl Stripped Bare, and started really focusing on being an advocate for women. On the back of the #metoo movement, Tracey produced and hosted a documentary called Silent no More, that focused on the powerful men in the Australian media abusing their power.
These days Tracey has her fingers in lots of pies! From being a member of a number of boards to writing another book around the growth of technology (AI and unconscious bias) and more! Tracey is a total inspiration!
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Tory, the founder of TORSTAR, was known in the events and PR industry and the woman who 'got things done' in her signature 'little black dress'. She has worked with celebrities and business owners across the fashion and beauty industries here in Australia and in the US and Europe. Her LinkedIn profile says 'Drew Barrymore ended my PR career", so we started there and the discussion went in all sorts of directions!
As someone who had no entrepreneurial role models, and didn't really excel at school, Tory has carved out an exceptional career. These days, Tory has made a radical change and is now branded as Powerful Steps, and her Business Attraction program is helping people all around the world increase their business to the next level. She works closely with C suite women and entrepreneurs to help them transform their businesses, If it's the inspiration you're looking for, this is one to watch!
Fabian is an Australian icon and a huge champion of women in leadership. The Founder and CEO of The Dattner group, the Compass Program for visionary women and Homeward Bound, Fabian is a total inspiration!
Taking over the role as CEO for her father's business, the Stephen Dattner leather retailing group at the ripe old age of 30, Fabian had a very early business lesson when the business went into liquidation soon afterwards. It gave her the impetus to set up The Dattner Group.
Fabian is firmly focused on helping women in leadership roles, because she believes that if there were more women making decisions, we would have a better world. So she started the Compass program for women, to help them realise their ambitions and their power.
Her Homeward Bound program is all about women in STEM. She takes big groups of them to the Antarctic every year so they can learn about leadership, how to survive in a man's world, and also to help them connect and understand they are not alone. She has done this five times now and has taken over 800 women which is an extraordinary achievement.
This woman is an absolute powerhouse!
Sandy Lowres, Founder of WB40 magazine (Women Beyond 40) and The Good Girl Confessional podcast is a woman who has found her groove. And it's one we can all celebrate!
Having had many years working as an EA for many business leaders across a variety of industries, Sandy knew she wanted to support women. Particularly those of us who are over 40 and practically invisible in mainstream media.
She started the Good Girl Professional podcast in 2019 so she could share the incredible stories of inspirational businesswomen (are you seeing a theme?!) and in 2020 she decided to start publishing her very own print magazine, WB40.
Sandy is the most positive and uplifting woman to talk to and this interview is filled with tips, inspiration and positive affirmations for older women in business (and in life!).
This is one not to miss - and make sure you subscribe to her magazine!!
Grace is just so inspiring! Normally residing in NYC, she is based in Turks & Caicos during the lockdown, so the view is amazing too (on the youtube video)!
Grace grew up in a large family surrounded by love. Heavily influenced by her amazing grandmother, she always aimed high. After their family home burned down just as she was starting college, her father vowed to keep the family together so 14 of them lived in a homeless shelter for most of her first year which was confronting. She studied at the prestigious Wharton College and her first job was on Wall St!
Grace LOVES numbers so finance was the obvious path for her to follow and she eventually started her own business, Grace Global Capital where she specialises in insurance. Her description of getting a position on her first Board is incredibly inspiring and will make you want to make a difference too.
Grace's story is one you won't want to miss. Her grandmother's advice alone will have you cheering her on!
Julie Demsey, author of FOUND Swiping Right on Me to Find Love, is such a lovely, funny, gentle woman and I know you will be fascinated by the story of her journey from the US to Australia and everything she has done. Growing up in San Diego, Julie spent a few of her early career years working in FMCG and software marketing and management, before she started working with Yahoo back in 2005 in San Francisco. After quite a few years at Yahoo and a couple of other organisations, Julie moved to Australia in 2016.
Her first job here was as GM of SBE Australia, a fabulous organisation that empowers female founders, had burnout (as do so many high powered women) and then after recovering, decided to learn about hypnotherapy.
As a Certified Hypnotherapist and Mindset Coach, Julie found something she really loved and that helped other women.
