If you’re thinking the title of this week’s episode sounds distinctly like it’s describing modern day espionage and intelligence agencies you would be right! 

We are super excited to share this exclusive conversation with Cyber Security leader, Abigail Bradshaw. Abi is Head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) which is part of the national Foreign Intelligence agency known as the Australian Signals Directorate. 

Abi describes her job as “revealing other peoples’ secrets whilst protecting our own”. The agency she heads, the ACSC, is tasked with protecting Australia’s communications and technology networks, and all Australians, from malicious cyber activity. That includes threats from both sovereign nations and cyber criminals.

Suffice to say, Abi is a very busy person! 

Abi has had a fascinating career and is passionate about serving her country. She’s also really passionate about seeing more women in leadership roles and is proud of the number of women who are working with her at the agency. 

In this episode you’ll hear: 

• How Abi’s career journey took her from being a lawyer in the Navy to a key role in an intelligence agency
• Why Abi realised she had to change her leadership style significantly when she started her current role, 
• The pros and cons of having to lock your mobile away all day; and
• Her seriously informed tips of how we can all protect ourselves from cyber crime. 

This really is a special episode so synchronise watches, put your phones on silent, and enjoy this conversation with the dynamic and patriotic Abigail Bradshaw.

Useful Links

Australian Signals Directorate website  

Australian Cyber Security Centre website

Free cyber advice 

Link to TAFE Cyber Essential 8 course 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’ve all been there, sitting in that meeting trying to get our point across and becoming infuriated because someone we work with repeatedly ignores what we say in meetings. 

Being heard at work isn’t as simple as just speaking up. Research shows that particularly if you’re a woman or a minority it’s harder to have your ideas, your comments and contributions acknowledged and accepted.

But there are things we can do to help overcome the challenges we sometimes face and in this episode Claire and Greta take you through numerous ways you can improve your influence at work and ensure your messages and communications are landing as well as they can. 

They look at tactics and tools you can use before, during and after important meetings, plus share stories from some of the most senior guests we’ve had on the show including a member of the House of Lords in the UK and the President of a large global health business.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• When, and with whom, Claire typically finds it difficult to be heard 
• How to piggyback off someone else in a meeting when you’re having trouble finding the moment to speak
• Why you have to stand up for yourself
• And, an important meeting tactic everyone should use. 

This episode is jam packed with tips and tools that can help us all increase our influence, and that we use regularly. If you know someone who’s complained of not being heard at work then why not share this episode with them as well. 

Enjoy!

Useful Links

Martha Lane Fox episode   

Que Dallara episode

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our guest on the show this week is Anna Rafferty who runs a global team of more than a thousand people at Lego, the company with play at the heart of its DNA. 

Based in London, Anna and her large team oversee Lego’s consumer relationships including digital and social engagement, apps, websites, memberships, magazines, community management, digital safety, and events. Phew! 

Anna’s had a remarkable career journey starting out of university with early dotcom ‘rocket ship’ Last Minute.com, where she worked for one of our former guests, Martha Lane Fox.

Her career has also seen her work with Penguin Books, the BBC and blockbuster author JK Rowling’s company, Pottermore. To this day she retains her links to the publishing world as Chair of the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Suffice to say, Anna is one busy woman! 

In this episode you’ll hear how:

• She had a career epiphany at 23 years of age
• What working for author JK Rowling was like
• How one question helped her deal with overwhelm; and  
• The 3 behaviours that Lego values most in its leaders.

Anna’s worked with some truly amazing brands and organisations in her career to date so we think you’ll love hearing more about her impressive journey. Enjoy this episode with the passionate and playful Anna Rafferty.  

Links

www.Lego.com

Women’s Prize for Fiction

Anna on LinkedIn

For Anna's Book Recommendations - go to our episode webpage and scroll down ....there are some fantastic recommendations here and we hope you enjoy them!

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If you’re inspired by people who have a worthy and clear purpose or mission then you’re going to love our episode this week. 

Our guest is Lina Xu, co-founder of a Medtech startup called Telecare which offers under-served people living in regional and rural areas virtual access to specialists and other healthcare professionals.

When Chinese born and raised Lina moved to Australia seven years ago and became a mum shortly after, she felt very isolated, out of touch with her new country and alone. 

Whilst still breastfeeding her second son four years ago, Lina realised she needed to make a change and do something more in her new country and so this quietly spoken and determined woman, along with her husband, co-founded Telecare. 

Two doctors joined them as co-founders and all were inspired by the potential of Telecare to fill a vital healthcare gap by enabling regionally based patients to have affordable access to city based specialists and allied healthcare professionals. 

As luck would have it, Telecare was founded just 6 months before Covid happened, so their foresight and careful stakeholder management has really paid off. So much so that Lina was awarded a Cartier Women’s Initiative Fellowship this year as one of Oceania’s leading female entrepreneurs. 

