Latest / WHAT I'VE LEARNT / Advisor Avril Henry AM on Challenging Expectations & Standing Up for Change

Transcript

Advisor Avril Henry AM on Challenging Expectations & Standing Up for Change · WHAT I'VE LEARNT

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, her work has been recognized with an AM, the AFR Westpac 100 Women of Influence, a lifetime achievement in HR Award and Global Awards on her leadership and diversity work.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: But behind the accolades is a deeply human story of risk, loss, and reinvention.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: From starting again in Australia with almost nothing to motherhood, marriage breakdown, the devastating loss of her sister, and her own battle with cancer.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Avril, welcome to the What I've Learned podcast.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: So thrilled to have you join us.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hi Deborah.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really happy to be doing this podcast.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I love the concept of what I've learned.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: And in my view, the what I've learned is the good, the bad, the ugly, and the funny.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I like the funny too, and I agree with you.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: One has to have a sense of humor to survive and thrive, I believe.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, you've been through some pretty, as many of us have, and many people I interview have, you've been through many challenges, many ups, many downs.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: And as I always say, many mountains climbed, many rivers crossed.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us a little bit about your background, because it's really interesting.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: And your book and memoir, Not All Diamonds Are Worn.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: I love the title, by the way.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Tells the extraordinary story of how you went from leaving apartheid South Africa at 22 with two suitcases and$500 to becoming one of Australia's most influential voices on gender equity and women in leadership.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now that's what I call climbing a big mountain.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's quite funny when I listened to that, I go, yeah, that's pretty cool, but I never sort of think of it like that.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think in an upshell, uh, the title comes from the fact that I grew up in Kimberley, which was known, and it's still known as the City of Diamonds.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: But until the Russians entered the diamond market in about the 70s, 70% of the free world's diamonds came from my hometown, uh, Kimberley in South Africa, and they had five diamond mines.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it was started by Cecil John Rhodes.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I wrote all the history in the book because Kimberley would not exist without diamond mines and without the investment by Cecil John Rhodes, who actually went on to establish things like the Rhodes Scholarship.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: But De Beers also established a scholarship for the ducks of every school in Kimberley.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: So way before corporate social responsibility and sustainability were a trend.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Back in the 70s, DeBeers gave a scholarship to every high school for the ducks of that school.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so I actually won the scholarship for my school, which was very exciting because I grew up in a low-income family in social housing.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I was pretty excited when I went to university and I lived in college and I had my own bedroom for the first time at 18.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, the whole piece about apartheid, and I won't spend too much time on it, but actually there was one of the hardest parts of the book to write, because I started questioning apartheid when I was about 11 when I asked a Sunday school teacher whether black people had red blood like us.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And she said yes.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, So if they've got red blood like us and emotions like us, then aren't they just the same as us, only a different colour?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And she was quite outraged and asked my mother to come and see her when my mother collected me.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And she said to my mother, this girl's going to be trouble.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm quite happy to say, I have been trouble ever since.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: If trouble equals questioning status quo, and not be silent about things you don't understand or things you don't agree with.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I went, I was fortunate to go to the University of Cape Town, which together with uh Vitz University, otherwise known as Wit Bart-Sarant University in Johannesburg, were the only two white universities who ever protested about apartheid and who allowed colored and Indian visiting students to attend, because apartheid was very much about color, you know, not just race.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And in 1976, and I think these riots were the beginning of changing apartheid and the dismantling of apartheid, there were these massive riots in 1976, and our University and Brits joined in.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I joined in the riots, and I participated in a number of the anti-apartheid rallies because I was doing a double degree in accounting and economics, but I specialized in labor economics, and I was horrified to discover that everything I thought about apartheid was true.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: It made no sense economically, it made no sense politically, and it was a complete violation of human rights.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd started recognizing it as a teenager, but I couldn't talk about it to anyone except my maternal grandmother, who gets a huge wrap in my book, because I think she was a woman who lived a hundred years ahead of her time.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I used to have these conversations with her, and so those conversations featured the book.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, we got tear gassed, uh, they had riot police, they were dragging us by our hair around the campus and at the riots in the city.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, back then there was no internet and reporting was very limited.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure it was just very controlled.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Huge censorship.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And they reported that 70 people died in those riots.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not true.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was over 700 people because that's extraordinary.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the police used rubber bullets on white people, but they used live ammunition on black people.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was awful.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is 19, is this 1976?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so the world found out, and that's when all the sanctions started.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Sporting sanctions, which killed South Africa because of rugby and cricket, and then the economic sanctions.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, the first third of the book is about life in South Africa, and that's the first time I've ever written about it.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I really had to face some unhappy memories, and my family was certainly not aware that I was an anti-apartheid activist, and that by the time I left South Africa, I was actually on security police watch list.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: So my days were numbered of being a free citizen, so I left.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I also left without telling my parents I was emigrating.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: I said I was going on holidays, a working holiday, and I'd be back in two years.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And a week after I arrived, I sent a telegram, free internet.