Julie's new book and coaching consultancy are focused on helping people connect to their true potential. Julie realised a few years ago that if you don't love yourself, it's hard for you to grow and reach your full potential, so the book is a funny and relatable guide to get you on track for wild success!
Cassidy La Creme. What a name and what an incredible woman! Having grown up in a family of entertainers, Cassidy was always singing and dancing and knew that the stage was calling her once she finished school.
After a brief stint as the Marilyn Monroe character at the Universal Studios Theme Park on the Gold Coast, Cassidy packed her bags and headed to Singapore to be Marilyn Monroe again at the new Universal Studios theme park that was opening over there. Then something amazing happened. One evening she was challenged to sing a song in Malaysian, so she did. It was videoed and shared on YouTube and she became an overnight superstar in Malaysia! With over 9 MILLION views for her first video, she was sought after by the media over there and as she continued to post content, her fame rose and rose.
Back in Australia following the lockdown, Cassidy is now singing all over the country. She is such a dynamo, you will love this chat with a woman destined for fame!
Helen McCabe is the bee's knees! She has worked in media most of her life before founding Future Women. Helen started her career at Channel and quickly moved to work in the Press Gallery in Canberra. What a start for a young female reporter! This was followed by ten years as the London Correspondent for News Corp before she returned and worked as a Night Editor at The Australian, followed by a stint as Deputy Editor of The Sunday Telegraph.
Soon after this, she was invited to be the Editor in Chief of the Australian Women's Weekly where she stayed for 6 years and loved it! Such an iconic magazine for women in Australia.
From News Corp, Helen moved to Channel Nine where she was the Head of Lifestyle and then the Head of Digital Content. She was responsible for the launch of Nine Honey before she made the leap and founded Future Women, in partnership with Nine.
Helen is now helping hundreds of young women navigate their careers, upskill and connect with other women through Future Women. An idea I obviously LOVE!
Bobbi Mahlab, Founder of Mahlab Media and The Mentor Walks in Australia is well known for her support of women. Bobbi had work experience as a 16-year-old with a publishing house and she quickly realised she loved writing stories. After uni, she went to NYC and then soon after started as a journalist at the Melbourne Herald as a reporter. This was followed by a move to the Sunday Age in Melbourne before she went to Text Media where she worked in custom publishing before starting Mahlab Media in 97.
Having worked in a couple of startups, Bobbi learned what she did and didn't want in terms of company culture (watch out for her description of the accountant that didn't pay his freelancers!) and so was intentional about how she set up her own company.
Mahlab Media started as a marketing company but quickly turned into a content marketing and comms company. She employs amazing writers and journalists to write content for their clients. The culture at the company is fabulous, starting their day with a smile, flexibility in terms of hours and support and celebrating staff wins, either personal or for the business.
You will love Bobbi's story. Mentor Walks is a brilliant concept that is growing here too. watch and you'll learn a lot!
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Anu is a total inspiration! Based in Delhi, India, she is the founder of AgroWave, a service that allows farmers to sell their produce for a fixed price at their farm gate, rather than having to take it into a market where they don't know what they will sell, or for how much.
Anu grew up on a small farm in Rajasthan herself and saw the problems that her grandfather and other local farmers in her village were having. Not only was it time-consuming to have to take their produce miles to the market, but they had no idea how much they would be able to sell, or for what price. AgroWave solves this problem.
Listed as one of the business owners in Forbes 30 under 30 for Asia, Anu has also been voted one of the Top 10 Innovators in India by India Today magazine and many more accolades have followed. She even won the Global Gandhi Award in 2019.
This entrepreneurial woman is amazing! You will love her story.
Nafisa's story is absolutely fascinating. From growing up in Hong Kong and being 'good at maths' as well as art, Nafisa studied for her medical degree to please her parents. As soon as it was finished, she started an activewear fashion brand that went global and she ran that for ten years before deciding to pursue her first love, portraiture. She went on to found Portraits Artists Australia, an NFP to support artists. She went on to win the Archibald Prize and the Gold Medal for Painting at the Florence Biennale and her work hangs in the National Gallery.
another of Nafisa's great loves throughout her life has been wildlife and animals. She is now dedicating the rest of her life to wildlife protection as the co-founder of Animalworks International where they will be raising funds for specific equipment - and focusing on solar-powered water pumps. This is a woman who excels at everything she turns her mind to. A total inspiration!
