Me and My Mentor Podcast: Recent Episodes
Norah Breekveldt
Whilst there are many strategies women adopt to create career success, mentoring relationships can play a central role in fostering talent and preparing women for senior positions. This podcast explores the inspirational mentoring relationships among some of Australia's most influential women in the workplace. The lessons and insights contained in these amazing stories can be applied to anyone, demonstrating the potential that a powerful mentoring relationship has for your career. To hear more about these women and their incredible career journeys, you can purchase Norah Breekveldt's book Me and My Mentor, published by Melbourne Books.
Carol Pollock is a nephrologist at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, one of the few women who carved out successful careers as medical specialists during the 1980s. Throughout her career, Carol has had access to some of the most significant leaders in her field, many of whom were passionate about advancing women in medicine, including Dr. Priscilla Kincaid-Smith and John Mahoney. In this final episode Carol caught up with Norah over the phone to discuss her experiences being mentored by trailblazers in the medical industry and discusses the rite of passage many women still have to go through before they can claim their hard-earned place in the medical profession.
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Cindy Briscoe has moved through a broad range of experiences in the Commonwealth public service — from IT to corporate services, policy and law enforcement. She is currently a Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer in the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment. It was during her time in border protection that she chaired WILES mentoring program and where and first met Tina Chawner.
Tina carved out a highly successful career in the public sector in the United Kingdom. After moving to Australia with her husband, Tina had to start again with no professional networks to support her. She is now People & Organisation Change Specialist at PwC.
Cindy and Tina discuss how difficult it can be to change career paths — or find a career at all — without a strong network, and how they helped bring the best out of each other, both as friends and as mentor/mentees.
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Kim Rubenstein is Professor and Director of the Centre for International and Public Law at the Australian National University. Larissa Halonkin is a legal researcher who first met Kim at university, with Kim her teacher. Larissa later worked with Kim as her Research Assistant where a deep friendship blossomed between those two women and their families. Their mentoring relationship evolved and strengthened alongside their personal, and Kim and Larissa discuss in this episode just how important this friendship has been to their professional decisions and the advancement and enjoyment of their respective careers.
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Pat McCabe worked for 56 years as a Melbourne-based insurance lawyer. He was passionate about Victorian serious injury policies and accident claims, and oversaw the drafting and introduction of significant legislation in these areas. Michelle Britbart has been a barrister at the Victorian Bar since 2004, where her work involves liability litigation and medico-legal matters. They discuss the importance of having a go, trusting your instincts and taking a stand, and how a mentoring relationship can give someone the strength to pursue a goal they otherwise might not consider.
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John Merritt is one of the great leaders in advancing women in leadership and achieving gender equality in the workplace. Currently he is Board Chair at Worksafe Victoria. Prior to this appointment he was CEO of VicRoads where he championed the organisation's first formal mentoring program for women in what had been a strongly masculine culture. John shares his insights around why the program was so successful in raising the visibility of these women with key decision-makers and how he convinced the sceptics to come on board with the program.
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Keerthi Ravi and Ruby Anandajayasekeram are both lawyers — Ruby is Senior Legal Counsel supporting Shell's global downstream acquisitions, divestments and post-closing team, while Keerthi is an associate in the Disputes & Investigations team at Allens and the founder of Diverse Women in Law. In this episode, Keerthi and Ruby delightfully discuss their career experiences and how these have been moulded by their diverse backgrounds and culture. Their mentoring relationship became one of friendship as they stress the importance of viewing the ways that you are different from everyone else — be it culturally or otherwise — as a strength.
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Adam is a partner at EY's Infrastructure Advisory Practice. Kate is Deputy Secretary Police and Crime Prevention. Their professional careers have criss-crossed for 20 years across a range of state government roles and they have kept in touch through some of their critical turning points.
This podcast explores an especially critical period for Kate as she was coming back from maternity leave and needed guidance around making that choice many women make – do I lean in or lean back? Through challenging her thinking, asking her some pretty tough questions and actively sponsoring her, Adam’s support taught her to trust her instincts and was instrumental in her making some key choices that relaunched her career.
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Jodi Fullarton-Healey is General Counsel of Institutional Banking at ANZ Bank and leads a team of more than 100 lawyers located across the globe. Sophie Wilson is a Solution Engineer at Salesforce, which has the world's number one rated customer relationship management software. Sophie attributes her relationship with Jodi as instrumental in giving her the self-confidence and courage to take a leap of faith into a totally new career in technology and innovation after spending over 7 years with ANZ. This podcast delves into the career and relationship of these two women and how mentoring relationships can inspire in someone the confidence to achieve their goals.
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This podcast explores the relationship between Jerril Rechter and Bec Reid, a friendship that formed over 20 years ago when Bec was a young 14-year old dancer and Jerril was the artistic director of Stompin’, a dance company in regional Tasmania. She remembers the day Bec Reid auditioned for Stompin’ and being absolutely gob smacked by this extraordinary young talent.Throughout Jerril's mentorship of Bec, she always assured her, "don't worry I've got your back". Then later the tables were turned and Jerril began to rely more on Bec's guidance and counsel.
These days Jerril is CEO of Basketball Australia and Bec’s career has expanded to all things artistic including producer, director, choreographer, artistic director and Board member – the list goes on.
Here they reflect on their extraordinary journey together and how they shaped each others careers.
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Norah Breekveldt is the director of Breekthrough Strategies where she is a leadership coach and consultant. She supports business leaders dedicated to advancing gender equity and diversity in their workplaces, and empowers women to lead with confidence and create successful careers. Norah introduces listeners to a series of inspirational and powerful stories of mentorship that will be dissected in the Me and My Mentor Podcast in this introductory episode.
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