In this episode you’ll hear how:

• A family tragedy helped Lina develop the resilience and adaptability that’s so valuable as a female founder
• How having a clear and impact-focused Mission has made it much easier for Telecare, and Lina personally, to garner supporters 
• How she and her co-founders are making headway with innovative technology in what is a very conservative and risk averse healthcare sector; and  
• Why relationships are so important to her. 

What struck us about this inspiring conversation with Lina is how clear she is about her ‘Why’ and how that’s morphed into becoming something much bigger and even more meaningful with her business. 

We think you’ll love this episode with the humble and mission-driven Lina Xu. 

Useful Links

Telecare Website 

Lina Xu on LinkedIn

Cartier Women’s Initiative 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We have a truly incredible guest in this week’s episode. We don’t think we’ve ever met someone with so much drive and conviction as serial entrepreneur, Sue Fennessy. 

Sue’s vision for her latest, purpose-led-business ‘WeAre8’ is absolutely epic. So large is the vision, that she’s spent the past 8 years building the technology platform required to take on the social media giants of the world. Yes, this one woman ‘tour de force’ is taking on the goliaths of social media with a determination to make social media better for all. 

She’s also invested more than $11 million of her own money to get WeAre8 to where it is today. She’s been able to do this because of her phenomenal track record building and exiting businesses. To date, she’s scaled and sold three previous businesses. 

The last business that Sue co-founded and then sold in 2022, the global Standard Media Index, was bought for $200million. SMI, as it’s also known, was a pioneering data and technology business recording global media spends across different advertising channels. It required years of persistence and serious influence skills to get all the world’s largest media agencies on board to have access to all that data. Sue has these in spades!

These days, after numerous years living in New York, Sue is based in London where we visited her at her HQ  in central London.

In this epic conversation you’ll learn : 

• How Sue thinks about her Purpose in life
• How she plans to transform the worlds of social media AND digital advertising
• The high personal cost of Sue’s single minded focus on making WeAre8 a success; and 
• The crazy and sexist things Venture Capitalists have said to her.

In short, this is a truly memorable conversation so please enjoy this episode with the purposeful and driven, Sue Fennessy. 

Useful Links 

WeAre8:  https://www.weare8.com/

Sue on LInkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/sue-fennessy/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’re really excited about the wonderful guest we have for you on episode 169 this week: Sally-Ann Williams. 

Sally-Ann (aka Sally) is CEO of Cicada Innovations, Australia’s leading deep tech incubator for startups and scaleups with everything from quantum computing to life sciences, ag-tech, space and hydrogen startups. Cicada provides office space, custom labs, specialised equipment and training. 

Over the years, Cicada has helped its resident companies raise 1.7 billion dollars in funding and they’ve also had 1.4 billion dollars in successful exits. 

And right at the heart of the Cicada ecosystem is Sally. 

Before joining Cicada, Sally spent nearly 13 years at Google in diverse roles mostly in the engineering team. There she was responsible, amongst many other things, for bringing street view to Australia and influencing school curriculum to ensure better teaching of technology and STEM subjects. She’s also always been a huge proponent for the start up ecosystem and women in particular.

In this episode you’ll hear how

• Sally coped working with Google’s tech engineers without any technology background
• How she goes about building or harnessing diverse systems to deliver positive long term change
• The biggest challenge Sally faces running a deep tech incubator 
• Why she thinks seaweed is actually more exciting than generative AI; and 
• Her strategies for coping with chronic imposter syndrome. 

Sally definitely sits in the box seat of what’s happening at the forefront of tech so we’re confident that you’ll find this conversation with her super interesting. 

Enjoy this episode with deep tech and community champion, Sally-Ann Williams.

Useful Links

Sally-Ann on Linkedin

Cicada Innovations website

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Blow out the candles and sing a merry tune for Don’t Stop Us Now! is 5 years old!  

A lot has happened in the past 5 years and we’re so grateful to have had some incredible conversations with incredibly inspiring women. 

So in this special birthday episode, we take a step back and reflect on the key insights and lessons our guests have shared over more than 165 episodes. What we find is that there are common themes that keep cropping up again and again.

Whether it’s a female leader and innovator in London, Bangkok, Silicon Valley or Costa Rica or Sydney, it turns out there are universal challenges our amazing guests have faced. We’ve also faced them and we’re pretty sure these are challenges that you’ve likely had, or may be facing too, they’re that universal. 

It’s not that our stellar guests are in a different league to the rest of us, it’s simply that they’ve found a way to work through these challenges en route to their success. 

And you can too. 

In this episode you’ll hear:

• The 5 key challenges that crop up again and again 
• The lessons to navigate these challenges more successfully
• Thoughts, confessions and struggles from leaders including internationally renowned author and speaker, Rachel Botsman; former entrepreneur and current member of the House of Lords and board director of Chanel, Martha Lane Fox and Forbes Philanthropy Hero, Audette Exel; and… 
• How we all have fear and if we’re not feeling a bit of it right now, then we’re playing too safe.

In short, this episode is jam-packed with 5 years worth of wisdom. 

