On being a female leader in male-dominated industries, what it cost, what it built, and why the advice you usually hear is wrong. There was a “hit list” on the back of someone’s door listing female reps.I was on it. I was about 22.I remember thinking: is this actually happening?It was. <div class="iframe-wrapper"><iframe src="https://iframe.mediadelivery.net/embed/431082/27080ae4-233e-4542-bc4d-af216a423729?autoplay=false" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></div>Check out some of the higlights from my career workI won’t name the industry or the person. What I will tell you is that a list of names tracking the women in a building was not the last time something like that happened to me. It was just the first time I noticed the pattern for what it was.I have worked across six industries over twenty years. Photographics. Consumer Electronics. Software. Telco. Music. Now Medical. Different rooms, different people, different job titles.Same dynamic, dressed up somewhat differently each time. This is not a personal problem.Depending on where you read, women make up 49% of entry-level employees globally. By the time you reach the C-suite, that figure drops to just under 30%. For every 100 men promoted to manager, only 81 women make the same move. That would suggest it is not simply a pipeline problem, it’s a pattern.In 2023, for the first time in two decades, women actually lost C-suite seats. Not stalled, lost. That stopped me in my tracks.I am not sharing this to make a political argument. I am sharing it because when you are sitting in a room where the meeting hasn’t started yet, it is easy to decide the problem is yours. It isn’t. It’s structural. Understanding that is the starting point. A pattern across industriesIn Consumer Electronics, I was too young. In Software, I was a woman. In Music, I wasn’t a musician. In Medical, I didn’t come from healthcare.There was always a reason. There is always a reason.What took me longer than it should have to understand was that the reasons were almost never about competence. They were about category. I simply didn’t fit the mental image of the person who was supposed to be in the room.The dismissal was less about what I knew, because sometimes they didn’t give me the chance to display that. It was about what I looked like.What I did after the meeting that didn’t start.There was a specific meeting early in my software career when I had been given the opportunity to be relocated to Sydney and build an Australian business division and I was given a lead by MYOB as a leading salesperson in ANZ for them. He walked into reception, looked at me, said “nope don’t bother” and walked back out. The meeting didn’t start. He’d already decided.I went home.I plunged further into preparation than I already did, I learned that software front to back. Every configuration. Every implementation pathway. Every edge case. I could do development consultation on it today, it's why my demos were labelled often as compelling, why my close rate was above 70%. I learnt the pain points and then ensured my demo path illustrated my understanding by showcasing the software with customers, items and services that were theirs.To be clear, this is not a story about resilience. I am not sharing it so you will be inspired. I am sharing it because the operational response to being dismissed is a choice and most of the advice women receive after that experience points them toward the wrong one.The advice usually sounds like “Speak up more. Be more confident. Find your voice.”All of those things assume the room wants to hear from you. They assume the problem is a performance issue.In my mind, often the problem is not the performance. It’s the room.What they didn’t account for.Here is the thing about being consistently underestimated. At some point you can stop it being a liability.When no one expects much from you, you move without scrutiny. You learn things they assume you don’t need to know. You see things they assume you’re not watching. You build capability in rooms where the expectation is so low that exceeding it is almost effortless.Being underestimated, if you use it correctly, works to everyone else’s detriment.I say all of this whilst not negating the benefit of ‘coming up in an industry’ and the value that can build and be of unparalleled worth – not being ignorant, rude, dismissive, or naïve. But a broader perspective can help to attain balance, and concepts that have created revolutionary jumps in alternate or adjacent industries can correlate and be adapted for different contexts. Learning how sales and marketing concepts affect operations and need efficient technology to adapt was the core of my career progression. Why the chip on your shoulder is a trap.Some of the women I have watched come up through these industries went home and got better. Built the business case. Came back prepared. Often then dominated.Too many let it harden them. Walked into every subsequent room leading with the grievance. They were right about what had happened. They were not strategic about what came next.There is a version of being done wrong that you carry as ammunition. And there is a version you carry as a weight, a north star if you will.The weight closes doors. The ammunition opens them.There is an old line that goes: “If you don’t claim a seat at the table, you’ll be on the menu”. I understand the intent. But the framing still assumes the table is worth getting to. It also assumes someone else built it and you are trying to earn access.I spent years working hard trying to earn seats at tables that were not built with me in mind. Getting good enough that they couldn’t say no, developing arguments so well backed and supported that whilst, I may have taken too long or been pedantic, were built on solid understanding and thoughtfulness. Being so prepared that it took actual effort to dismiss me or my ideas, and if attempted, frankly, just reflected poorly on other parties.I didn’t ask for or expect chances simply based on visually meeting equality standards. I believe in meritocracy.And it worked. To a point. It only worked if the right elements were in place: collaborative leadership communication, pace, and being enabled to build highly effective teams. That took best-in-class people who had J-shaped leadership qualities combined with a drive to be forward thinking leaders in their positions. That’s rare and not usually found from industry followers.When I stopped fighting for the seatThe thing nobody tells you about finally earning the seat is that you are still at someone else’s table. Still operating inside a structure someone else designed, with rules someone else writes. Keeping in mind when those rules start to change or pivotally turn, needing to know when to walk away is one of the hardest struggles anyone has to face later on in your career. Especially when you feel you’ve given so much of yourself to a business, a team, an industry. All whilst losing relationships, time, and opportunities.The one statement that frustrates me the most is “it’s great you’re a successful woman”, like the standards are somehow different because I’m female.At 40, I moved states, had a one-year old child that I didn’t know about until 14 hours before delivering him, and I decided to take a leap of faith. To trust in an idea that I had collaborated on with a close friend and confidante. We had watched from a semi-sideline for nearly a decade, frustrated about the lack of industry access, and that idea was Mentor Academy. A platform built to offer a direct alternative to fix the broken access pathways to mentoring and knowledge transfer to prepare people better and find opportunities they couldn’t otherwise identify in the Australian creative industries. I am simultaneously CEO of Temple Medical and Scientific.I am building MA because I saw a problem and had the experience to do something about it.That is not a conclusion. It is where I am right now. The table is still being built.<hr>If you are in a room right now where no one is listening, where you are being dismissed before you have finished a sentence, where you have put in the work, know your numbers, readied your business case - the first question I would ask you to consider is not: how do I get them to hear me?The question is: what you will get from being in it, and is it the right room. “If you’re still not being listened to, you’re not in the right place.”

On being a female leader in male-dominated industries, what it cost, what it built, and why the advice you usually hear is wrong.

I Never Asked for the Seat. I Built a Different Table.

Across multiple different short form content streams, our Founders and Industry Leaders explore their key takeaways from industry events, challenges that creatives face, and everything in-between.

I Never Asked for the Seat. I Built a Different Table.

I Never Asked for the Seat. I Built a Different Table.

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