Hear from some of the media industry’s top talents, develop new skills, and network with colleagues from across the country at Women in Media’s third national conference held on Bond University on September 13-14, 2019.
Delegates will receive a password to register for the concurrent workshops once they have their pass but if you have any issues or questions, please email womeninmediaconference@gmail.com.
The Women in Media conference returns to Bond University on the Gold Coast.
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 13: DAY ONE
Co-chair
Cath Webber
Co-chair
Kathy McLeish
Living Treasure
Caroline Jones
Freelance Journalist
Victoria Laurie
Bond University
Professor Tim Brailsford
Co-chair
Cath Webber
Cath Webber is the Co-Chair of Women In Media Australia. She has worked in the media for more than 20 years, appears weekly on Channel 7’s Sunrise as a commentator and is a founding member of the Queensland WiM committee.
Webber is a Strategic Communications Adviser and prior to that was Editor of the Gold Coast Bulletin – its first female editor in 130 years and the same paper where she started as a cadet in 1995.
Before returning to the paper where she started her journalism career, she was assistant editor across The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, deputy editor at the Townsville Bulletin and deputy features editor at the Irish Examiner, a national broadsheet in Ireland.
She is also passionate about digital, having worked as website editor for http://www.thetelegraph.com.au. Webber has a degree in journalism and film and television.
Co-chair
Kathy McLeish
Kathy McLeish is the Co-Chair of Women in Media Australia and was the founding Convenor of Women in Media Queensland.
An award-winning ABC journalist and producer who has reported for programs across the network including 7.30 Qld, Stateline, 7.30, Landline, Australian Story and TV and radio news and current affairs.
She has executive produced Stateline and 7.30 Qld.
She’s currently searching out with wonderful towns and communities across the country for ABC TV’s Back Roads.
Coverage more than 20 years in media has included extensive reporting of Queensland natural disasters, the Nauru Detention Centre riots, the last Mentoring Taskforce handover in Afghanistan and race correspondent for the Sydney to Hobart yacht race.
McLeish was named Queensland Journalist of the Year for an investigative series, which triggered a Commission of Inquiry and a $60 million restructuring of youth mental health services in Queensland.
She has degrees in journalism and psychology.
Living Treasure
Caroline Jones
Caroline Jones AO Hon DLitt (University Sunshine Coast; Hon DLitt (Sydney University) is national co-patron, with Victoria Laurie, of Women in Media.
She is a veteran journalist, author and broadcaster, who has had a 50-year association with the ABC; working most recently with ABCTV Australian Story (1996-2016).
She was the first woman reporter on This Day Tonight (the first Australian national current affairs program, from 1968-72), and the first woman to anchor Four Corners (1972-81), concurrently with broadcasting on ABC Sydney morning radio.
She is a sponsor of the Mary MacKillop Tertiary Indigenous Scholarship Program, and on her retirement, the ABC created the ABC News Caroline Jones Indigenous Scholarship.
Freelance Journalist
Victoria Laurie
Victoria Laurie is a freelance journalist and feature writer, and former senior reporter with The Australian in the Perth bureau.
She has worked in TV, on radio and for magazines including The Bulletin, HQ, Australian Geographic, and The Weekend Australian magazine.
She is a founding member of Women in Media and is national co-patron with Caroline Jones.
Bond University
Professor Tim Brailsford
Professor Tim Brailsford, PhD FAIM FCPA SFFin, has served as the seventh President of Bond University since 2012. Bond is Australia’s first private non-profit university, opening its doors in 1989.
Prior to his appointment at Bond University, Brailsford’s career in the tertiary sector was largely with Go8 institutions including the Australian National University, Monash University and the Universities of Melbourne and Queensland. In addition, he has held numerous visiting roles in Europe, the UK, North America and China.
Among various achievements, Brailsford was the first Australian to be appointed to the North American and European Boards for accreditation of business education. He has been elected as President of several professional and learned societies; and he holds Fellowships with CPA Australia, the Australian Institute of Management and the Financial Services Institute of Australasia.
