The future is female. In recent years we have experienced increased opportunities for women across the globe to not only follow their passions, but serve as leaders within their communities. There’s no shortage of amazing success stories from wonderful, empowered women across the world. Showcasing women making moves in their communities, careers and businesses, these 20 ladies are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to trail-blazing females paving the way forward all over Australia.
Ginnie Hope-Johnstone
Led by Ginnie Hope-Johnstone, VC Events Australia is a leading event management organisation dedicated to the niche market of rural, regional, and remote Australia. They combine their event management and agriculture expertise to provide the best possible services. They can manage different types of events beautifully and fulfil clients’ needs.
VC Events Australia was established in 2018 and, since then, they have worked with national and international organisations. Ginnie and her team are truly passionate about providing impressive event experiences, so they pay attention to every little detail. Whether clients need complete event management services or simply require assistance with specified aspects of major events, they will get the best results.
This organisation passionately advocates for agriculture and rural Australia because they want to make an impact on the agritourism industry. VC Events Australia specialises in unique, dream events, and they always go the extra mile to make sure they meet clients’ expectations.
In 2020, VC Events Australia launched a new concept called “The Paddock”, which is a new way of educating consumers about Food and Fibre in an engaging way. The goal of this concept is to bridge the gap between producers and consumers while giving them a chance to dine in exclusive locations. This is how they showcase rural Australia to help people understand its importance and beauty.
Dixie Crawford
Dixie Crawford is a Barkindji woman from Brewarrina who lives on Ngunnawal country. Dedicated to collaborating with clients, connecting communities, and challenging the status quo on social policy and equity, she is the Founder and Managing Director of Nganya, meaning ‘firelight’ in the Barkindji language.
Her main drive is to make a difference in the way Aboriginal people are heard and understood, Dixie holds a Bachelor degree in Health Science, an Advanced Diploma in Leadership and Management, a Certificate IV in Aboriginal Family Health, an Advanced Diploma in Specialist Trauma Counselling, and Level One Executive Coaching.
Additionally, she has a strong background in policy design, program implementation and monitoring, and governance expertise in social policy, human services and community well-being.
Embodying the company’s namesake, Dixie and her team challenge ideas to change the way things have always been done. At Nganya, through a people and relationship-focused approach to community engagement, the team ensures two-way relationships are nurtured with Aboriginal communities. They support and stretch individuals and organisations to make valuable contributions to achieve sustainable social change that delivers equitable outcomes.
Nganya is accountable to the people and communities they advocate for. The team’s core objective is centering the voices of Aboriginal people in all conversations. They provide coaching and consultancy services not just on the visible issues; they dig deep to find the invisible ones. The values based and purpose driven leadership of Nganya help clients define the depth and impact of the work that’s important to both their organisation and the Aboriginal communities they are connected to.
Tracey Newman
Tracey Newman is the co-founder and director of Impacto Consulting. A social innovation consultancy that specialises in helping for-purpose organisations go from ‘traditional and surviving’ to ‘innovative and impactful.’ Over the past 4 years, she has impressively built the business from the ground up and has worked with some of the country’s most influential community organisations, such as UN Women Australia, RACV’s Community Foundation, Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, and the Victorian and New South Wales state governments, to be even more impactful in their work. Creating a healthier, more inclusive and fairer Australia for everyone.
Tracey also launched and co-hosts the #1 podcast in the country for not-for-profits, the ‘Innovate for Impact’ podcast. The podcast shares her extensive knowledge on innovation and also features high profile guests such as The Smith Family’s CEO Doug Taylor, ECH CEO Dr David Panter, and many other influential leaders.
Understanding that many organisation’s require innovation assistance but may not always have the resources to afford it. In response, for the past few years, her organisation has provided a series of pro-bono training opportunities for leaders in the sector, with over 650+ different organisations participating last year alone. Building the knowledge of the sector so that organisations can deliver better outcomes for the people they support.
Tracey is also a board member at a community-based not-for-profit that supports disadvantaged youth, and recently ran a campaign for a seat in the Legislative Council, in the South Australian state election.
