Sunita Gloster is a non-executive director combining current board and governance experience with a career spanning 30-plus years in the professional services sector. She serves as the Chair of Diversity Council Australia, and a non-executive director for Maurice Blackburn Lawyers and the UN Global Compact Network Australia, the principal sustainability initiative for businesses in Australia. A Member of the Order of Australia, Sunita is also a sought-after keynote speaker, commentator, and guest panellist on ABC TV’s Gruen.
Q1. How did you end up in media?
After I graduated with a marketing degree, I applied for a grad traineeship at an advertising agency called Y&R Adelaide. Every three years, the agency invited grad students to take part in a boardroom-style pitch to a brief on the agency’s biggest client, Mitsubishi Motors. I won the pitch and was their trainee in 1992. It sparked a lifelong passion to see business and growth through the lens of the customer. Since then, I have enjoyed a 30-plus-year career in executive roles in Australia and internationally, and have been humbled to have been awarded and recognised for my contributions in the media and marketing sector.
Q2. What makes a good leader?
There isn’t a perfect play book. Leadership is a combination of skills, attributes and, most importantly, behaviours – how a person inspires, influences and empowers those around them. But leadership shouldn’t be about a level we arrive at, or a specific role or title – it’s an inherent capacity. It’s about care. We’re all born with the ability to lead the change we care enough about to make. We can all inspire growth, change and progress – whether it be one person at a time, in communities, workplaces or on a larger scale. There is so much more complexity than just gender, when it comes to what differentiates us as leaders. Our individual differences, lived experiences, and the many intersections that shape our professional lives, all impact our leadership skills. Great leaders draw on all these experiences and facets.
Q3. What’s the best career advice you’ve been given?
Remain curious. Ask questions. Curiosity drives continuous learning and growth. It opens doors to new opportunities and experiences. It makes us push harder to find new knowledge, to embrace risk, challenge the status quo, navigate change, and explore differences and diversity. Staying curious helps us adapt, foster creativity and innovation, and it keeps us engaged in the people around us and the impact we can make. Be passionately curious, always. My advice to aspiring leaders? Challenge your bias. Be hard on your beliefs every day. Identify your biases, prejudices and privilege. We all have them.
Q4. What do you see as the big opportunities in the media sector?
Australia has one of the most culturally and racially diverse populations in the world. One in four Australians were born overseas, one in two have one parent who was born overseas, and nearly 20 percent speak a language other than English at home. The biggest opportunity for the media sector in its broadest definition – advertising, marketing, technology and content – is to embrace the diversity of who we are as a nation. Not just in casting, but in our stories, in our expert opinions, in our newsrooms, in how we market and advertise, in the products and technology we create, and in who creates our media. In doing so, we can dismantle the inequalities and biases perpetuated by the harmful stereotypes still present in the “media”.
Q5. What has changed for women in media – and what hasn’t?
B&T Magazine recently ranked me number one in the Women in Media Power List, a list I’ve been proud to feature in for 10 years. I received this award in the same week Four Corners ran a story about women’s experiences in media. I found it challenging to celebrate the progress of women in media at the awards night when our media was telling a very sobering story about the safety and respect of women working in media. So, I’d have to say, whilst progress has been made, it’s too slow. As women in media, we know that workplace harassment, bullying and misogyny are still rife. Women in media are still underrepresented on panels and podcasts, as expert opinions, in our trade press, and in creative departments. Women in media are still being unfairly spoken over, ignored in meetings, undervalued and restricted in their learning opportunities and career progress. Women in media still want to leave the industry – one in four women in middle management, rising to a third when you add in ethnicity. And they are still paid less – according to the Women in Media Industry Insight Report, there’s an average weekly earnings gap of 16 percent. We still have much work to do.
Interview by Susan Horsburgh