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not coming back.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: I emigrated.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Then a month later, I sent another telegram saying I got married yesterday.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then four months later, I sent them a letter with a photograph which said, P.S.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: He's black, and the proverbial shitty the fan.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: That is a brilliant, brilliant circular moment.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, what an incredible story.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Where did you emigrate to?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: To Australia.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: So Australia.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: This was your first hill at home here.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Always been happy.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: We I have a lot of South African friends.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very I mean, we have a lot of people we know who came from South Africa very much for the same reasons to escape the control, the controlling government, the apartheid issues.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: And as you say, the safety was just a massive issue.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: And and some people came with diamonds in their pockets so they could actually live.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was like a known thing.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was a known thing.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like just, you know, pop a few diamonds in your pocket so that you can actually emigrate and go and live somewhere else.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it was really quite, and I remember hearing these stories.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: So you arrive in Australia, and obviously I'm sure your parents were still recovering from the fact that you'd evacuated, so to speak.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how old were you at this time and you were married, or you got married here?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: I was 22 and I got married here because he was black.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, this Where did you meet him?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, at work in South Africa, so I also had a secret relationship, which the security police found out about.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I was on their radar for two reasons: the anti-apartheid activism and the coloured husband.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Friend.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Friend.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: So really, you were definitely standing up to the status quo, as you say.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: So did he come to Australia with you?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I write in the book about the fact that my father missed seeing me off at the airport in Kimberley.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so the whole family club together at the airport.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: He was just late because he was always late for everything, and bought a ticket, and he came to see me off in Johannesburg.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where I was meeting my boyfriend.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so we had to go our separate ways, and that made me feel really anxious.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because I thought to myself, you know, what if I get on this plane and he's not on the plane?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: But he was, and he did come to Australia.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, so you were 22, you're very young, and you've done, you know, I mean, that was that's a young age to make such huge life decisions.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: And you clearly had quite I love the way they say that you were going to be trouble.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'd say you were not trouble, but you were certainly open to challenging the the powers that be and beating to your own drum.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: And we do love people who beat to their own drum in this what I've learned space.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's very much it's those people that change the world.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it sounds like you've done a lot of world changing, both personally and just at a community level.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: So clearly, you left South Africa, you land in Australia, and how did you and you had a degree at that time?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because I was a qualified accountant, yeah.
• 11:02
  unknown: Yeah.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I was of interest to Australia because I had a skill they were recruiting.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you and your husband settled, you know, settled roots here in Australia, what did you then do?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: You obviously got work, but you have made a pretty major footprint.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I gather that from the beginning you were ready to go, from what I'm reading.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: The interesting thing is that in the first 10 years I lived in Australia, uh, I worked predominantly in investment banking, structured finance, and financial services.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I wasn't involved in the gender space other than being outspoken, and it's in the book about how I got paid when I discovered I got paid less than the black folks, and I how I challenged it.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it's something I've taught women is I go down playing, you know, gather the data, do your research, prove your work.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Be equipped, yeah.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then we went to London for two years, and when we came back from London, I had this complete career change which blew away everyone in the finance space.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because I was one of the most senior women in a finance role at Westback in the early 90s.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I ran finance for technology operations and corporate services.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And Sherry arrived as the first lateral recruit by the new American CEO, Bob Joss.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And she came out of the Prime Minister's office.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: She had been a senior advisor to Paul Keating.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: She saw me do this presentation and she said to me, I want you to come and work for me in HR and change management.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I went, HR didn't think so.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a real job.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we still laugh about it to this day.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: She's actually launching my book, In Sydney, on Thursday.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, I'm not hiring you for your people skills, because you don't have any.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: She said, I'm hiring you for your understanding of numbers and your ability to present the economics of what you know might be the project.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, if I'm going to do anything in the HR space, organizational change space, I need someone like you.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, Anne and I to this day still talk about the fact that one of our greatest achievements, and certainly for me, I mean, Anne's done amazing things, but for me, work-wise, the thing I'm most proud of is that we are the two women who introduced paid maternity leave in March of 1995.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: 1995.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, how crazy is that though?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like in 1995, and there was no paid maternity leave.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's just six weeks for women, one week for men.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody else got paid maternity leave in Australia.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: The other banks followed.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what's also interesting, Deborah, is how little it had changed for about 20 years.