Brailsford also has experience on commercial boards, government agencies and professional committees. His interests including making sense of global economics, the transforming role of education on our youth, the role of sport in modern society and the drivers of corporate performance.
9:05am THE AGE OF INFLUENCE Everyone’s talking about side hustles, entrepreneurial storytelling and influencer culture; in the current media landscape, personal brand is more important than ever. But for those who’d rather stab themselves with a nametag than gloat at a networking event, Walkley Award winner Caroline Graham offers some unconventional tips on elevating your presence – without the cringe factor.
Award-winning storyteller
Caroline Graham
Award-winning storyteller
Caroline Graham
Caroline Graham is an award-winning reporter and university lecturer, who teaches journalism and creative writing at Bond University. She is the co-writer/co-producer of Lost in Larrimah, a six-part literary true crime podcast published by The Australian in 2018.
The series won several awards, including a Walkley Award, and has since been optioned by HBO, with Orange is the New Black showrunner Sara Lee Hess attached as a writer.
Graham is also the co-author of Writing Feature Stories: How to research and write articles – from listicles to longform (Allen & Unwin, 2017) and when she’s not teaching, she writes fiction and creative non-fiction.
She has received a national citation for her contributions to tertiary education and is passionate about mentoring the next generation of reporters.
Her students have collaborated on data-driven investigative journalism projects for News Corp, The Guardian and a range of other publications.
9:20amWONDER WOMEN The Weekend Australian Editor Michelle Gunn, Stellar magazine editor-in-chief Sarrah Le Marquand, Living Black’s Karla Grant and Mahlab founder, owner and managing director Bobbi Mahlab kick off the conference. Moderator: Women in Media special adviser Marina Go.
Editor
Michelle Gunn
Living Black Host
Karla Grant
Magazine editor-in-chief
Sarrah Le Marquand
Managing Director
Bobbi Mahlab
Leader
Marina Go
Editor
Michelle Gunn
Michelle Gunn is the editor of The Weekend Australian. Under her editorship, the newspaper has won the News Media Award Weekend News Brand of the year for four out of the past five years.
In 2018, the newspaper also took out the overall News Brand of the Year award. Gunn was appointed editor in September 2012. Prior to that, she held many senior positions on the paper including Deputy Editor, National Chief of Staff, Sydney Bureau Chief and Social Affairs editor.
She is married with two teenage boys.
Living Black Host
Karla Grant
Karla Grant, a proud woman of the Arrernte people, is the Executive Producer and host of Australia’s award-winning and longest-running Indigenous current affairs show Living Black on NITV. With more than two decades of media experience, Grant has dedicated a huge part of her career to working in Indigenous news and current affairs, witnessing and reporting on the shifts in policy and attitude towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.
Starting at SBS almost 20 years ago as a presenter, producer, reporter and director of the Walkley award-winning ICAM – Indigenous Current Affairs Magazine – program, Grant was appointed as the Executive Producer of the network’s Indigenous Media Unit, where she developed Living Black – now a Deadly Award-winning show.
For 11 years, she managed SBS’s coverage of The Deadly Awards. Before joining SBS, Grant worked on Channel 10’s Aboriginal Australia and hosted a weekly show on Canberra’s community radio station 2XX.
Magazine editor-in-chief
Sarrah Le Marquand
Sarrah Le Marquand left university determined to pursue a career in political journalism but an early detour on a magazine devoted to the surprisingly intricate world of daytime soap operas redirected her career.
In the years that followed she was employed as a magazine entertainment reporter and film critic on breakfast TV before joining The Daily Telegraph in 2005 as a television writer. She went on to assume various roles at the newspaper including film editor, columnist, features chief of staff and deputy features editor. In 2008, she was appointed features editor.
In 2010 after returning from maternity leave following the birth of her first child, she began writing a weekly column covering everything from politics to pop culture to parenthood.