Meryl Sukumar
With a wealth of experience within the boutique and global advisory/consulting industry, Meryl Sukumar is the founder of Subcinctus Consulting, an outstanding consulting firm that offers results. Meryl has worked with many clients, including commercial, manufacturing, industrial, and governmental organisations, so she knows exactly how to help clients grow.
One thing that sets Meryl and her team at Subcinctus Consulting apart is that their values are connected to who they are as people. They approach clients with a true dedication to helping them transform their lives and businesses beyond their wants. Meryl and her team serve clients with accountable and inspired action that leads to sustainable and lucrative transformations.
Our clients’ needs (not just wants) are of utmost importance, even if that means referring them to our network of practitioners in this space. This is our commitment to everyone we cross paths with, to serve them in the best way for positive, economically sustainable change. Subcinctus Consulting also offers a unique resource hub where they provide curated programs to inspire and empower businesses to create measurable and accountable pathways towards low impact operations.
Their main goal with this resource hub is to inspire, empower, and encourage people to provide sustainable services. Meryl is dedicated to helping businesses shift their practices towards low-carbon and circular operation, so her firm provides the resources they need to understand the requirements and take action. Additionally, she offers one-on-one and group mentoring programs to clients worldwide to provide personalised guidance.
Vanessa Briody
Director of Oregional Collective, Vanessa Briody is a marketing and business development guru who works with Kate Kirkpatrick, queen of event operations, and Andrew Weibusch, an amazing creative, to bring original ideas to regional areas. They work primarily within regional Victoria and focus on industries such as tourism, hospitality, events, and wine.
Vanessa and her incredible colleagues provide clients with tailor-made teams of independent marketing, creative, and event specialists, bringing projects to life in a spectacular manner! A huge part of their success is their unmatched ability to be and find the right people for the job.
Oregional Collective lives and breathes the industries they work in and have an innate understanding of what the consumer wants. Vanessa and her colleagues all bring different perspectives to the table and collaborate to get the best results for their clients.
One such client is the City of Ballarat and they are proud of their involvement with their Ballarat Heritage Festival, which won Gold at the Victorian Tourism Awards and the Australian Tourism Awards in the category of Events and Festivals. Oregional Collective assisted with marketing, creative, digital, and award submission; doing their bit to champion an event that has become part of Ballarat’s culture and history. Excitingly, the next event on the Oregional calendar is the Grampians Grape Escape, recently listed as one of the world’s top 14 food and wine events by AMEX Essentials.
Tracie Eaton
Internationally-renowned Australian artist Tracie Eaton has an impressive career that spans over 15 years. She has a gallery and a public studio in Marina Mirage on the Gold Coast where clients can get pieces that are only created once. She’s known as a “Celebrity Artist” following her exclusive 3-year commission to create bespoke artwork for Oscar nominees and winners. Hollywood A-listers such as Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Bradley Cooper, Anthony Hopkins, and Charlize Theron, among others, own her artwork.
In 2021, she was recognised by GAA as one of the Leading & Investable Contemporary Artists and listed by Herrington Publications as one of the Top 25 Global Woman Change Makers of the year. This year, she was published by Lux Life as the Leading Luxury Art Company – Australia, and she was awarded the Leonardo Da Vinci International Artist Award for Outstanding Artistic Merit.
Tracie has developed a unique painting style and her creativity is truly limitless. She’s known for luxurious artworks that are bold and textured with loose forms and brush strokes. Additionally, curators describe her pieces as “passion-art”, meaning everyone who sees them loves them. Tracie’s offering is unlike any other and she has created an intimate brand.
To Tracie, painting is not just décor; it’s a personal journey into the creative world of the artist that brings a vision to life. As a result, her pieces are passionate and vivid. She actively engages with clients in every step of the process because this personal connection allows her to create the emotive bond that makes her artworks so heartfelt and unique.
