Each Wednesday we interview women in our community about innovation and what drives them to make a difference in their industries everyday!
What are you working on?
My focus is on boosting speaking skills for professional women Australia wide. Speaking and pitching our work is essential these days and many of us need help and training to make sure we get our message across. I run workshops in Canberra & Sydney to help women build speaking confidence and skills. We are having great success as we get more #WomenSpeaking.
This is a Canberra based business. With technology such a key to the modern conference world I really want to engage more with the innovation sector on this. I want to support more women entrepreneurs to get their message across and help promote their products and services to potential backers and customers.
Why is innovation important to you?
We have to constantly look at new ways of doing things. Innovation has changed communication forever and we need to ensure that we are also examining the ways we communicate/speak to ensure we are as effective as we can be. We must get our businesses and services noticed. Speaking skills are an essential part of that.
As more businesses go online, face to face speaking becomes even more crucial to business and corporate success. It is where deals are signed and alliances made.
What drives you to make a difference?
My dream is to get more women speaking at conferences, events and workplace meetings because the workplace has been transformed but gender equity has not been achieved. Women are still not visible enough in leadership roles across Australia. I want to change that so that women in their 20s, 30s and 40s can really say they enjoy equality of opportunity.
Do you have any advice for getting more women into the innovation ecosystem?
You have to have a vision for how your product will look to others and try to help them understand more about you and where you are coming from.
After 30 years in the Australian media as a leading broadcaster for ABC and SBS I look at communications and business engagement through the prism of ‘how our message lands’ with an audience. This is a key point that can be hard for new business owners to contemplate. Sometimes when we speak we think our audience ‘gets us’ but sometimes they don’t. Think about the perspective of your audience before you pitch or go into a meeting. You will be surprised as the results.