How Charlotte Valeur went from investment banking to build a global portfolio: The naked truth about diversity
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in Conversation
Release Date: 03/01/2021
Woman of Honour: Board recruitment specialist Bernadette Uzelac AM
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in Conversation
‘If the door is closed, climb through the window’. That’s the message from board recruitment specialist and director, Bernadette Uzelac, who has been made a member of the Order of Australia (AM), for significant service to the community of the Barwon Southwest region in Victoria. Growing up in Geelong, Bernadette was married with a baby and selling Mary Kay products by the time she was 18. Three years later she had completed a commerce degree and welcomed her second child. By the 1980s, driven by a hunger to put her own stamp on something, Bernadette started her own recruitment business...
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Julie Adams OAM: Dad’s legacy brightens future for cancer patients
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in Conversation
Warning: This podcast discusses suicide A curious child who grew up with an older brother, Julie Adams OAM started challenging gender stereotypes at an early age. “I felt empowered to speak up if I thought I was being treated differently because I was a girl,” said Julie. It was this curiosity, she says, that led to her success as an entrepreneur as the co-founder of Chemo@home - which offers cancer patients the convenience and flexibility of receiving treatment in the comfort of their own home - and in 2024 being awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for service to...
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Avril Henry AM - Levelling the playing field - Women of Honour Series
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in Conversation
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Architect Helen Lochhead AO - Building a career with purpose - Women on Honour series
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in Conversation
Make every day count. That’s the advice from architect and urbanist , who was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in the 2024 Australia Day Honours for distinguished service to architecture and urban design, to building regulation reform, to tertiary education, and to professional organisations. A graduate of both the University of Sydney and Columbia University in New York, Helen is a woman who has certainly made every day count. A recipient of many prestigious travel scholarships and Fellowships including Fulbright, Bogliasco and the Harvard Lincoln/Loeb...
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Georgina Gubbins OAM, ‘The accidental farmer’ - Women of Honour Series
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in Conversation
In this Women on Boards Honours series, WOB Executive Director talks to the 12 WOB members who were recognised in the 2024 Australia Day Honours. In this episode Claire speaks to Warrnambool cattle and sheep producer and founding member and chair of , , who was awarded an OAM for service to primary industry, and to the community. As she tells Claire “I wouldn't probably be sitting here having received this award if it hadn't been for Women on Boards!.” Georgina started her career as a nurse then moved to Victoria’s Western District in the mid-90s to help on the family farm with husband....
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Professor Ngaire Elwood AM, Beating the Odds - Women of Honour Series
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in Conversation
Associate Professor Ngaire Elwood AM is driven by a strong sense of purpose that grew out of a life-changing experience that inspired her, as an inquisitive science-loving teenager, to dedicate her life to improving therapies for kids with cancer. As a teenager, she was treated for osteosarcoma, a common form of bone cancer that had a survival rate of about five per cent prior to the advent of chemotherapy. After her bone cancer diagnosis, her treatment involved an above-knee amputation, followed by 18 months of high-dose chemotherapy. Even with this ‘aggressive therapy’ the survival...
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Emerita Professor Lesley Hitchens AM - Women of Honour Series
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in Conversation
In this first episode of the new Women on Boards Honours Podcast Series - featuring the 12 WOB members recognised in the 2024 Australia Day Honours - WOB co-founder and Executive Director, , chats with . Lesley was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for significant service to tertiary education, and to the law. This is only the second year that the majority of honours were awarded to women since the national system formally began on 14 February 1975 – nearly 50 years ago. Lesley had a long and distinguished legal career, starting in Sydney at Allens before she headed overseas...
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Claire Braund in conversation with Lisa Carlin - Transformational change and the importance of community
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in Conversation
Growing up in South Africa Lisa Carlin experienced apartheid in its truest form. “I just felt this complete sense of unfairness of it all, and that's really carried with me today” she says. Through this she has become extremely passionate about transformation to give a voice to those who don’t have one. Lisa is the cofounder and CEO of global advisory FutureBuilders Group and author of . Her portfolio includes mentoring founders and CEOs in the HRTech, EdTech and workplace talent sector, she is on the Advisory board for Rebelliuz and Chair of the University of Cape Town...
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Optus blame game: Do we treat male and female CEOs the same?
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in Conversation
Is there less of a tolerance for failure for women at the top than there is for men? In the wake of former Optus CEO’s Kelly Bayer Rosmarin’s resignation from the telco following a nationwide outage that took down phone and internet services for 14 hours, Women on Boards Executive Director Claire Braund spoke with ABC Canberra Radio’s about the blame culture around CEOs following a crisis and asks, do we treat our male and female CEOs differently? Find out more about Visit our Women on Boards Follow us on
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Claire Braund in conversation with Tom Elliot on 3AW
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in Conversation
Claire Braund spoke to 3AW Drive Host, Tom Elliot on 23 Sept 2023 about a decision by HESTA that they will vote against select director re-elections of ASX300 companies where the board has less than 30 per cent of female representation. Claire says HESTA and other investment firms are taking a stance on “merit”, “We like to think of merit as something objective … but it’s actually defined by culture, values and expectations … which means only some parts of merit are to do with how hard one works,” she told Tom Elliott. Read HESTA's four key expectations for ASX300 companies in...
info_outlineFormer Danish investment banker, Charlotte Valeur, is an internationally renowned and highly experienced Non-Executive Director and Chair who is committed to increasing levels of good governance globally through value-based leadership. Always destined to live and work abroad she admits, at the age of 22, Charlotte transferred from Denmark, her home, to London with the bank she was employed with at the time and has remained there ever since. Raised by an adoring father who encouraged and supported all of her choices, his words of advice have been key to her every success: “Jump life before life jumps you.” In this episode, Charlotte reminds that everything that happens to us in life is based on our personal decisions and no one else’s.
Intrigued by the behaviour of people, Charlotte studied psychology when she took some time off work when she had her children. It is these soft skills, paired with her innate knowledge of investment banking, that have set her apart in the Boardroom. Charlotte has extensive Board level experience with IPOs, mergers and acquisitions, and restructuring, and her portfolio of sectors range from construction, infrastructure, renewable energy, private equity, property, finance/investments/debt, higher education and the third sector. When she entered the world of Board governance, she had a feeling that the overriding principles of best practice were the same, no matter the country or the organisation. From Board composition, to risk management and oversight, to stakeholder engagement, she found from her lived experience that the principles were in fact the same.
When Charlotte first stepped into the Boardroom, she was alarmed that she was the only woman most of the time. Male Board members would justify the polarisation by saying there were no women with Board experience. This motivated Charlotte to establish Board Apprentice Ltd, a not for profit organisation that collaborates with Boards, governments, academia, the third sector and businesses in many different countries to achieve greater equality, diversity and inclusion for women and minority groups.
Today Charlotte is Non-Executive Director for Liang O’Rourke and NTR plc, Chair for Blackstone Loan Financing Ltd and FSN Capital GP and Advisory Board Member for multiple organisations.
When she first began chairing 15 years ago, the appalling slow pace of governance shocked Charlotte. Following the 2007, 2008 and 2009 financial crises, and now COVID, she confidently says we are witnessing a push for better governance and leadership.
Hear about Charlotte’s upcoming book, why her Autism diagnosis has in many ways made her a better Board member, and the benefits of her many transferable skills.
LinkedIn Charlotte Valeur | Claire Braund (host)