She's The Boss Chats

Teresa Sperti launched her very first business almost 20 months ago called Artic Fox. Artic Fox is an advisory and training organisation that operates within the digital and marketing transformation space. Teresa spent 20 years in the corporate world working for large and small organisations before rising to the top of her field as chief marketer. She found this role challenging which inspired her to work with different leaders to help them make sense of the digital world and she always wanted to start her own business before the age of 40. Growing up in an Italian family and one of three kids, she was surrounded by many inspirational women.

She studied finance and marketing at University and initially wanted to be a real estate agent but decided it wasn't for her. Teresa has had a successful and productive career and her first role was in Marketing for Ford Motor Company. From here, she moved to the travel industry which then took her to London where she learnt and developed new skills and ended up being head of International Marketing for a job board across five different countries. Two years later, Teresa returned to Australia and worked for various companies including Realestate VIew and Coles before entering the not for profit industry working for World Vision. At World Vision, Teresa entered an executive role at a global level, leading a team of 72 where she had lots of amazing outcomes and achievements but was forced to step down due to personal health issues. Inspirational women in Teresa's life are Christine Dietrich, who was Teresa's previous Marketing Communications Manager.

She took Teresa under her wing and developed and nurtured her. In the UK, Alex Farrell was also a big supporter and advocate of Teresa and is one of many amazing female leaders Teresa has been exposed to. Hilariously, Teresa was also the TV show The Price Is Right.

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Rechelle Leahy has her fingers in many pies. She lives in Armidale NSW and launched a fantastic business a few years ago called Regional Collab. Regional Collab essentially helps rural and regional businesses, specifically focused on women, with business strategies and creating financial strategies. Rechelle also does some entrepreneurship training and helps identify and create programs and projects within regional Australia, addressing a particular need for women. Rechelle is also developing a tech platform called "I Decide" which is an online platform for sharing people's end of life documents. She has a background in palliative care and noticed we all need a safe place to store our documents as well as preparing for the end of life. If that's not enough, Rechelle also sits on a number of boards including the National Rural Women's Coalition, the Classification Review Board for movies and video games as well as the Local Landsavers for Northern Tablelands board.

Rechelle has also recently launched "Mentor Walks" in Armidale. Mentor Walks is already established in capital cities however, Rechelle saw a need to launch it in regional Australia. This program is completely funded by the Minister of Mental Health and Women. Rechelle was inspired to set up Regional Collab because she realized through her own experience that the only jobs available were contracting jobs and she wanted to do something that was going to successfully impact the country. She applied for a tender with the Federal Government for regional trials and was successful. So for the last 18 months, Rechelle has been able to help people seek funding for their own projects. Rechelle started her education at boarding school in Armidale and then moved on to a law degree at university. She chose not to become a lawyer and eventually moved to Canberra with her partner and worked in various government departments. They lived in Canberra for 20 years before moving back to regional NSW. Rechelle has experienced many personal hardships including the death of her husband which is the reason why she is so passionate about helping others.

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Brenda Debesten has lived an outstanding life! Brenda is a chemical engineer with over 15 years of experience in the mining and manufacturing industry. She also coaches women who are struggling to get ahead in male-dominated STEM industries to reach their full potential. Brenda grew up In Zimbabwe in a small mining town. Her father was a doctor and her mother was an entrepreneur who ran multiple businesses. She's a trailblazer and a go-getter. Brenda attended boarding school from the young age of eight and by the time she turned 18, she was inspired to become a chemical engineer. She applied to study university in Australia and the rest is history. Her first job was working in a gold mine in Newcastle where she was the only black female engineer. She then went on to work for the Australian Federal Government at a nuclear facility in Sydney. Currently, Brenda is working for her previous employer manufacturing ammonium nitrate and making bombs for the construction industry and she's based in Melbourne. New to the coaching industry, her passion lies in self-development.

She initially did some coaching with a woman named Janine Jackson who helped her dive deep and discover her passions. Brenda is now coaching other women in the mining and manufacturing industry who are yet to develop their own full potential. She's also speaking at University and coaching female students who are still at the front end of their own journey as only 12% of engineers in Australia are female right now. Brenda also runs a Youtube series called, "Chronicles of a female engineer" and she does a weekly episode on how to build visibility in your workplace and becoming proactive about self-promotion. Brenda has been helped along the way by Jennifer McKenzie, her general manager and Janne Jackson, her coach. A huge quirky fact about Brenda is that she once spent six weeks in a maximum-security female prison for a crime she did not commit. The biggest lesson in her life has been, "Your past doesn't determine your future!"

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Tracy Sheen is an extraordinary powerhouse. From the age of 5, she knew that someday she was going to run her own business and that business is called The Digital Guide. Tracy helps small business owners navigate technology in order to run a successful business. Her journey began 30 years ago when she started working for Strathfield Car Radios selling mobile phones in retail. Tracy was incredibly successful and a customer took it upon himself to fly her to Sydney to meet Gerry Harvey. Four weeks later, Tracy began a new role at Harvey Normans starting up the office automation of the business as well as establishing the mobile phone retail division. She was only 21 at the time. Gerry Harvey took Tracy under his wing and mentored her every week in all things retail, marketing and sales.

Tracy had a long and varied career working in radio, TV and for Telstra climbing the corporate ladder fast! This powerful woman has numerous accolades including becoming Queensland's number one corporate coffee provider after successfully establishing her very first business. Tracy also started podcasting ten years before podcasts became popular as she's always been ahead of the curve and developed the world's first-panel style podcast called "Not Another Business Show."