Julie Trell is just so irreverent, smart and insightful that you will be totally enthralled with this episode. With a career in Silicon Valley, and has worked for many of the major names in tech, Julie was one of the first few people to work for Salesforce, when it was just a startup, and she watched the company grow to the colossus it is today. It was while she was there that she became interested in philanthropy and she became the Global Head of that department of the Salesforce, before going on to help other organisations that wanted to give back.
Julie became focused on the combination of play, purpose, philanthropy and innovation in the US and was the first person to launch the SheEO network in San Francisco.
Then came the move to Australia. Keen to slip into someone else thongs (ads the ad suggested), she was enticed to Sydney by Telstra to head up muru-D, their startup accelerator program. Since that closed down she is a mentor for the Mentor Works program, she is the Country Lead for the SheEO Network in Australia and while she is working out her next move, she is the Founder and Chief Play Officer for her own business, Playful Purpose.
Karen Jacobsen has a voice that billions of people have listened to - on their iPhones, GPS's, narrating books, in ads and on your GPS. She is the Australian voice of Siri and she's also a total inspiration.
Growing up in Australia, Karen learned about voiceover work while at uni and loved it. She started to provide her voice, in between uni classes, for a number of ads and jingles in both Sydney and Brisbane but she had always wanted to go to New York and so at the earliest opportunity she headed there to settle down.
Arriving in Manhatten with very few connections, nothing was going to hold Karen back, so she hunted around all the main studios doing auditions until, at last, her career started to take off.
Karen is a sought after keynote speaker these days, as well as being a consultant and coach to leaders of industries. Currently holed up in the Whitsundays to ride out the lockdown (it's tough but she had to stay somewhere!), Karen's story is funny and inspiring. You're going to love her!
Vicki Saunders is an amazing woman changing the world. As the Founder of the SheEO network, Vicky has the vision to find a million women who each invest $1000 into a perpetual, billion-dollar fund to invest in female-founded businesses that will have a positive impact on the world. What an absolutely brilliant idea! She calls it #radicalgenerosity Vicky is Canadian but has co-founded and run businesses all over the world, including Europe, Toronto and Silicon Valley.
She was always shocked by the lack of visibility and funding that went to women-led businesses and was determined to make a difference. The way that the SheEO network makes group decisions and even the process that their potential investees go through, is radically different and far more suitable to women than the 'tell your story in numbers' attitude of most of the male investors. Her story is one that will definitely inspire you!
Katrina is an absolute powerhouse when it comes to business, marketing to mums and strategic partnerships for business growth. She has just done another twist in her career and launched her program, Partnership Mastery. In this episode, we discuss her course and why partnerships are such a valuable way to grow your business!
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Stacey Tisdale, CEO and Founder of Mind Money Media and financial and business media personality was lucky enough to have a mother who supported her goals, and a large family to lean on when times were tough. However tough her childhood was financially (and when the family home burned down things got VERY tough), there was so much love and wisdom she has excelled in her adult life and career. You will love her grandmother's advice!
Stacey started her career on Wall St (I know!) on the trading floor, and then moved into finance reporting for CNBC before her career as a financial media personality took off. She has hosted shows for everyone from Oprah (OWN) to CBS, CNN and more. These days she has founded her own media company where she creates financial and business content for her clients, as well as being a huge advocate for diversity in the media. You'll love this woman!
My latest episode of She's The Boss show is with an incredibly inspiring woman; Aslaug Magnusdottir in Reykjavik. Aslaug, who is Icelandic but normally based in New York, is the founder of an incredible, innovative and sustainable fashion brand called Katla. She’s also loads of fun and has a wealth of experience in business that she generously shared with me.
The model for Katla is unique. It’s a fashion range that is made after you purchase it, and delivered within 2-3 days. The fabrics are organic, sustainable and very luxe. The best thing about this innovative way of manufacturing on demand that it is as cost-effective as large scale manufacturing. I was quite shocked to know that 30-40% of clothing is wasted at a huge cost to the environment. This could change everything!!