Sabrina Houssami
Founder and CEO of Avanti Search, Sabrina Houssami, brings an impressive background in recruitment and diversity and inclusion to the table. Having spent the majority of her career leading talent acquisition functions across APAC, Sabrina launched Avanti Search in 2022 to provide clients with what many agencies cannot – strategic advice built from the perspective of an internal recruitment function.
“Recruitment agencies are viewed as very transactional and ‘salesy’. My offering differs because I’ve spent the last decade leading recruitment inside of global businesses, strategising on how to attract and retain talent. So that’s the lens I bring with me to Avanti Search. I’m not here to ‘fill roles’. I’m here to solve business problems.”
Sabrina’s unique background has garnered her a large network across APAC – she is also a published author, member of Mensa, former Miss World Australia, and former contestant on reality TV show, The Apprentice.
The 35-year-old also Chairs the City of Sydney’s Disability Inclusion Advisory Panel, and consults on disability inclusion for the Australian Museum.
Sabrina’s company, Avanti Search, recruits corporate roles across Australia, including Sales, Marketing, Finance, IT & Development, C-Suite, Healthcare, HR & Talent Acquisition, Operations, and Office Management. She is currently taking on more clients nationally.
“I want to see companies succeed, and I want to see people in jobs they love. That’s why our motto is ‘Good people, found.’ Because we’re connecting the dots between amazing talent and fantastic organisations,” says Sabrina. We can’t wait to see what she does next.
Lisa Sisson
Author, speaker, and founder of Unearth, a specialised risk consultancy, Lisa Sisson is driven by a desire to make the world a safer place. Lisa brings a unique perspective that forms Unearth’s philosophy: A belief that when people feel safe, they’re empowered to give their best efforts without fear of failure.
With 30 years of experience within risk management, technology and services with global brands and niche specialised companies, she built a reputation for tackling difficult problems most people avoided. Lisa’s experience with specialised analytics in areas such as insider threat, human behaviour, cyber security, threat, and hazards, allows her to offer a distinctive difference and insight to risk management.
Since founding Unearth in 2013, Lisa works with both the public and private sector including national security, emergency services, and some of Australia’s largest and recognised commercial brands. Lisa is passionate about helping leaders who are overwhelmed by risk management. She doesn’t only deliver outstanding results; she also demystifies risk and provides clients with the tools to tackle it successfully.
Unearth provides a unique perspective on risk because they believe risk starts and ends with people. They have created a person-centred evidence-informed and proprietary System4Risk, which sits within Unearth’s PROTECT framework.
The power of Unearth PROTECT framework offers clients the ability to gain a new perspective on risk and develop the confidence they need to protect their organisation while helping to identify new opportunities for organisations. This means that Lisa and her team enable you to find reward in risk.
Suzanne Jones
With an impressive career in journalism,PR, and communications, Suzanne Jones has extensive real-life experience, and knowledge of the world of PR, having helped hundreds of clients successfully build their profile and businesses across targeted stakeholder groups.
As the Founder and Director of The Jones Collective and its latest arm, Podcast Now, Suzanne heads a boutique communications agency. Through its newsroom-like setup, Suzanne and her dedicated team are able to cater all their clients’ communications needs across traditional, digital, content, podcasts, videography, and everything in between.
Main sectors include property, technology, mental health, and more recently environmental, social and governance (ESG). One of Suzanne’s biggest assets is her extensive networks and ability to find solutions to communication challenges. She is very direct in her approach and knows what’s needed to make the headlines and for other clients what’s required to stay out of the headlines!
Suzanne is a communications agent you want to have on your side.
Ingrid Miot
Founded by Ingrid Miot, Bamboo Growth Consulting is a business strategy consultancy that specialises in revitalising and refocusing tired, overgrown private businesses. Typically, these businesses have branched out over the years meaning they’re competing on price like commodity-type businesses and yet they don’t have the advantage of scale.
Bamboo helps prune them back to their valuable core so they can leverage their valuable expertise to dominate a profitable niche and compete by offering premium products. Ultimately, Bamboo helps transform these specialist businesses into very valuable long-term investments.