In 2014, she was appointed opinion editor of The Daily Telegraph and went on to become the founding editor of RendezView, the opinion hub for News Corp Australia that will turn five next March.
In 2016, Le Marquand was named editor-in-chief of the soon-to-be-launched Stellar magazine, a role she remains in to this day.
She is a weekly panellist on the Today show and a regular co-host of The Project and has a recurring guest on ABC radio. She has also appeared on Q&A, Sky News, The Drum, Studio 10, Mornings, The Morning Show and Sunrise.
Managing Director
Bobbi Mahlab
Bobbi Mahlab is the owner and Managing Director of Mahlab, a content marketing agency she founded in 1997. A pioneer of content marketing in Australia, Mahlab agency is a three-time global finalist for Content Agency of the Year and was named Small Publisher of the Year in 2017 and 2018.
In October 2016, she co-founded Mentor Walks Australia, a ‘speed mentoring’ program modelled on Mentor Walks Asia, where senior women walk and talk with aspiring female leaders for an hour, once a month. Mentor Walks is now in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Canberra, Wollongong and Geelong with plans to expand further. Since launching, more than 1850 women have participated in the program.
In 2017, Mahlab became a juror for Oceania and South Asia of the Cartier Women’s Initiative which awards $US 1million to female-led, purpose-led, early-stage businesses.
In 2015, she was selected by EY to participate in the Entrepreneurial Winning Women program, Asia-Pacific.
Mahlab has experience on many non-profit boards including the Sydney Women’s Fund Advisory Board and the Young Girls Refuge, an accommodation service for homeless teenage girls.
She is a former board member of Publishers Australia.
In this year’s B&T Women in Media awards, she is a finalist for Entrepreneur and Social Change Maker.
An honours graduate of the University of Melbourne, Mahlab began her career in journalism as a graduate cadet with the Melbourne Herald.
She has two teenage sons and has lived in Melbourne, Canberra, New York and Sydney.
Leader
Marina Go
Marina Go is Chair of Suncorp Super Netball and Ovarian Cancer Australia, a non-executive director of Energy Australia, Autosports Group, 7-Eleven, Pro-Pac, and The Walkley Foundation, Chair of the Advisory Board for the Centre For Media Transition at the University of Technology Sydney, a director of PWC’s Diversity Advisory Board, and author of the business book for women, Break Through: 20 Success Strategies for Female Leaders.
Boss magazine named her as one of 20 True Leaders of 2016.
Go has more than 25 years of leadership experience in the media industry, having started her career as a journalist.
She is a founder of the female leadership website Women’s Agenda and food magazine disruptor Australian Good Taste, a former Editor-in-chief of ELLE and Dolly magazines and Crikey Publisher.
Go is the former Chair of the Wests Tigers NRL Club and Private Media CEO. She has an MBA from The Australian Graduate School of Management and is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
10:20amMORNING TEA Basil Sellers Theatre foyer.10:50amFINDING YOUR MOJO Rob Layton trains journalists globally in how to use their phones professionally. He will share what he learned from two of the world’s largest mobile journalism events, MojoFest in Galway and MojoAsia in Bangkok, and how important this new era of journalism is in connecting communities and developing audience.
Mobile Journalism Expert
Rob Layton
Mobile Journalism Expert
Rob Layton
Rob Layton is a journalist-turned-educator who specialises in computational smartphone photography and filmmaking, particularly underwater. His work has been showcased around the world and won a number of international awards.
Layton also trains journalists in Australia, Britain, Europe and Asia on how to professionally use their phones.