Aslaug's story is fascinating. From starting off as a lawyer, moving into consulting, then investments and then fashion investments, she worked with the Gilt Group in the US as they grew their eCommerce site to turn over $US400M. She worked with Marvin Traub, the ex-CEO of Bloomingdales and the man who 'reinvented' merchandising and marketing for the fashion and retail industries and then co-founded a company called Moda Operandi with former Vogue editor Lauren Santo Domingo where they brought catwalk fashion into the eCommerce space. The company raised over $300M and Aslaug is still involved and on the board. There are so many great stories and insights in this interview, you will be transfixed!
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Robyn Foyster is such an inspiration! She is a hugely successful journalist, Editor, entrepreneur and champion of women, and her career will blow you away! You may know some of Robyn's digital media outlets already - The Carousel is a lifestyle brand for women, Women Love Tech is another, and Gamechangers.
Robyn has had such an illustrious media career it's hard to know where to start. She landed in London in her early 20's and worked on Fleet St on many of the flagship titles for News Ltd including the top-selling newspaper of the day, and also for the newly formed Hello magazine. This was followed by a stint in LA as the US correspondent for breakfast TV in the UK before returning to Australia where she became the Editor and Publisher of some of our most loved women's magazines including Woman's Day, New Idea, Grazia, Australian Woman's Weekly.
Robyn describes what happened to finally make her decide to be her own boss, and how that has led her to start up a number of different businesses, including raising capital and launching some amazing tech businesses. If you want s dose of inspiration, this is the episode to watch!
Erika Cramer is The Confidence Queen! Starting out from a troubled childhood with a beloved Mum with bipolar disorder, Erika spent time in foster care when her Mum was unable to care for her. Unfortunately, she suffered physical and sexual abuse during this period. Then, as a teenager, she was abducted by her estranged father for a year before she was returned to her Mother's care. As a teenager, she was in a terrible car accident with her boyfriend at the time and took years to recuperate. Then her new husband died in another car accident leaving Erika bereft. But she picked herself up, dusted herself down and started again.
After following her new love to Australia, she started a career in the beauty and styling industry. Her career as a confidence queen started when she realised that although she was styling these women to look gorgeous, inside they still felt they weren't enough, and she knew that beauty and confidence come from within.
Martina is turning education as we know it on its head. Thank goodness for women like her! As a school teacher and principal for many years, Martina knew that something needed to change and so she created The School Beyond Limitations, an online school for students from all over the world.
The School Beyond Limitations has students of all different ages that share the same virtual classroom (just like real life where we have to interact with people of all ages and abilities) and follow the subjects and topics that interest them. Christina takes a holistic view when it comes to education, so the students can work on one subject and then look at the related areas such as geography, maths, history and biology to make the content relevant and stimulating for all ages. the lessons go for 3 hours, the students are offered the opportunity to conduct classes themselves if they would like and it completely changes their lives!
The students also get the incredibly exciting opportunity to meet three times a year, in real life, in different geographical locations (how cool is that!) where they can socialise and learn together about the country or city they are in. This woman is a complete game-changer when it comes to education.
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What a woman! Michelle Redfern is an absolute champion of women in business and her interview will totally inspire you. As she herself says, she 'gets shit done'. Coming from a country town, she started her career in the corporate sector when she was given the opportunity to work for Telstra and even though it was initially just supposed to be a short stint, she loved it, and they offered her so many opportunities she stayed for years. This was followed by some roles in other big blue-chip companies before she headed to the banks where she stayed for another decent stint. All this experience at leadership and management was interesting, but Michelle really wanted to go out on her own and have the opportunity to make an impact on women's lives.
After a big discussion with her wife, Michelle decided to make the leap, giving herself one year to make it work. It did. Her business, Advancing Women in Business and Sport is doing really well and Michelle is also on a huge number of boards and advisory committees including being a judge for the Telstra Business Awards, She also started the popular Facebook group, Women Who Get It and has a fantastic podcast and business initiative called A Career that Soars. Michelle works on a gazillion other initiatives to advance women. The sports thing? She's a mad AFL fan. Watch this episode and I defy you not to want to clap out loud!
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Cass Spies has pivoted (to use the favourite word for 2021!) brilliantly as she has built her frozen yoghurt business, Twisted Healthy Treats up. Starting in 2009 as an idea that came to her when she couldn't find healthy snacks for her own children, up until that point Cass had been firmly entrenched in a corporate role as a Project Manager within the financial services sector. But she had always wanted to own a company since she was a child.