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't until organizations like the Parenthood started to challenge how much paid maternity leave we were given.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, Australia and the US were the only Western countries that didn't have government-sponsored maternity leave until about 10 years ago, and they still don't in the US.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I truly believe it's when you challenge the status quo, and once we did that, the other banks followed and the other insurance companies followed.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then, interestingly, about eight years after I left Westpac, I went back into investment banking, but as a global and regional HR director.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the first thing I did was I changed the maternity.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they didn't have maternity leave.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: I introduced, not six weeks, but I went, you know, guns blazing, for 10 weeks primary caregiver leave, and two weeks non-primary caregiver leave so that men or women could take it.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Brilliant.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that's very critical.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I know because the next gen, like my nephews and my family, they all the guys get, if they want, to up to three months, they take.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's extraordinary what they can do.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that was where you you basically sowed the seeds of what is now pretty much endemic in every corporate.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the other thing that I'm proud of is we were also.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Anne gave me enormous rope to do things because she trusted me.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: She knew I did my homework, she knew I would do the numbers.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: I inherited from that same maternal grandmother I talked about a photographic memory for numbers.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a pretty good thing.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good thing, Dad.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Car registration of every car I've owned.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: That is amazing.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: But I'll tell you what, a numbers, a number cruncher like you is very is so pivotal and so critical.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: And in the gender space, which actually my daughter works in this area, she's a doctor, but there's a big the gender health gap, which is a whole whole other area that she's working a lot on with a massive team and a massive footprint.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: But the issue of knowing your numbers and knowing your stats, that's when you actually, I know that they're using it a lot at Ovum, which is her company.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's a huge tool because it equips, it's unequivocal, it's scientific, and it allows progress.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's sort of non-negotiable.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what you're saying.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: You you made sure that you could equip so that change can then be implemented evidentially, so there's evidence.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: You manage to do that in a way that it sounds like it sounds like it's easy until you realize just how much it hadn't been ingrained in any of the corporations.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: And to 1995, it's just, to me, it's just mind-blowing that prior to that it was not even an option.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me for you.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, let's add one thing.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And uh when I was at Merrill Leech, which was between 2001 and 2003, there were still huge numbers of Australian organizations who still had no maternity leave, you know?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that was almost 10 years later.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I always knew and predicted that once the Gen Y's and Gen Z started coming into the workplace, and they are now the most educated generation in history, and 90% of Gen Y's and Gen Z finished sheer toil, I knew the cultural push would come from younger people.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it has.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: It certainly has.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you know what?
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thank, thank goodness, because you know, if I look like I've got, you know, daughters, and I can see that the challenges of trying to maintain corporate life or work life and having children, which I've done and you've done, the the juggle of motherhood and having a career trajectory such as you've had, which is really challenging to try and do both and not drop one ball or both balls or whatever.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think that having maternity leave is absolutely non-negotiable, whether it's male or female.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it really underpins so much of what they can then do, and it allows choices.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that without that, I don't even know how we did it, to be honest.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think we just all just winged it.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like, so tell me a little bit about you in terms of uh your motherhood and your experience, because obviously at that time you wouldn't have had that resource, and neither did I.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh, so the other thing I did at Westpack was I introduced employer-sponsored childcare.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I started by buying places and childcare centers like Fly Spaces, which were then available to our staff.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: I also project managed the building of the biggest childcare center in the Southern Hemisphere back in 1995, which was a 60-place center in Adelaide, and it got us good publicity because we gave 30 spots to the local community and 30 spots for our staff, because we centralized mortgage processing into Adelaide.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: But you still have the problem which I had because I became a single mum when the girls were five and nine.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: So one had just started school, one was only in year two, school holidays and before and after school care.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I just used to do my heading.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like most women.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:58
  unknown: Yeah.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: So what I did was I started creating partnerships with the schools where my kids went.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then after my kids grew up, and I still kept doing it.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I helped raise money and fund the building of before and after school care facilities.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: And Westpac, again, thanks to me, were the first to introduce school holiday programs with the Y for the YNCA.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: We funded the establishment of the programs and it was available to our staff.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I'm the first to say, well, my kids were the guinea pigs for everything to do with childcare while they were in primary school, right through till they were about 14, because that's when the cuddles came, you know, for the school big programs.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I always had a nanny.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm the first to say, you know, I went back to investment banking after Westback because I needed to make enough money.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Money to pay the nanny and to I had the same.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I so relate to that.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I think most women, anybody who's worked, trying to do, I mean, if you can take some time off, amazing, and that's what you hope.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: But having a nanny to support, but then you're also employing other women, or you know, there's a beautiful circularity to that.