11:00amFEEL THE FEAR – GET PREPARED – AND DO IT ANYWAY! Shelly Horton tells us how she transitioned from a television and radio journalist in to a risk-taking entrepreneur who now runs her own successful business. Independent journalist and filmmaker Yaara Bou Melhem has worked in the remotest corners of Australia and around the world and talks through the peaks and troughs that comes with being a freelancer. Feeling lost on her purpose, senior marketer Louise Davis risked everything leaving a successful high-flying job to move, reset and create something of her own. Career manager Margot Andersen takes you through structuring your career, how to position yourself to ask for what you want – whether it’s a pay rise, promotion or a plan to start your own company. Moderator: Women in Media Canberra convenor Emma Macdonald.
ShellShocked Media and 9Honey
Shelly Horton
Journalist and Filmmaker
Yaara Bou Melhem
Leadership Insights
Margot Andersen
Marketing
Louise Davis
Associate Editor
Emma Macdonald
ShellShocked Media and 9Honey
Shelly Horton
Shelly Horton’s high school guidance counsellor said she was too opinionated and talked too much, so she should tone it down. Rather than take his advice, she turned it into a job description and became a journalist.
Now Horton’s opinion can be heard nationally a number of times each week with regular segments on Channel Nine’s Today, Today Extra, 3pm News and Weekend Today. She’s also the lifestyle presenter for 9Honey.com.au and co-host of Talking Married – a chat show dissecting Married At First Sight.
Her career highlights include 11 years reporting for ABC Radio and TV, eight years as a presenter on Channel Seven, six years as a journalist at Fairfax and five years as the South Pacific correspondent for Entertainment Tonight USA.
As if that’s not enough, she is a sought-after MC and also runs her own presentation and media training company, called ShellShocked Media.
She teaches people how to shine on camera and how to build their confidence. Basically, she helps people find their inner Beyoncé.
Journalist and Filmmaker
Yaara Bou Melhem
Yaara Bou Melhem is an intrepid independent journalist and filmmaker. Her films include exclusive reports where she crawls through Syrian rebel-held tunnels, films in lawless Libyan jails after the fall of Gaddafi, explored taboo subjects like youth suicide in remote Aboriginal communities and reported more uplifting stories about doctors giving free health care in Nepal and conservation efforts in New Zealand.
Her observational documentaries for Witness, Al Jazeera English include gaining intimate access to Time Person of the Year Maria Ressa in the War on Truth – a film about the Filipino editor’s campaign against the forces manipulating social media giants to undermine democracies worldwide. The film is now being developed into a feature documentary.
She has also directed and produced Creating a Nation about an Aboriginal man creating an independent Indigenous nation and Saudi Design Queens is about two young women in Saudi Arabia hosting a design event that is pushing boundaries of art and tradition for the network.
She is currently in production on a feature documentary film Dark Arts, a part human, part artificial intelligence-driven journey into the visualizations of one of the world’s leading contemporary artists as he battles to reveal the invisible forces shaping our lives and futures.
Her films have received a number of accolades including UN Media Peace Awards, New York Film and TV Festival Awards, a Hong Kong Human Rights Press Award and Walkley Awards for her films from Australia, Asia and the MENA region.
Leadership Insights
Margot Andersen
Obsessed with helping people create career and leadership momentum, Margot Andersen helps leaders take action to move themselves, their teams and their business forward. Her expertise is focused on building meaningful career pathways, aligning and raising capability and unlocking potential both for ourselves and the people we lead.
A globally experienced leader, she combines a background in senior operational leadership and talent management roles in both the private and corporate sectors. Her personal career story is one of managing growth and opportunity – with moves around the world, the country and in and around organisations.
Professionally, she supports businesses and individuals lead through transition and change scenarios including high growth and turnaround strategies, mergers and acquisitions, restructures and sale processes.
Andersen is the Owner and Director of talentinsight Australia, a career management, leadership and HR consultancy; and Founder of the Insync Network, a group that supports expatriates both personally and professionally as they navigate the move home.
She is a regular writer for CEO Magazine, The Employee Mobility Institute and various other leadership publications.
Marketing
Louise Davis
Louise Davis is a marketing leader who recently stepped out of the corporate world. Tired and lost on what was really important to her, she made a bold move from the busy city life of Sydney to clear her mind, rediscover her purpose and be close to the grounding energy of the beach on the Gold Coast.