Twisted Healthy Treats started out with her supplying homemade frozen yoghurts to her children's primary school. They sold like hot cakes and so she made more and more, until she was providing frozen yoghurt treats to most of the primary schools in Sydney, and then Australia. These days 2 million Aussie kids enjoy Twisted Healthy Treats in their lunch break. And then she grew. And grew. And now her products are sold nationally through Costco, Woolworths and Coles. America is next! Listen to her story of how she has grown this business to the behemoth it is today!
Angela Priestly is a journalist through and through! She has always loved current affairs, politics, and writing and in her early years, she was a freelance journalist writing for a number of custom and niche publications across a variety of topics. After a stint writing for Private Media where she launched an investigative journalism title, The Power Index for Crikey.com, she identified a huge gap in the market. Quality journalism for women in business. And so The Women's Agenda was created. This publication is at the top of the tree when it comes to politics, business, leadership, and more.
When it first came out, in 2011, it was a breath of fresh air for the Australian media landscape and it still is! These days The Women's Agenda runs events, maintains an annual Leadership awards program, and lots more. In 2018 Angela co-founded Agenda Media which recently launched Women's Health News and other new titles covering women's sport, STEM, climate leadership, and more. If there was only one publication you should follow in Australia as a woman in business, this would be it! Angela is amazing and you are bound to be inspired by her story and her purpose.
Casey Burgess, who recently released her first solo album, is an amazing actress, musician and television presenter with over a decade of experience in the entertainment industry. Having grown up in a musical family, Casey's first role was in Annie while she was still at school, and on the back of that, she was mercilessly bullied by her schoolmates. As a result of her breakout stage role in the musical, she was offered a role as the presenter of Girl TV on Channel 7. What a great way to show her bullies that she wasn't going to let them get her down!
Following on from Girl TV, Casey auditioned for the children's group Hi-5 and was chosen to replace Charli. She stayed with Hi-5 for 4 years, travelling the world but also working incredibly hard. Finding it hard to be taken seriously after her stint in a children's group, Casey eventually got acting roles and then the Pandemic hit, and the time at homemade her want to realise her dream of a solo album. That album is now out, fully funded by Casey and is called Space to Breathe.
Sue Fennessy has been an entrepreneur since she left school, and is one of the most successful, and nicest female founders out there! Sue's story started with a fax machine in her bedroom when she started her first business, MM Communications, a marketing and PR agency in Melbourne. This was followed by a move to Shanghai where she started the Chinese arm of Frontier Entertainment and brought international acts. such as Andrew Lloyd Webber productions to China for the first time. Then she came back to Australia and started the Standard media Index (SMI) to bring transparency to where brands were spending their marketing dollars.
As SMI grew, Sue moved to New York to expand the business into the USA. This was followed by a lightbulb moment where Sue realised that the $550 billion dollars that social media platforms like Facebook were earning from advertising, and the data that was being mined, should be handed back to the people. So she created WeAre8, bringing brands and people together to change the world.
Sue still lives in New York and has spent the last 10 years building WeAre8. She explains how, at one stage she realised the model was wrong and had to pare back to a tiny team, reassess the situation and rebuild. It's now taking off around the world. Sue is an absolute hero of Jules' (they have known each other for years) and this interview will definitely inspire anyone who has plans for global disruption!
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Sheree Rubinstein is such an inspiration! She created One Roof as a co-working space for female entrepreneurs and it has everything a business woman would want, from childcare to courses to social events and business support.
Starting out as a lawyer, it didn't take Sheree long to realise it really wasn't for her. She wanted to build something herself. The concept of One Roof took off fast and Sheree was lucky to be given access to a space in Southbank, Melbourne that was ideal. She invested time and resources to make it perfect, including an event space. After 4 years, she was given notice and had to find a new space. In order to do that she needed money and Sheree describes what it was like to capital raise (her experience with her female investors sounds like the ideal scenario!) and then COVID hit.
Where many women would have curled up in a ball as co-working spaces became unworkable, Sheree pivoted to online and created One Line, making the community and support services available to women around the country (and overseas). You'll love this story from a woman who is determined to support Australian female founders. Get inspired!