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm yeah, in fact, I still work very closely with the woman who helped me with my kids when they were little.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: 25 years later, she's still part of my life, and I help her and she helps me.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: So there's there is a, if you like, an evolution where those relationships become very important because you employ somebody else while you can then go and do your work.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, but it's a complex thing that that really for many women is a struggle.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the childcare is a fortune, very expensive.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, even I cration, all of this stuff.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I think you know, you you were onto it early, but it's still evolving, it's much better than it was.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: But and and as you say, you were a single mum, which meant you had to.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Keep working, it was not a an option because there was no other opportunity or other person to sort of hold the fort while you did, you know, raise the children, for example.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's just an ongoing discussion.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I know I have it with a lot of the the the next gen who try to navigate that.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: And most of them, to be honest, I would say 80% of the ones I know could go back to work in some form and have the support system.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: So that you know they're across it, as you say, they're the most educated and the most informed.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: So for you, how did you navigate?
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: And how the kids were young when you separated, but you managed by having clearly using your mind and your your smarts to have a very good job.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think that culture has changed?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Do you see the evolution?
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes, it has changed.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: What I've it's changed in the sense that uh people accept that women and men have families, and people have accepted that the burden of care, particularly childcare, and even now elder care, falls to women.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: But what I do like about Gen 1, Gen Z men is they now have wives or partners who will speak up.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I certainly know my daughters do.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: But women are still doing the majority.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: I would say my generation, it was 90% women, 10% men.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: It may now be more like 70, 30, and if you're really lucky, 60, 40.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I agree.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: I still think the biggest issue is we try to fix women.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: I go, you've got to stop trying to fix women.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to fix it.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: The system and the processes.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I really think that if we started to include women in the redesign of work, where we work, how we work, to create better flexibility and to measure people on productivity and results, not how much time they spend working.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: So we're all different.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: We can make a difference.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: I still think women aren't at the table in the numbers we need to be.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I often say to women, if you're not at the table, be very careful that you're not under the table, not being heard from the table, being analyzed.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to be at the table as an equal.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a really good analogy because I am watching it and I can see.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: And look, I think a lot of the women, as you say, the women and the men, they're both looking at things differently.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, ability to work from home is huge because it's given a lot of women and men that opportunity to do both.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I think that's transformative.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you were in my generation, there was just no way.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I did work, I wrote my column.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: I was running to the age at the time, and I did write my column from home when I had little children.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: But that was so unusual.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I didn't tell you you didn't talk about it.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, okay, I'm just quietly, you know, it was not something that was really encouraged.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it was almost seen as a bit sort of, oh, what do you mean into working from home?
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's celebrated.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: The most stressful day of the week for me when the kids were small, and for them was Friday mornings.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: We had our team meeting at 7:30.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I had a few of those too, yeah.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so they get the kids up early and their breakfast, they'd have to have their breakfast in the car as we drove to be saw after school care.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: I arranged to be open at 7.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I would come screaming into the team meeting, you know, at 7:35, with the senior director raising his eyebrows.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I was the only woman on that team at the board table.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: All the time to say.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, at 7:30, those 7:30 meetings were shocking.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember doing everyone.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: There was, you know, the hair center hadn't opened or there was traffic.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't care.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: No, and I think the other thing is that it used to be very judged.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now I think there's a lot more education.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of men are very empathetic and understanding to a point.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: But you're right, most of them have wives.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I, you know, I've got very senior women who work in very senior jobs who just say, I just wish I really just need a wife.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like, I mean, it really is something that I think is evolving, although I still think it's got a way to go.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it sounds like hopefully it is something that is changing.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it's going to be easier for the next gen.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: You also you're friends for my daughters.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Same, yeah.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: So now my hope is the oldest of my six grandchildren is a girl, and she's just turned eight.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I just want it to be different for her by the time she's 21.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't have that's only 13 years away.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if it's going to happen.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think if they if if we keep speaking up, as you say, and and being at the table, not under the table, I think that's a really good analogy.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: I know that you've also had, you know, some challenges, particularly losing your sister.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: That obviously was devastating and and and difficult.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: How did that happen and how did you navigate that?
