Lessons learned breaking into the boardroom with Jennifer Grech
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in conversation with Claire Braund
Release Date: 10/09/2020
Optus blame game: Do we treat male and female CEOs the same?
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in conversation with Claire Braund
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? >> Read more (including transcript) >> Listen to the full segement on ABC radio . All rights ABC Radio...
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Claire Braund in conversation with Tom Elliot on 3AW
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in conversation with Claire Braund
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...
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Claire Braund in conversation with Dr Amber Tan
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in conversation with Claire Braund
You may well think Dr Amber Tan has the world at her feet and job offers flowing in. A former Malaysian national who was born and raised in Ipoh (the gateway to the Cameron Highlands hill station), Amber migrated to Melbourne in 2011 with her partner and received an Australian Postgraduate Award scholarship in 2013 to complete her PhD at Monash University. A feat she accomplished in 2017 with no amendments. Her thesis critically examined national security and public order laws in Malaysia and their impact on constitutionalism and the rule of law and Amber has also conducted extensive...
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Claire Braund in conversation with Dr Monique Beedles
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in conversation with Claire Braund
Dr Monique Beedles was not your average teenager. At 15, as well as having posters of Murph Hughes and the Adelaide Oval on her bedroom wall, it was her dream to be CEO of Swiss multinational healthcare company Roche. To this end, she went on to study German and chemistry at school. “I was always interested in medical research from a very young age. But I didn’t know back then that to be the CEO of Roche, your name has to be Roche,” she tells Claire in this podcast. Undeterred, Monique went on to study pharmacy and gained her first board role with the Australasian College of Pharmacy....
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Connection Content: Rethinking Your LinkedIn Strategy with Karen Tisdell
Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in conversation with Claire Braund
When it comes to getting the most out of your LinkedIn page, content is great but it’s no match for connection. That’s the message from LinkedIn expert Karen Tisdell, who talks to Claire Braund about how LinkedIn has changed over the years and the importance of content AND connection when it comes to directors putting themselves out there”. As she says, “if you have a really great profile and you’re putting out content but you haven’t made the effort to connect with people to build your network, then you’re just shouting into the wind”. With a long background in the...
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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...
info_outlineGrowing up to Mediterranean parents, Jennifer Grech had to fight to finish high school and go to university. Breaking family tradition, she graduated as a school teacher. From there, Jennifer says she accidentally fell into a learning and development role in the pharmaceutical industry, where she worked internationally, ascending to director level at major pharmaceutical AstraZeneca.
After many years in the corporate world, Jennifer is now consulting, using her vast experience to assist organisations in leadership and transformation. She has also decided that the boardroom is her next calling.
In this podcast Jennifer shares her journey as someone relatively new to the board arena, including the systematic approach she has taken to learn about boards, how she has built her board collateral, and how she sees her eight applications as a learning process to help define her board value.
Jennifer provides a true and honest account of her challenges and what she’s learned so far. While she’s still is seeking her first elusive board role, we’re sure that with Jennifer’s experience, hard work and approach, that it won’t be long. Watch this space!
Claire Braund (host)
Further Information about Women on Boards (WOB)