Michele Adair’s home truths on Australia’s affordable housing crisis, and the challenge boards face fixing the problem
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in conversation with Claire Braund
Release Date: 08/09/2021
Gorana Saula: International woman of innovation
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in conversation with Claire Braund
Bosnian-born Gorana Saula speaks three languages, has three passports, four drivers’ licenses and loves to travel. And with her passion for gadgets and all things tech it’s no wonder friends of the former CEO and electronics engineer call her James Bond. The Non Executive Director has had a wide range of executive leadership roles in defense, telecommunications, and electronics manufacturing. Attending university in Croatia she holds two master's degrees in electronics and business and is known as a woman who loves innovation - her first job out of uni was leading a project to...
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Fair game: Dr Catherine Ordway on gender equity, integrity and anti-corruption in sport
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in conversation with Claire Braund
Dr Catherine Ordway is an academic in sports management, and a sports lawyer, who specialises in anti corruption and integrity.She's a sought after tribunal member, media commentator and consultant who's assisted sports including AFL, archery athletics, basketball, combat sports cricket, cycling, football, golf, handball, rowing, rugby, softball, swimming, and triathlon in governance, selection and anti-doping and code of conduct disputes.What is less well known is that Catherine played a central role in the establishment of Women on Boards shortly after the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. In this...
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Fostering culturally diverse leadership - with Karen Loon
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in conversation with Claire Braund
Karen Loon is a Non-Executive Director, and a former senior Big 4 partner. She has worked with the world’s leading banks and is a recognised thought leader and speaker on workplace diversity and inclusion - inspired partly by her own experiences in Australia. “What really struck me was that I was sitting in boardrooms or sitting in meetings, where there was pretty much I was the only Asian in the room, let alone an Asian Australian woman in the room,” Karen tells Claire in this episode. She was formerly PwC’s Singapore and Asia-Pacific Diversity Leader and a member of its award-winning...
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Managing a portfolio career and leading the charge in Adelaide - with Wendy Teasdale Smith
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in conversation with Claire Braund
Wendy Teasdale Smith is a woman full of surprises. As well as being the owner of possibly one of the largest collections of hairclips for anyone over 40, WOB’s quirky and energetic South Australian representative also recently won a Toastmasters humorous speaking award with her speech on having an RBF (resting bitch face), which she presented over Zoom during COVID. Born and brought up in Elizabeth, South Australia (the inspiration for Jimmy Barnes’ song Working Class Man) she is also in a book called Elizabeth Champions celebrating people from the region. As she tells Claire in this...
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Security Risks for Boards. Are you asking the right questions? - with Matt Fehon AM
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in conversation with Claire Braund
In the wake of the Optus cyber-attack, in this special update we talk to Matt Fehon AM, partner at McGrathNicol. Matt has led some of the largest and highest profile fraud, corruption, and regulatory investigations in Australia. He is one of the key presenters in our new 5-part program Security Risks and Risk Management for boards. The program starts on the 20 October and consists of 4 one hour webinars plus a fifth panel session in Sydney at the end (also via livestream). Here Matt provides an overview of what will be covered in the program, including: - His view on the key risks...
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Leading Equal Opportunity for Women - with Helen Conway
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in conversation with Claire Braund
Helen Conway has, by her own admission, always been an agitator. As the experienced lawyer, senior executive, NED and workplace gender equality expert tells Claire Braund in this podcast, it was her “contrary nature” which compelled her to get involved when she saw something that was not right. “I may have made a few enemies along the way, but you have to be courageous enough to stand up for what is right, and ultimately you get a return on that investment.” Helen spent 10 years in private legal practice, including seven years as a partner in a major law firm in Sydney before moving...
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Cyber warfare expert Dr Sarah Morrison: Getting into the mind of a threat actor
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in conversation with Claire Braund
To be good at cyber security you need to be able to think like a threat actor. That’s according to state-based cyber warfare expert Dr Sarah Morrison, who has herself embedded herself for the last 20 years in the technology and cybersecurity industry. No surprise then that Sarah is always the one at dinner parties reminding people to use secure passwords and update their anti-malware. What is more of a surprise is that Sarah - who has no less than seven qualifications in the area of criminology, investigation & intelligence and cyber security including a PhD in Russian Information...
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Claire Braund in Conversation with Miriam Silva AM - Faith, resilience and my board journey
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in conversation with Claire Braund
Miriam Silva is an experienced board member and senior corporate roles across multiple industries including pharmaceuticals, banking and agriculture. Her influence extends across business, Government, media, Muslim and broader Australian communities. Educated at The Wilderness School, a non-denominational school for girls in Adelaide, Miriam went on to read mathematics at Adelaide University before launching into the corporate world where she took on roles with ANZ & Elders before becoming COO for FleetPartners. In 2022 Miriam was made an AM for significant service to the multicultural...
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Ready for lift off: How Amanda Mark nailed her elevator pitch
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in conversation with Claire Braund
From avoiding fisticuffs on the trading floor to conquering Wall Street and running her own financial market regulation consultancy, Sydneysider Amanda Mark is known for her fearless determination and big picture thinking. It was always Amanda’s dream to work in financial services overseas, so after landing a job in Sydney for a money market broker as a chalky in the early 90s - one of four women on a trading floor of more than 250 men - Amanda secured a role in Morgan Stanley’s Sydney office before getting a transfer to the New York head office. It was in Manhattan that Amanda was to make...
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Corruption, whistleblowing and disclosure in the boardroom - with Dr Kath Hall
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in conversation with Claire Braund
Dr Kath Hall is an internationally recognised expert on transnational corporate corruption and foreign bribery regulation. Her career as a legal academic and writer has led to her advising a number of leading international organisations including the United Nations Joint Inspection Unit and Safra Centre for Ethics at Harvard University. Dr Hall has advised the International Standards Organisation on the introduction of a global standard on best practice whistleblower policies and processes and between 2016-2020 was the lead researcher on a global project investigating positive organisational...
info_outlineMichele Adair is a long-time WOB member with great passion for housing all Australians.
As Chair of Community Housing Industry Association NSW and CEO of affordable housing provide Housing Trust on the NSW South Coast, Michelle’s goal is to ensure all Australians have access to the basic human right to somewhere to live.
Aligning her board roles with her values and purpose is very important to Michele. In this podcast she tells Claire how she was drawn to these roles because of the diversity of policy and the complexity of the policy framework.
Michele’s interest in social housing also comes from personal experience, after she found herself a single mother with two young children struggling to keep a roof over their heads in her 30s. It was, she says, ‘a pretty tough gig’ getting by on just $2 a week after paying her rent.
It’s a situation, says Michele, that could happen to any woman - our mums, our grandmothers, our aunties, the ladies next door. “Our housing system is broken and in desperate need of reform and we’re not even scratching the surface,” she says.
A paradigm shift – from governments, the private sector and for-purpose organisations – is needed, she says, to address the housing shortage problem which currently sees 180,000 people on the social housing waitlist.
In the podcast Michele also talks about what’s involved being on the board of affordable housing organisations - from overseeing huge commercial developments and joint ventures to the joy of giving keys to a home to someone who desperately needs it.
LinkedIn: Michele Adair | Claire Braund (host)
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