Women & Leadership Australia

After more than 20 years championing gender equity and supporting over 60,000 leaders, we’ve made the difficult decision to wind down Women & Leadership Australia program delivery across 2026.
Our mission has always been clear. To provide a safe space for leaders to grow, and to support the creation of more inclusive workplaces.
We’re incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished over the last two decades and the community of leaders we’ve helped to create.
We’d like to extend a heartfelt thank you to our alumni, delegates, clients, award winners, speakers, and partners. Whilst our chapter is coming to a close, the impact of Women & Leadership Australia’s work will continue to live on through yours.
There is an opportunity to attend our final Symposium in Melbourne, and the final intake of our flagship women’s leadership programs. Visit our website to learn more - 🔗in comments.

There are too many highlights from our programs and events 20+ years to list here, but we’d love to hear any of yours in the comments

We're thrilled to celebrate Dr. Trishima (Trish) Mitra-Kahn, Christine Castley, Susan Coyle AM CSC DSM, Robbie Campo, Dr Ruth Higgins SC, and Justice Louise Taylor, each of whom has recently taken on a significant new leadership role. These women are a testament to the incredible talent and drive shaping the future of leadership. Please join us in congratulating them! 🎉🎉

Gladys Elphick (1904-1988), also known as Auntie Glad, was a Kaurna and Ngadjuri Aboriginal woman. Gladys was the founding president of the Council of Aboriginal Women of South Australia in 1964, which was the first Aboriginal women's body in the country and became the Aboriginal Council of South Australia in 1973.

Is AI coming for our jobs? We don't have a crystal ball to say for certain which jobs will be at risk of redundancy due to AI, and whether it is a permanent displacement, but we have started to see wide scale redundancies across the tech sector.

Women's Agenda Founding Editor, Angela Priestley, writes about how women's jobs are more likely to be automated than men's and calls for employers and policymakers to consider the gendered implications of the shift to automation. Read on: https://loom.ly/8jsryIM

We’re proud to partner with Auto Women and MTA Queensland as the learning partner supporting women across the automotive industry.

Through this partnership, we deliver leadership development programs like Executive Ready, designed to support the transition into senior leadership.

In 2025, one of the participants was Carolyn Rimmer.

After 30 years building a career in pharmacy, Carolyn made a bold move: straight into the automotive industry. Today she is the Company Culture Coordinator at DMH Group, overseeing recruitment, learning and development, and the wellbeing of 100 team members across 11 Bridgestone stores in southeast Queensland.

"All learning is great learning and this was no different. It has been very advantageous and added to my skillset," she said.

Carolyn's story is a reminder that great leaders come from everywhere, and that the right investment at the right time can make all the difference.

🎥 Watch Carolyn's story: youtube.com/watch?v=CAvCFEz1ssI

Anne Tonkin didn't set out to change the world; she set out to take her husband to a basketball game.

What she found instead set her on a path that has taken her advocacy global. A TAFE lecturer and carer from Adelaide, Anne is this year's recipient of the South Australian Award for Excellence in Women's Leadership, and the author of the Tonkin 10/10 Bill, the world's first community inclusion metrics for the disability sector, driven by a belief that true inclusion is not an afterthought but a basic human right, and she won't stop until it becomes law.

Read her story: https://loom.ly/dO4XehE

More than 60,000 nurses and midwives in NSW have just won a landmark pay rise, and it's a result that deserves to be celebrated.

Nursing is one of Australia's most woman-dominated professions, and one that has long been labelled "undervalued" despite the complexity, responsibility and demands it carries every single day.

The work hasn't changed in terms of its worth. What's changed is that, finally, a formal process has confirmed what nurses and midwives have always known: this work deserves to be paid accordingly.

Congratulations to every nurse and midwife who fought for this. You advocated not just for yourselves, but for every woman in a profession that the system has been too slow to properly value.

This is what progress on gender pay equity actually looks like in practice.

NSW nurses secure landmark pay rise after years-long fight over “undervalued” work Nurses and midwives across New South Wales are set to receive significant pay increases following a landmark industrial ruling.

How can leaders and workplaces create the conditions for confidence to thrive?

In Part 2 of our Confidence blog series, we build on last month's exploration of how workplace environments shape confidence. This time, we're getting practical. Here, we share tangible ways leaders and workplaces can help confidence grow.

Read here: https://loom.ly/A0IX6Xw

What does leadership growth really look like, beyond the job title and the career highlights?

At the Australian Women's Leadership Symposium, we sit down in conversation with a senior leader to hear how their journey has unfolded, the decisions that shaped their career, and what growth has looked like in practice.

Swipe to meet the leaders joining us this year and don't forget to book your ticket!