So grab a slice of (birthday) cake and enjoy our special 5th birthday episode. 

Episodes we feature:

Rachel Botsman

Audette Exel

Courtney Hohne 

Lindley Edwards

Caroline Issa

Holly Ransom

Martha Lane Fox

Que Dallara

Tina Sharkey

Ann Sherry

Julia Paige

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you’re like us and have been playing a lot with Generative AI models such as Chat GPT or Bard lately then you’ll be fascinated by today’s episode on all things Artificial Intelligence and particularly Generative AI. 

Today, we’re joined by a world class AI expert in what will be the first of a series of occasional episodes we’re doing on different aspects of AI and machine learning. 

In this episode, we explore the hype surrounding Generative AI and explore its positives as well as issues and shortcomings. 

Listen in as we speak with AI expert and entrepreneur, Asaf Somekh. Asaf is Founder and CEO of Israeli-based AI company called Iguazio, which management consultancy McKinsey has recently acquired because of its prowess in helping companies successfully adopt and scale AI.

Asaf has been working with Artificial Intelligence since the 1990’s and his take on all the recent hype is fascinating. 

In this episode you’ll hear:

• How most businesses have struggled to operationalise AI to date
• Exactly what Generative AI is and where it falls short§
• How Chat GPT compares to the professionals when it comes to humour; and
• How important ‘explainability’ is going forward. 

Plus, we share some of our favourite resources to help you keep abreast of all that’s happening in this fast-moving world of AI. 

Enjoy this episode! And if you do, why not share it with a friend? 

Useful Links and Resources 

- Neat Prompts - AI newsletter

- Hard Fork Podcast - Tech podcast

- Chat GPT- AI chatbot by OpenAI

- Google Bard - AI chatbot by Google

- Hey Pi - AI chatbot by Reid Hoffman

To receive a list of additional AI resources and links, email [email protected].

P.S. 

Join us next time for a special fifth birthday episode and an interview with one of this year's award winners from the global Cartier Women's Initiative.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we have a big ‘first’ for this podcast, our first Olympic medallist!  

However Zali Steggall, Olympian, barrister and now an independent member of parliament in Australia is so much more than these labels!

Last year, Zali was re-elected to Federal Parliament after a stunning and, for some, an astonishing victory in the same seat at the previous election, three years earlier. 

Zali really is a pioneer (and winner) in so many fields: she was Australia’s first ever individual medallist and first Australian female medallist at a Winter Olympic Games. Plus, when she won the World Championship slalom skiing event a year later in 1999, she became the first ever person from the southern hemisphere ever to win that event. 

Not one to do anything by halves, when Zali was first elected as a member of Parliament in 2019 she defeated a former Prime Minister! What’s more, she did all this as an independent candidate with no big political party to support her, however she had an army of enthusiastic supporters and volunteers. 

In this episode you'll hear: 

• The key things Zali learnt from her Olympic skiing career that still serve her well today
• Zali’s strategies for dealing with the fear of failure 
• How she made the transition from being a competitive skier to becoming a barrister 
• Why Zali decided to enter the competitive and often antagonistic world of politics
• How she deals with negativity and criticism; and 
• The one thing she wants you to walk away with. 

Zali truly has unique stories, experiences and advice to share so enjoy this episode with the indefatigable and purposeful Zali Steggall.

*For full transparency, Greta worked pro bono on Zali’s re-election campaign last year for several months.

Useful Links

Zali’s website:

Amazon link to Zali’s mum’s book Alpine Beach:  (it’s an e book)   

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our fabulous guest this week is Kerry James, CEO and co-founder of not one, not two, but three different businesses! Not so remarkable you may be thinking if these businesses came one after the other, but no, Kerry is doing this all simultaneously. 

After spending many years successfully running and co-owning a high end real estate business in Singapore, Kerry is now building two other businesses in completely different industries.  

The first new venture is in the flower delivery and subscription business, and the second business is filling a niche she spotted more recently in online and corporate gifting. 

Now while Kerry knew everything about real estate in Singapore after building that business for more than twenty years, she and her friend, turned co-founder, Sandi Sadek, knew nothing about the flower industry, delivery logistics or e-commerce prior to launching their online flower business, Flower Addict. What’s more they both still retain their big full time work roles.

Despite these novices starting from scratch, Flower Addict has been a roaring success, being voted number one florist service in Singapore for five years, and they’ve only been going for five years!  

In this episode you’ll learn how: 

• Kerry manages her time juggling three businesses and a big family 
• The huge learning curve she had with the ins and outs of a fast moving ecommerce business 
• How asking for help and being prepared to invest in getting the help she needs makes all the difference 
• How she shifts her attention from one business to another in  the most positive way; and 
• Exactly why Kerry even wants to run three businesses all at once. 

Enjoy this episode with the positive and unstoppable Kerry James. 

Useful Links

Flower Addict website 

Flower Addict on Instagram 

GiftBoxLove website

GiftBoxLove on Instagram 

Citiprop website

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.