Noga Edelstein is my latest guest on the She’s The Boss show. What a woman!
She started her career as a lawyer and talks about why she left the law to set up UrbanYou, a cleaning and housekeeping marketplace.
She raised capital a couple of times before negotiating a successful exit to a multinational company. Their strategy of acquisition was fascinating and it worked!
Noga is now looking at becoming an investor herself, and is involved with a number of initiatives, including being on the board of Springboard Enterprises (SBE Australia).
Ariane Barker is the CEO of Scale Investors, an angel investor group for female founders. Of course, I was delighted to have a chat with her about the 2% of VC funding that is available to female founders and how Scale is able to make a big difference here in Australia.
Ariane talks about her long and illustrious career in finance in New York, London, Asia and Australia and how she loves working with female founders. The ROI opportunities from female-founded companies are huge and we covered off the effect of COVID on the investment community (it's good news!) and what Scale Investments are looking for in terms of companies to invest in. So watch this episode ladies, and get inspired to think big!!
Lisa Andrews is, as she says, 'actively working on solving the global grand challenges' by using technology and innovation to make the world a better place. She has not had your average career. With a deep love of numbers, she went down the accounting route for many years, resulting in her creating a firm with 82 employees before she chose a completely different path and started to explore working with entrepreneurs and visionary disrupters.
Lisa has also experienced two kidney transplants, both times with kidneys donated by family members, and to a certain extent, it is her experience of having an 'invisible disability that has shaped her dramatic change and exciting future!
Lisa has really had an extraordinary career, including spending hours, one-on-one with Richard Branson on Necker Island, and going to Davos in Switzerland. By the time you get to the end of this interview, you should be all fired up and ready to take on the world!
Lisa Cox wants to change the way disabled people are featured in the media. By the end of this episode, you will feel the same way. Lisa's story is quite shocking as she had a stroke and then got sepsis in her 20's whilst in the midst of her career trajectory in advertising.
After the initial 3 years of rehabilitation (which included two years learning to type again), she optimistically went out to reclaim her career, with the same resume and awards, but rather than being embraced back into the fold, she was basically patted on the head, told she was 'brave' but no one offered her a job. Lisa knows first hand what it is like to be affected physically but to be treated as if she is mentally impaired. She also knows that there are very few disabled role models that are 'normal' people - not Paralympians or genius's - and she wants to change that. This is a super inspiring episode.
Rochelle Courtenay is one inspiring woman! Not only has she built Share the Dignity to a huge brand that has built awareness of the lack of sanitary products available for homeless woman, or as she calls it, 'period poverty but she has also agitated successfully for the removal of the GST that was applied to tampons and sanitary products for years and years. And that's not the half of it!
Watch the show to find out how she grew a volunteer network of over 5,000 'Sheroes, how she created free vending machines with 'period packs', and what she doing to help our indigenous sisters and the women caught in the bushfires or caught out by COVID. She explains the challenges she is facing right now, as many of her annual drives have been cancelled because of the pandemic and what she is doing to get around the obstacles. Share the Dignity is more important than ever as we come out of the pandemic and lockdown, with more and more women needing access to sanitary products.
Angela Vithoulkas is perhaps the most entrepreneurial of all the women I have interviewed so far, having started and sold almost 30 businesses in her life. She is passionate about helping the small business sector (SMEs) have a voice, both politically and in the media. It's something she knows so well. having been brought up with parents who also ran businesses. So much so that she founded the SME Party that stood for the last Federal Election, she has also been elected twice as a City of Sydney Councillor, championing small business, and she has won numerous awards, including Telstra Businesswoman of The Year for NSW.
Moving on to the media, Angela founded her own radio station, Eagle Waves Radio in Western Sydney for years, again focusing on small business. These days Angela can be found hosting and producing her own TV channel, SME TV, twice a week. There's no doubt that she won't stop there! Watch this show if you want to be totally inspired.
Wendy Squires is one of Australia's top journalists and her story is truly inspirational. From a terrible start, being homeless in Year 12, she ended up getting a job as a copy girl at the Herald Sun. From there, and after two long years, she became a cadet and that is when her life took off! From spending years in New York working across most of the Australian magazines, she returned to Australia to start her stellar career with News Ltd and Channel 9.