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: And what have you learned about grief and how one comes through it, if you ever do?
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, um, uh it was really shocking because my sister immigrated yeah a long time after me, and she'd only been here, say, about 10 years.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I had a very difficult relationship with her husband.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we didn't see a lot of each other, and she was in South Australia, and then she moved to Golburn.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I would see her two or three times a year, and she rang um my husband, who has a medical background, and she told me that she just had these scans, etc.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it was found that she had lung cancer, which was devastating, but it was treatable and she could have an operation, etc.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: And can I tell you 10 months, 10 days from when she was diagnosed until she passed away?
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because they did the surgery, and shortly after the surgery, she had a stroke.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: She was young, she was only 52.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: But it also took away her ability to speak.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: So she was sent to a different hospital, and they were working out how they would do the rehab, and her son had driven from South Australia and had arrived there the day after her stroke.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that was on about day six.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then four days later, she had this massive hemorrhage at the bank.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's terrible.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: I am so sorry.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: And when my nephew rang me, I thought he was ringing me to tell me she'd been scheduled, you know, for her rehab.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, no, she's gone.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: So it was very sudden and very traumatic.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Very traumatic.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, what have you learned about grief and and how one copes with loss?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think the thing that I've learned that's the most profound is that it doesn't go away.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: And we've got to stop telling people that time heals or wounds, angry will be fine.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just move on.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think what happens is it changes, but it changes because you have to change the way you view grief and the way you deal with grief.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because you never get over the loss of someone.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's how to live with it.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: How to live with it, yeah.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the experience that most people I speak to who have been through a loss, particularly a sudden loss, it sort of shocks the system.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so sorry that you've been through that, and you've you've also been through your own health challenge, as I understand.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: So was that recent?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: So my sister died during COVID in uh 2021, and I was diagnosed with stage three aggressive breast cancer in July 2022.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: I have to be honest and say, I didn't even cry.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: I just I actually didn't realize what he was telling me, but I'd taken my husband with me because I know that most surgeons don't have a good bedside manner, and that's largely because their job is solving medical problems.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: And ironically, as a coach, I do profiling.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't expect you to have a good bedside manner.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: I knew I needed to take my husband with me.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: And he's he was talking to me and I was looking at him, thinking, I don't understand what he's saying.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I turned and I looked to David to say, what did he just tell me?
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: And David was as wide as a sheet, and he said, You've got breast cancer, and it's aggressive, and you're gonna be operated on very soon.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: And um when was this?
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Was this recently?
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Was this July 2022?
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it's been four years, okay.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you know, the thing about cancer is I I also had a natural reconstruction.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I had two teams in the operating theater, I was under the knife for 12 hours, I had drips hanging out of me, I couldn't do anything for myself for four months.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: And for a carpent personality, that was really hard, you know, and I had the walking frame and the commode and the cheg and the shower, etc.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then I had my radiation, and even though there were days when it was hard, my whole team, because you have a whole team, you have an oncologist and you have the radiation therapy and the lymphedema nurse, because I've got lymphedema in one arm, etc.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: They all were amazed by how I had dealt with it.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, well, for a start, I'm not a cancer victim, I'm not a cancer survivor, I'm a cancer warrior.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: I came, I saw, I conquered, although I'm not in remission yet.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: So my official remission date, if all goes well, is the 2nd of April, 2028.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm still on daily medications or they still make you tired and they still make you nauseous, etc.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: But what I wrote about in the book, and the chapter on cancer is actually titled Fuck Cancer, because that was my approach.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I had this black ring made because black diamonds are the strongest stone in the world, and they use black diamonds to cut all other stones.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then I asked my jeweller to engrave the inside of the ring, and the inside of the ring says fuck cancer.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've replaced my engagement ring with this ring, which I will wear until the 2nd of April, 2028, because I'm into symbolism.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's very powerful.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: Symbol, yeah, and very symbolic.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: The the the the main thing I want to get across about cancer is because I ended up having uh four surgeries, and they weren't all related to the breast cancer.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: What they were related to was the damage done by the treatment.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: So chemo radiation kills the cancer cells, but it damages good zone.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: Correct, yeah, good tissue, good muscle.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I even had a shoulder reconstruction because of the damage done by the radiation.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that meant I was in a sling for two months, 18 months after my breast cancer surgery.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: But the message I want to leave for people is if you've got somebody close to you who has cancer and you yourself have never experienced it, the first thing I'd like to say is please don't tell them you understand.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's the one thing that drives us insane.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: You don't understand if you haven't been there.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's much better to say, I cannot imagine how you feel.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then not let me know if I can help, but say, What can I do to help?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I've got a friend who's just gone through lung cancer here down in Mollymook.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: So once a week I took a meal to her and her husband because I'm a good cook.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that was far more useful than me saying, Do you want to talk about it?