This fabulous podcast averaged between 15,000 and 20,000 listeners per episode. Tracy's first book which she authored herself, will be released shortly. It's called "The End of Techno Phobia." It's a practical guide to digitise your business.

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Shannon Gilleland is one very determined woman. She's the inventor of Pronto Bottle which is a self-sterilizing baby bottle that every new mother needs! The concept came to Shannon after giving birth to her first baby four years ago. Shannon went straight to bottle feeding as she struggled with breastfeeding. The bottle basically has a button on the lid that activates the UBC in the bottle making it a more unique and efficient way of feeding as it literally sterilises the water, bottle and teet at the same time. This amazing invention eliminates the need to have numerous baby bottles. Shannon's background is in entrepreneurship innovations although in her earlier years she studied art, pottery, graphics and animation after arriving in Australia from South Africa.

Growing up on a farm in South Africa cemented the belief that where there's a problem, there's always a way to fix it by using your own initiative, as Shannon didn't have the money to buy things. Many hurdles and obstacles were faced during the setup and development of the business, namely in funds and manufacturing however, Shannon's determination and entrepreneurial spirit is truly impressive and has enabled her to succeed.

Currently, Shannon is working on the second prototype of the Pronto bottle and her big goal is to expand globally.

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Catherine Cervasio, the founder of Aromababy, and Jules sat down together, in real life (!) to do this podcast chat and it was amazing! Catherine's brand is iconic for mothers, especially those with skin conditions, and her 26-year old business now exports to over 12 countries. But when Catherine started, no one had heard of natural skincare or organic products. Everything was synthetic. She had to start from scratch and really created a whole new retail sector around skincare products for Mums and babies.

Catherine grew up in a raucous Italian family and, of course, had a huge love of food and cooking which she still has! She started working part-time at 12 and left school at 15, eager to get out and start her career. from secretarial college, she soon moved into skincare, particularly for iconic women's fashion brands such as Sportsgirl, Portmans and Witchery. It was while working in this sector, and soon after she became pregnant with her first child, that she started Aromababy.

The interview is filled with wonderful stories of Catherine's trials and tribulations, successes and celebrations, you will love it! Watch out for her story about how a copycat brand almost sent her business under, and how she recovered and grew the business to where it is today, pretty much single-handedly.

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Wow! Talk about resilience! Wait till you hear Cheree's story. After growing up in Queensland with, as she puts it, a 'dysfunctional family', and a father that was an alcoholic due to being one of the Stolen Generation, Cheree left home at 16 with a suitcase and $20, to follow her boyfriend. By the time she was 24, she had 4 kids. Her own marriage wasn't happy either and she was 36 before her kids had grown up and she decided to qualify as a teacher. She eventually left her husband but once she became a grandmother, she again had a full-time role looking after 5 of them when their mother was unable to.

Fast forward to today and she is the owner of her own Gallery in Trundle, regional NSW. After chasing her dream of being an artist, she secured a role as Artist in Residence at Uluru and that's when things really started to take off. The tourists in the region LOVED her work and wanted to visit her studio, but she was painting in a tiny house, where the double bed was the biggest space so she painted on the bed. Not a great place to bring visitors! Eventually, she secured a brilliant place in the tiny town and now she happily invites guests to come and watch her paint and touch her work. her paintings have healing dots and are meant to be touched.

Cheree's is a brilliant storyteller and you will admire her resilience and tenacity in the face of huge obstacles and challenges. She's an amazing woman!

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Anne Dobson is an absolute delight to talk to! After a career that encompassed countless jobs across a variety of industries, it took her first child to be born before she did what she was born to do - teach! Her mother knew it from an early age but she didn't want to follow in the family footsteps for a long time. But she loves kids and eventually succumbed.

After teaching for almost 30 years, Anne had helped so many parents and kids, particularly those kids with challenging behaviours, but she knew that in many cases, it was the parents that really needed the help with managing the kids at home. So she set up as a consultant to parents and created Effective Behaviour Management. Anne's story is fascinating and you will wish she was your teacher, she's just so lovely!

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Brownyn Reid is passionate about helping small businesses navigate the procurement process to work with big businesses. And she has walked the walk first! after meeting her hubby at uni, Bronwyn was lucky to travel for the first few years of her married life, living in the Solomon Islands, Swaziland and more before returning to Australia when their first child was born.

Having grown up in inland regional Australia (Emerald in Queensland), Bronwyn and her husband Ian started an environmental consultancy and research business and then started to interact with the really big mining companies like BHP. It was this experience, coupled with a constant stream of questions from other business owners, that planted the seed for Small Company, Big Business to be born. She would consult with companies to help them win the big contracts that would change their businesses. In fact, she loves it so much that her next book, Small Business, Big Crisis is about to launch and it complements the first book. Bronwyn is also a huge advocate for regional Australian businesses and encouraging business leaders to step into the spotlight. You will love her!

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Monica Rosenfeld is definitely a woman to admire. She set off to the UK as a young woman and managed to get work in television over there - as a gopher! Absorbing everything she could, she worked on a documentary series that involved travel to all sorts of glamorous countries, before heading back to Australia when her visa expired. Once she got back, she managed to secure a lowly job on A Current Affair where she worked hard to rise to the level of Producer. It was when people were pitching her ideas (badly!) that she saw an opportunity.

Starting off in PR while working full time, she eventually decided to start her own agency and Wordstorm PR was born! She has now had the agency for over 20 years which is a huge accomplishment and has now decided to focus on her professional speaking career and there is no0 doubt she will be a huge success. Monica, with her bright red hair and generous nature, is constantly helping business owners with PR tips and advice, why not take it to the next level?! You will love her indomitable spirit!

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