She talks about the amazing women that were at the helm of the ACP magazine stable, like Lisa Wilkinson and Mia Freedman, at a time when magazines were hugely popular and there were exciting new titles being created all the time. Lachlan Murdoch asked Wendy to start Australian Style and then she went on to work on across a variety of titles including Who Weekly and The Australian Woman's weekly. Her story is so exciting, this is one episode you will not want to miss!
Christina's entrepreneurial spirit is inherited. So many members of her family, from her father to her uncles, invented and innovated. Choc tops, Violet Crumble and Talking Books were all a result of her family's fresh way of looking at things. And Christina is the same. As a young Greek girl, Christina felt she didn't really fit in at school, but she excelled at schoolwork.
After killing it in her exams, she decided against studying law (much to her mother's dismay) and instead, went into The Arts. After studying Drama at uni, she then started her career in the television industry and there have been lots of interesting twists and turns since then. These days she is the Co-CEO of SingularityU Australia.
These days she describes herself as an eternal optimist, idealist and seeker of opportunities, on a mission to inspire and empower leaders to find solutions to humanity’s grand challenges. She works with corporates, startups, scale-ups and universities and creates programs and retreats to activate innovation and growth.
It’s hard to know where to start with the accolades for this incredible woman of many talents! An early adopter of digital technology and a huge fan of yoga and ‘being of service’, Polly’s interview is fascinating. On her website she describes herself as an ‘All Purpose’ human but she is also an author, speaker, business strategist, yogi and good hustler,
As one of only 400 people worldwide to have attended Brene Brown’s master course and become a Certified Dare To LeadTM facilitator, these days she and her business partner, Zoe Coyle (who also did the course), are running workshops around the country through their company Pilot Light.
Jules and Polly have known each other for a few years now so they discuss how they met and their combined love of startups, female founders and innovation in all its forms. They move on to Polly’s emergence from academia and her curiosity about the digital world. She has been at the forefront of innovation for decades now.
Polly’s lust for life, her certainty that she was put on this planet to be of service to others and her mixture of ‘woo woo’ and business savvy makes this an interview not to be missed.
Lucy Bloom is one in a million (and its not just the luscious pink Mohawk!) and she’s a funny, generous, insightful guest. Her experience in advertising land and then morphing to work in an NFP, ultimately becoming CEO is so inspiring. Her accident that nearly cost her a leg, her great advice around being ‘let go’ as a CEO and her brilliant tips and stories around being a speaker make this a great interview!
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The latest episode of She’s The Boss features the fabulous Zoe Coyle who is just wonderful to talk to! Her start in the theater set her up well for her coaching and speaking career at Pilot Light Consulting.
Zoe is also one of only 400 women worldwide who have been taught directly by Brene Brown and she now teaches the Certified Dare to Lead course along with the equally brilliant Polly McGee (who I’m interviewing this week!).
Sam White is the CEO and Founder of The Freedom Services Group in the UK and of Stella Insurance for women in Australia.
During the interview, we talk about how Sam went from a naughty (she says not so!) school girl to a woman running insurance businesses that turned over £23 million last year!
We have a great discussion talking about her career path, women in business, female founders and funding and how we all need to make it change for the better.
Stella is a new car insurance product especially for women, with lower premiums because statistically, women have fewer accidents! It was launched in Australia in July 2020.
This is one to listen to.
Louise Mahler is an absolute joy to chat to! An internationally renowned speaker and executive coach, she is also very funny and has loads of stories to tell. From growing up in the suburbs of Brisbane, Louise headed off to Europe and sang in operas from Vienna to Stuttgart and everywhere in between. And then she realized she had had enough and returned to Australia, a young divorcee with a small baby in tow.
This led her to find a 'proper job so she worked with a big mining company in 'Quality Control' for a few years before leaving to focus on helping leaders have a voice of influence and a charismatic presence. "It's all about communication," she says. Starting off with free talks and working her way up to being able to command a fee of $US25,000 for a one hour talk in a stadium in the US, Louise has a career many Australian's would envy. And yet she is still down to earth, generous and humorous with her stories. One to listen to!