Walking on the beach every day to ground herself, is a ritual for Davis.
Freedom, adventure, flexibility and gratitude are some of her core values and Davis applies these to each choice she makes in her life, including setting up a business of her own which is focussed on purposefully working alongside small and medium businesses to set up their marketing programs and teams to deliver their business objectives.
Associate Editor
Emma Macdonald
Emma Macdonald has worked on the front line of daily newspaper journalism for 23 years before moving to the ‘new media’ of online and magazine platform HerCanberra in 2016 where she is Associate Editor.
She has written on a huge range of issues, from politics to education, social affairs, health, and women’s affairs. Macdonald began her journalistic career with the Australian Financial Review before moving to The Canberra Times where she spent 13 years covering federal politics from the Press Gallery, rising to become Bureau Chief at The Canberra Times.
She has won numerous awards for her work – these include two Walkley Awards (1993, 2003) and selection as a national Walkley finalist (2001). Macdonald was awarded the John Douglas British Prize for Journalism in 1998, and in 2002 was awarded a Vincent Fairfax Ethics in Leadership Fellowship. She was highly commended for her political journalism through the Paul Lyneham Press Gallery Journalism Award in 2002 and was recognised as a University of Canberra Distinguished Alumni in 2011.
She has been published widely, from The Times (UK) to the Business Standard (India), to Cosmopolitan magazine. Macdonald has been a regular commentator on politics for programs including Meet the Press and radio current affairs across the country.
She is dedicated to promoting women in media – becoming Convenor of Women in Media Canberra in 2015. In this role, she hosts regular live broadcast National Press Club addresses and founded the Caroline Jones Women in Media Young Journalists Award, which is now in its third year.
Macdonald has also been a Walkley Award judge across various categories and has mentored a series of journalists throughout her career.
A mother of two, she co-founded the maternal health charity Send Hope Not Flowers in 2010, shortly after the birth of her now nine-year-old daughter.
She won an ACT Telstra Business Woman of the Year Award for Send Hope’s work in 2016 and has raised almost one million dollars, which has been spent on safe birth programs and maternal health training across eight developing countries.
In recent years, Macdonald has forged a reputation in emceeing and moderating events and has dabbled in the odd podcast. She is increasingly adept at juggling.
12:00pmLUNCH WITH RACHEL BERGER – Don’t forget the fun factor! NT News Deputy Editor Jill Poulsen chats with The Katherine Times journalist Roxanne Fitzgerald, one of the participants in the inaugural Women in Media Connector program. Poulsen, convenor of WiM’s Northern Territory committee, introduces our newest committee member from Tasmania Rachel Berger. Rachel Berger is one of Australia’s best comedians and also works as a broadcaster, novelist, columnist, agitator and television entertainer who has taken four solo shows to the Edinburgh Festival. She’s had enough of feeling guilty, so while we’re having lunch she’ll be reminding us why it’s important to have fun along the way.
Editor
Jill Poulsen
Trailblazer
Rachel Berger
Editor
Jill Poulsen
Jill Poulsen is the deputy editor of the NT News and editor of the Sunday Territorian. For the best part of a decade, she has been working as a journalist across Queensland and the Northern Territory.
Before returning to Darwin at the start of this year, she was working as a senior journalist and columnist for The Courier-Mail in Brisbane. Poulsen completed a Bachelor of Journalism at the University of Queensland in 2010 and got her first job at the Chinchilla News.
She later joined News Corp as a iournalist for the NT News, going on to become the paper’s head of news.
She said she has been lucky to be surrounded by strong female leaders in her time as a journalist and was thrilled to be part of the founding committee for WIM NT to help give back to the industry.
Trailblazer
Rachel Berger
Rachel Berger is one of Australia’s most highly regarded, adept and adaptive comedic talents working variously as a comedian, broadcaster, novelist, columnist, agitator and television entertainer.