In today’s world, the ultimate competitive advantage is a fast, agile team. Specifically, a team who understands and can execute the business strategy. Ingrid originally qualified as a chartered accountant but people are her passion so Ingrid’s real drive is to empower teams through skills development – specifically, financial and strategy skills.
One of the things that set Bamboo Growth Consulting apart is the simple, intuitive strategy tool they’ve developed. It gives teams a common language and structure to fine-tune their business strategy. Most business strategy consultancies tightly guard their strategy models so clients become dependent on them. Bamboo Growth Consulting is different because they democratise strategy and offer a simple tool that clients can easily adopt. This way, clients can strengthen their internal strategy capability and truly thrive.
Edwena Dixon
Award-winning Mortgage Broker Edwena Dixon is the director of Pinpoint Finance, a boutique independent brokerage firm that rejects the “one size fits all” approach taken by the major banks and specialises in providing clients with tailored mortgage and finance solutions. They work closely with clients to understand their goals and provide loan structures that make sense today and for the foreseeable future.
Pinpoint Finance clients enjoy not only great rates but also the right features and structure to suit their lifestyle, financial habits, and goals. Pinpoint Finance led the mortgage broking industry by becoming an all-online brokerage in 2016, servicing clients across Australia and all over the world, including the UK, Hong Kong, and Vietnam.
Edwena is approaching 10 years in the Mortgage Broking Industry and has won over 14 different industry awards. Married and a mother of two young children, she understands both the industry and the real world challenges clients face, and she uses this knowledge to refine the client experience and ensure Pinpoint Finance clients enjoy the most efficient and stress free experience possible.
Edwena is committed to giving back and assists in promoting financial education and independent thinking among young girls by speaking in schools, and has helped raise over $2,000,000 in donations for the Monash Children’s Hospital.
Stephanie Moorhouse
Olympic gymnast and co-founder of Find My Balance Stephanie Moorhouse is passionate about helping young females thrive in their lives and achieve their goals while staying healthy and happy. Her co-founder Ashleigh Brennan is also an Olympic gymnast, so they understand the challenges that females can face on their journeys.
As gymnasts who spent their childhood and teenage years learning the physical and mental skills that would allow them to participate in the Olympic Games, they have the experience and knowledge to provide valuable services to help young females navigate the many challenges that can come their way.
Through Find My Balance, Stephanie and Ashleigh offer mentoring and workshops in schools and sporting clubs. They cover a variety of topics that offer insight and invaluable information so they can build healthy habits. Such as body confidence and body image, self-confidence, individual strengths, breathing techniques, visualisation, dealing with social media pressure, and more.
Essentially, they provide young females with the tools they need to overcome adversity, create a healthy relationship with their bodies, and work on self-improvement so they can be more successful. Stephanie is honoured to provide clients with the support and guidance they need so they can enjoy the best possible outcomes without sacrificing their well-being.
Suki Stander and Adele McNiff
Co-Founders and Directors of MONTAGU GROUP Adele McNiff and Suki Stander leverage over 45 years of combined recruitment experience to bring together the best employers and candidates across Australia. Their expertise is focused on IT, Digital, Accounting, and Finance recruitment across labour hire and permanent resource placement.
MONTAGU GROUP is designed to seamlessly integrate with organisations to extend their reach, capability, capacity, and assist with strategic resource planning. Throughout their careers, Suki and Adele have learned that the relationship aspect of recruitment is essential to successful outcomes for everyone involved.
With this in mind, they strive to source the people who will become the leaders of tomorrow. Their approach to recruitment is based on building long-term relationships. They take the time to have a deep understanding of clients’ workplaces and their talent needs to ensure that they are not just finding people but finding YOUR PEOPLE.
MONTAGU GROUP is defined by honesty, transparency, and solid industry knowledge all underpinned by their focus on THE HUMAN CONNECTION.
Alyson Wavish
Led by Alyson Wavish, Re-Solve Retail Solutions is a unique agency that successfully combines marketing and business consultancy based on 22 years of experience. They offer effective practices that focus on retail, hospitality, and SME markets, and provide holistic end-to-end services. They are experts at identifying opportunities to help businesses improve systems, productivity, reposition, growth, and profitability.