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: I just action, acts of service and and practical support and being there for somebody.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: So have you learned a lot about yourself?
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because it you when you're forced to stop with somebody who has gone non-stop, it's it's often very challenging because then you have to really was there, was that did you use it as a time to reflect?
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, while you're going through a very challenging physical time.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: Did you learn anything from that that time?
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: I learned that I'm not very good at doing nothing.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: I understand that I don't like not having control.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: And once you get cancer, you've got no control, you know, while you're going through treatments and additional surgeries.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, okay, do the massectomy, give me another treatment, it's all okay, and I'll go back to how things are.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, I wrote a really good article titled, I thought cancer wouldn't change me, but it did.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, October is breast cancer awareness month.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: So every October I write an article for Lee Deep.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I re but I looked for what were the good things I learned out of it.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: And things that I think made a difference was it l taught me that it is okay to do nothing.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: And women don't know how to do nothing.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a good point.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: I do agree with you.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: We're sort of used to constantly doing, yeah, like it's it's but it's also the culture.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's a big culture of, you know, service and and just keep doing things.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you sit on the couch for three hours, but I've had to have days, whole days where I can't do anything.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'd read, I watch TV, I do puzzles, but I've learned the value of slowing down.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: And now what I've I've also been doing at the start of every year is to reflect on the year that's past.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: I also don't like, you know, people say, uh, you know, reflect and then reset.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: I go, no, first rest, relax, then reflect and then re-invest.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because reset suggests you're going to go back and do what you did before.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I do what I call the traffic analogy, would I need to stop doing because it no longer serves me.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: So one thing is spending time with people where I don't think I add value or they add value to me because I might only have another 20 or 30 good years left.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: So my time's very precious.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: And to say, okay, what am I doing that I'm really enjoying?
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: I should do more of.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, it was learning to go for long walks because I was a runner before and I couldn't run for years, you know, with all the surgeries and stuff.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then the green light is what would I like to try that I've never tried before?
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: So in 2027, I'm taking up photography because I like taking photos, but I want to do better photos.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: I like it.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think, you know, before we can even reflect, I think we need to first learn how to rest our bobbies, our minds to relax, but truly relax.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then to reflect and to think about, you know, what are the things you do that you actually don't enjoy?
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: Who are the people you spend time with because you have to, because they're family, or because you went to school with them?
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's bullshit.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: So don't be selective, curate, curate your life a little bit to what you actually, how you want to live.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that more people are doing that.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: I do think there's a movement in that direction.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm reading, there's so much like the reading parties where everyone just sits around and reads books together.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Mahjong, which is huge, which I'm starting.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, people are doing finding ways to just go back a little bit to probably how we grew up much more.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: There was a lot more time to just do nothing.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas, you know, the world sort of amped up and obviously social media, etc.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that the lessons you've just shared are very valuable.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: And on that note, I'd like to thank you so much for a wonderful chat and interview.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: And congratulations on the book.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I will take that on board, as will my listeners.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: We love speaking to you and wishing you all the best with this wonderful book.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: And thank you so much for having me.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: I've really enjoyed it.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: Me too.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you for joining us on the What I've Learned podcast.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you enjoyed that interview because we are so privileged to have a wonderful platform where guests come on and share lessons learned, rivers crossed, mountains climbed.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: We love our shared humanity, and we are so grateful to have such a beautiful community.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: So remember to stay curious, kind, and connected, and we'll see you next time at the What Up Love Podcast.