She’s taken four solo shows to the Edinburgh Festival and her dynamic presence and engagingly sharp observations have made her an extremely popular performer both live and on television, across Australia and overseas.
Berger’s high public profile has done much to establish the position of women in comedy providing a distinctive voice for women’s opinions and viewpoints.
She’s also a woman of remarkably diversified talents. In addition to playing the xylophone and carving avocado pips into small Buddhas, she’s recently stopped feeling guilty. There are no cows too sacred for this Berger.
2:00pmCONCURRENT WORKSHOPS: ON CAMERA SKILLS: Jillian Whiting and Suzanne Stark DATA JOURNALISM FOR BEGINNERS: Caroline Graham HOW TO TAKE BETTER SMARTPHONE PICTURES USING COMPUTATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY: Rob Layton INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING: Sue Bell SUPERCHARGE YOUR DIGITAL BRAND: Corinne Podger BUILDING CAREER PATHWAYS: Margot Andersen
Presenter
Jillian Whiting
Communication Expert
Suzanne Stark
Award-winning storyteller
Caroline Graham
Mobile Journalism Expert
Rob Layton
Digital Specialist
Sue Bell
The Digital Skills Agency
Corinne Podger
Leadership Insights
Margot Andersen
Presenter
Jillian Whiting
Jillian Whiting is a familiar face on Queensland television, with more than 25 years’ experience as a journalist, newsreader and TV presenter with the Seven and Nine networks.
She’s also been a regular presenter on local radio and travel contributor and opinion columnist for News Corp papers.
Whiting is a partner and director of communication agency Media Potential, a Brisbane based company which specialises in media and presentation skills and TV presenting courses.
She is currently a presenter on Channel Seven’s lifestyle program, The Great Day Out, and regular MC facilitator for Queensland corporate events.
Communication Expert
Suzanne Stark
Suzanne Stark is a communication expert and professional voice coach who has worked with CEOs, politicians, television talent, journalists and Olympians.
For more than 16 years, she has successfully helped fine-tune their public speaking, everyday communication abilities and media skills.
Stark also has a background in the television industry as a producer of national programs including Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Sale of the Century for the Nine network.
Speech, language, messaging, communication is her passion.
Award-winning storyteller
Caroline Graham
Caroline Graham is an award-winning reporter and university lecturer, who teaches journalism and creative writing at Bond University. She is the co-writer/co-producer of Lost in Larrimah, a six-part literary true crime podcast published by The Australian in 2018.
The series won several awards, including a Walkley Award, and has since been optioned by HBO, with Orange is the New Black showrunner Sara Lee Hess attached as a writer.
Graham is also the co-author of Writing Feature Stories: How to research and write articles – from listicles to longform (Allen & Unwin, 2017) and when she’s not teaching, she writes fiction and creative non-fiction.
She has received a national citation for her contributions to tertiary education and is passionate about mentoring the next generation of reporters.
Her students have collaborated on data-driven investigative journalism projects for News Corp, The Guardian and a range of other publications.
Mobile Journalism Expert
Rob Layton
Rob Layton is a journalist-turned-educator who specialises in computational smartphone photography and filmmaking, particularly underwater. His work has been showcased around the world and won a number of international awards.
Layton also trains journalists in Australia, Britain, Europe and Asia on how to professionally use their phones.
Digital Specialist
Sue Bell
Sue Bell is a digital learning consultant and an interactive media specialist. She designs, develops, and delivers digital media, design thinking, and cyber entrepreneurship training for private organisations, tertiary institutions, and media professionals.
Her passion is to up-skill women in the digital technology space and to expand people’s online engagement using interactive storytelling for social media platforms.
She also teaches micro-credentialed courses on how to write stories for new and emerging technologies, including virtual, augmented, and mixed reality.
Sue is the founder and director of the successful Launceston Freelance Festival where Australia’s top freelancers converge for several days of workshops, networking, and fun.