Re-Solve Retail Solutions’ business practices are based on a deep understanding of marketing and economics, which underpin every solution they offer. Their expertise comes from a long-standing career in events/hospitality management and shopping centre management. They have worked with Australia’s largest property funds and commercial real estate agencies.
Alyson and the team behind Re-Solve Retail Solutions have created bespoke Standard Operating Procedures that allow them to provide a streamlined proactive service to give clients direction at all levels of management. The team consists of a specialist group of curated consultants with valuable expertise in their respective fields. This is how they’re able to provide outstanding outcomes that elevate businesses.
Re-Solve Retail Solutions is the only agency of its kind that provides a landlord/retailer partnership model. They ensure improved business performance for individual SME businesses, improved capital values, and better net income results for landlords. Additionally, they have a useful digital ecosystem that allows retailers to maximise their digital footprint even if they don’t have any understanding of the digital or social media world.
Melissa Murray
Driven female entrepreneur Melissa Murray is the Founder and Creative Director of Ashdown and Bee, a boutique events company that specialises in styling and designing spectacular events. They produce events for lovers of bespoke and handcrafted styling, which is their approach. Though they have a particular love for styling weddings, they also produce events for luxury brands and venues of all kinds.
As a professional event stylist, Melissa offers couples and clients a truly unique and personal styling experience. That means that the events she produces are not only amazing but they are also tailored to her clients’ needs. She helps bring their vision to life and create a memorable experience for them and their guests.
Melissa has worked in the industry for over 15 years and she’s qualified in interior styling, event management, business, and marketing. This is her passion and she makes sure every element of the events she produces is customised to create a magical experience.
Her work as a stylist and designer has been featured in multiple publications, including Vogue Bride, Vogue Living, Harpers Bazaar Bride, Real Weddings, Hooray, and more. Ashdown and Bee have a collection of thoughtfully curated props and furniture available for hire. Additionally, they collaborate with a wide range of handpicked boutique and specialised vendors to provide the best possible value.
Sarah Newport
As a young, female business owner, Sarah Newport is dedicated to innovating and improving her field of work. With a strong background in data driven and science marketing, psychological marketing and a passion for neuroscience, she is committed to changing the existing agency model. Creating an agency that focuses on its employees and prioritises high-quality, data-based work is essential to her success.
TwentyTwo Digital is a problem-solving marketing agency that helps businesses thrive in an ever-changing environment. They are experts at identifying problems and providing data-based solutions that are applied over quick iterations. All the solutions they offer as a digital marketing agency are supported and justified by data.
With all this in mind, Sarah is dedicated to making moves in the industry and shifting the way advertisers/marketers work. “It’s not a prerequisite to be burnt out in order to work in the field,” she says. “The keys to success are being focused, prioritising and knowing that you don’t have to work yourself to the bone in order to climb the ladder.” As a leader and business owner, it’s essential to create and foster a positive environment where teams can flourish. This is the best way to get the most out of their unique talents and it’s the basis of Sarah’s approach.
Sarah and her team are passionate about providing clients with true data so they can make the best possible creative decisions. They work with each clients’ best interests at heart and they foster strong relationships with them. At TwentyTwo Digital, they are dedicated to delivering high-quality work to fulfil clients’ needs to the fullest.
Ali Uren
Founder and Director of Ed Tech Buisness Kiikstart, Ali Uren is committed to providing teams and individuals with the skills they need to design the future. The traditional learning model doesn’t cut it. Not just in terms of content, but also in how the learning is delivered. Ali’s platform is on a mission to enable people to learn differently and eliminate the frustration out of the problem-solving process.
Kiikstart allows people to think differently about skill gaps, threats, and risks, which allows clients to create different businesses and careers. Strengths take care of themselves, but weaknesses represent big opportunities. Ali designed this platform to provide unconventional content and learning experiences, which has proven to be very effective.