The Digital Skills Agency
Corinne Podger
Corinne Podger is the Director and Principal of the Digital Skills Agency. Since 2013, she has designed and run training for more than 4000 journalists and communicators from businesses, NGOs and universities in over 20 countries.
Brands she has worked with include: the BBC, Thomson Reuters, CNN, Forbes, the Financial Times, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, the University of Melbourne, and the World Health Organisation.
Podger’s teaching draws on 30 years of industry experience as a television, radio, online, social media and print journalist, primarily with the ABC and BBC World Service.
She continues to write for the European Journalism Observatory, the International Journalists’ Network and WAN-IFRA, speaks regularly at conferences, and serves as a consultant to the annual Mobile Journalism Conference for Asia.
Leadership Insights
Margot Andersen
Obsessed with helping people create career and leadership momentum, Margot Andersen helps leaders take action to move themselves, their teams and their business forward. Her expertise is focused on building meaningful career pathways, aligning and raising capability and unlocking potential both for ourselves and the people we lead.
A globally experienced leader, she combines a background in senior operational leadership and talent management roles in both the private and corporate sectors. Her personal career story is one of managing growth and opportunity – with moves around the world, the country and in and around organisations.
Professionally, she supports businesses and individuals lead through transition and change scenarios including high growth and turnaround strategies, mergers and acquisitions, restructures and sale processes.
Andersen is the Owner and Director of talentinsight Australia, a career management, leadership and HR consultancy; and Founder of the Insync Network, a group that supports expatriates both personally and professionally as they navigate the move home.
She is a regular writer for CEO Magazine, The Employee Mobility Institute and various other leadership publications.
3:30pmTRUST AND TRUTH News Corp’s national Sunday political editor Annika Smethurst, 7News Brisbane Crime Editor Paula Doneman and media lawyer Sophie Scott on the importance of press freedom and building trust with your contacts and audience, with tips on how to protect your sources. Moderator: Network 10’s Sandra Sully.
Award-winning Political Journalist
Annika Smethurst
Seven News
Paula Doneman
Media Lawyer
Sophie Scott
News Anchor
Sandra Sully
Award-winning Political Journalist
Annika Smethurst
Annika Smethurst is the National Political Editor for the Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Herald Sunday and Sunday Mail – Sunday News Corp papers). She began her print career in Bendigo in regional Victoria before being selected for a cadetship with the Herald and Weekly Times in Melbourne.
She worked as a state political reporter at the Herald Sun before joining the Canberra press gallery. In 2015, she won a Walkley for the Choppergate scandal. She won her second Walkley in 2017 for a series of articles which revealed former Health Minister Sussan Ley had purchased a property while on a taxpayer-funded trip to the Gold Coast.
Smethurst was the 2016 Young Press Gallery Journalist of the Year and the 2017 Press Gallery journalist of the year.
In June, her Canberra apartment was raided by seven AFP officers a year after she wrote a story revealing the Australian Signals Directorate was seeking to broaden its powers to spy on Australian citizens, prompting a global debate about press freedom.
She regularly appears on Sky News, as well as The Drum and Insiders on the ABC.
Seven News
Paula Doneman
Paula Doneman is a crime and investigative journalist, a true crime author, and podcaster.
Media Lawyer
Sophie Scott
Sophie Scott is one of Queensland’s most experienced media lawyers. She provides advice to Australia’s largest media organisations. She helps journalists and media organisations mitigate and manage risk, protect their sources and defend claims against them.
News Anchor
Sandra Sully
Sandra Sully is a senior journalist and anchor of TEN Eyewitness News First At Five Sydney and is Managing News Editor of ten daily. She has been part of the TEN News team since 1990 and celebrated her 25th anniversary at the Network in 2015.