Ali believes that people who are committed to changing their businesses and careers should be able to do so without any frustrations. Additionally, the process shouldn’t be lonely, expensive, or painful. That’s why Kiikstart exists, to facilitate this process. So far, they have worked with over 70 organisations and over 2000 people and are working on a full platform to change how ideas are nurtured and managed post learning.
Kiikstart continuously and consistently delivers learnings to a diverse range of people and industries. Ali works with clients who want to be influential in their respective industries and she ensures they have the talent, skills, and processes to innovate. She provides detailed, responsive, insightful, and challenging guidance every step of the way. From strategy through to the successful execution of ideas so clients can reach their goals.
Christina Salvo
Founder of Simple Separation Christina Salvo guides couples through the separation process to make sure the well-being of families is at the centre. Her mediation, legal information, and law firm referral service assists couples from start to finish in an innovative proprietary online platform for everyone’s comfort and convenience.
Simple Separation’s platform manages every single step of the separation process, including family law mediation and facilitation of third-party legal services. This allows Christina and her team to provide valuable services at a competitive fixed rate. Compared to the standard billable hour system, this is one of the most affordable options on the market.
Clients will enjoy the expert guidance of family law mediators, third party independent family lawyers, estate planning lawyers, and conveyancers Australia-wide. Simple Separation is the perfect solution for couples who wish to stay out of court and avoid expensive, time-consuming legal battles. They help clients with divorce, property settlement, child support arrangements, parenting arrangements, property conveyancing, and wills.
Though Simple Separation was launched only 2 years ago, it has become Australia’s leading online separation service. Christina’s personal experience with a highly stressful and troubling separation inspired her to turn her adversity into an effective solution to help other couples. Her mission is to make separation simple, cost-effective, and respectful, which is exactly what she accomplishes with her amazing online platform.
Veronica Jones
Certified Results Coach and successful entrepreneur Veronica Jones is the Founder of The Life Coaching Co, which specialises in helping people awaken their inner power and harness success mechanisms in business and life. Veronica is a three-time business owner and former medical industry CEO, so she knows what it takes to rise above the many mindset challenges that litter the path to success.
Many common and uncommon roadblocks can keep people from skyrocketing toward success. Veronica teaches clients how to conquer those roadblocks effectively. Her 1:1 coaching focuses on providing the tools people need to transform their mindset and say goodbye to mediocrity, limiting beliefs, and self-doubt. With her guidance, people can replace them with crystal clear purpose and confidence.
The Life Coaching Co serves men and women around the world and it’s the right solution for anyone who wants to take advantage of tailored programs. Instead of investing in different kinds of coaching, clients are able to create customised programs to fit their specific needs.
This is how The Life Coaching Co helps people achieve anything in any area of business, career, and life. Veronica is a Results Coach, Life Coach, Wellness Coach, and NLP Practitioner, so she has the tools, knowledge, and expertise to lead clients to significant breakthroughs. Her services are not only valuable, they’re life-altering and lead to consistent results.
Sandra Louise Yousheyah
Chartered Accountant, Co-Founder, and Consultant of DY Leadership Advisory Sandra Louise Yousheyah specialises in building strong finance teams. The firm was founded with Patrick Dwyer to fill the gaps that exist when it comes to assisting corporate finance teams in achieving greater efficiency.
Finance teams do not always run smoothly for a number of reasons. Whether that is lack of skills and expertise, staff shortages, demanding projects such as merger and acquisitions or changes in accounting standards. DY Leadership Advisory steps in to assist, manage, coach, and collaborate with the finance team, CFO, CEO, internal and external stakeholders to execute company objectives.
Sandra’s extensive experience in Sydney and New York allowed her to build the knowledge and skills required to help finance teams thrive. One of the things that sets her apart is that she is an expert at creating a collaborative team culture so finance teams can improve and support organisational goals more effectively.
DY Leadership Advisory is a Chartered Firm and a Practice Entity Member of Chartered Accountants Australia New Zealand. It is focused on generating sustainable, efficient, best practices that will improve the finance function and reduce risk for clients across a wide range of industries. This is a flexible firm that tailors its services to fit clients’ needs and they offer competitive pricing.
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