As one of the most recognisable and respected faces on Australian television, Sully has also hosted major network news events including the Federal Budget, the Royal Wedding coverage from London and Oprah Winfrey’s Big ‘O’ event at the Botanical Gardens. She also co-hosted TEN’s interactive, real-life crime series Wanted.
Sully’s career includes 18 years as the highly popular Presenter and Senior Editor of TEN Late News with Sports Tonight. In that role, Sully was the first Australian journalist to break the news of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. She has subsequently covered anniversary commemorations of both the Bali bombings and the September 11 attacks.
Her documentary credits include travelling to Timor in 2010 to produce Independent Future, a report on how the then-new nation was coping post-liberation.
In 2009, her documentary Sandakan – Sheer Bloody Murder revealed the tragic story of hardship and horror faced by Australian prisoners of war in Borneo on the infamous death marches of World War II. It premiered on Network Ten over the Anzac Day weekend that year.
Sully was one of the first journalists in the country to fully understand the impact and embrace the digital media revolution. Seeing early on the power of the platform and its ability to immediately deliver up-to-date and breaking news, Sully has established herself as one of the nation’s news leaders online, building a mass following on social media platforms.
Sully’s engaging warmth, style and versatility have enabled her to cover numerous events such as Commonwealth and Olympic Games, as well as becoming the first woman to co-host the iconic Melbourne Cup/Spring Carnival, a role she filled for seven years.
She is a passionate sports fan and sits on the Board of Hockey Australia, as well as being one of the first women members of the prestigious Carbine Club of New South Wales, which supports children in sport.
Sully is an Ambassador for National Adoption Awareness and, as well as being committed to several charity organisations, including her position as Co-Patron of Spinal Cure and Ambassador for the NSW Crime Stoppers. She is also a National Ambassador for Do Something, which encourages social change.
Sully’s passion for news has fortified her position as one of the finest newsreaders in the country, delivering TEN Eyewitness News First At Five bulletins with integrity and credibility.
4:30pmTHE TWINS’ PURPLE PAPERS Financial literacy is one of the biggest opportunities facing Australians. Cathy and Sarah Bellenger drill down to find out your thoughts on how best to equip, empower and elevate women financially in this special ‘purple paper’ deep dive.
Consultants
Cathy and Sarah Bellenger
Consultants
Cathy and Sarah Bellenger
Cathy Bellenger and Sarah Bellenger are twins who own and run boutique consultancy Belle & Co.
Cathy Bellenger is the founder of Belle & Co, a consultancy specialising in transformation, culture, brand and risk for ASX listed corporates and government. Core capabilities are in transformational change comprising concurrent shifts in operating model, culture, technology and behaviours across governance, risk and compliance – including anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing – in highly regulated areas of finance and banking, media and publishing, gambling and entertainment.
She has a proven record in delivering business growth and sustainability, understanding business drivers and motivating organisations to deliver in digital and regulatory complexity within a competitive landscape, with deep experience in helping businesses navigate successfully through storms of reputation, legal and regulatory breach and litigation, merger and acquisition and industry restructuring. Cathy led the change management for the News Corp Australia Methode transformation with not a deadline missed.
She is passionate about people and enabling sustainable growth.
She is married with two children.
Sarah Bellenger is a published author, educator and management consultant. Early on, Sarah decided to have a portfolio career, managing several transitions between government and private sector with only one permanent job – lasting 18 months.
She is passionate about enabling women to strengthen their futures, their finances and their security. Having bought income protection insurance when she really thought she couldn’t afford it, it saved her bacon seven years later when she needed time off work to recover from a serious car accident on a country road in NSW.
Sarah has extensive experience in building finance and wealth management capabilities.
She is married with two dogs.
Website:belleandco.com.au 4:45pmNOW WHAT? So, you’ve heard all these inspiring stories from fabulous women in media, you’re energised, and you’re feeling pumped! But now what?! Psychologist Peta Stapleton gives some tips on what to do with the information which has resonated with you at the conference. From positive self-talk to overcoming the dreaded perfectionist syndrome.