A - F

As a founding member and the President of the North Solomons’ Provincial Women’s Council in 1978, Titus is a mother of the Bougainville Women’s Movement. She has held many roles in local level government and with organisations promoting women leadership and peace building, including as UNWomen coordinator for Bougainville. She is currently program coordinator at the Nazareth Centre for Rehabilitation, that through its gender justice program has been connecting with women leaders all over Bougainville, building their capacity in knowing and exercising their rights as well as raising awareness of the laws that has been put in place to protect them in times of violence.

Angela Bogdan, is a career diplomat and Canada’s current Consul General in Sydney, Australia. Prior to taking up her current position, Ms. Bogdan was Chief of Protocol for Canada and before that served as Inspector General. She has also been Champion for women at Global Affairs Canada (GAC) for the past 6 years.

Ms. Bogdan has held several off shore assignments. She was High Commissioner to Sri Lanka and the Maldives and prior to that held the position of Ambassador to the Former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Ms. Bogdan has also served as Political Counsellor in Warsaw, Deputy Political Advisor at Canada's Mission to NATO and as Vice Consul in Melbourne.

In Ottawa, Ms. Bogdan was formerly Director of the Global Partnership Programme, Canada's $1 billion cooperative threat reduction programme and has held several HQ Assignments including as Head of Nuclear Policy in the Defence Relations Division and in the Asia Pacific Relations and the United Nations Divisions.

Ms. Bogdan holds a BA in International Relations, a BEd and a Master Degree in Strategic Studies from York University in Toronto.

Annie Zaidi is the author of Gulab, Love Stories # 1 to 14, and Known Turf: Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales, which was short-listed for the prestigious Vodafone Crossword Book Awards (non-fiction, 2010). She also co-authored 'The Good Indian Girl', a series of inter-linked narratives that traces young women's lives and liberties. She has published a book of illustrated poems, Crush.

She is the editor 'Unbound: 2000 Years of Indian Women's Writing', a multi-genre anthology of select extracts from some of the most significant texts written by Indian women, and of 'Equal Halves'.

She also writes scripts for screen and stage. 'Jaal' and 'So Many Socks' were produced and the latter script was nominated for the prestigious META awards. Her script 'Name, Place, Animal, Thing' was short-listed for The Hindu Metroplus Playwright Award, and the script for a radio play, 'Jam', was the regional (South Asia) winner for the BBC’s International Playwriting Competition 2011.

Zaidi works as a filmmaker too. Her documentary film, 'In her Words: The Journey of Indian Women', traces the lives and struggles of women as reflected in their literature.

Ashleigh Smith grew up in small town New Zealand. At age 13 her community lost three young people to suicide in eight months. This experience highlighted to her the impact words and actions can have on our young people. At age 15, alongside 30 other young people in Central Otago, she founded Stick ‘n Stones- A bullying prevention organisation that recognises young people as the expects in bullying prevention for their pairs.

Today at age 20, Ashleigh is Chairperson of the Sticks ‘n Stone board, and the organisation has over 400 young people, striving for a New Zealand where every young person is accepted for who they are. These young people co-design workshops, programs and advocate for the importance of youth voice in decisions making.

Ashleigh’s work has been recognized with both national and International awards, most recently a Queens Young Leaders Award, which she received from Her Majesty the Queen in Buckingham Palace, June 2017.   This year Ashleigh is in her final year of her Bachelor of Nursing degree. In March she is traveling to New York as part of the New Zealand delegation for the United Nations Commission on the Status of Woman.

Balveen Ajimal is the Founder of Grace Street Consulting, offering advice on strategic projects, stakeholder engagement and income generation to Boards and executive teams in the not for profit sector. Balveen is a Board Director of the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital Foundation, a member of the Queensland Government Strategy Group for Women on Boards and holds senior advisory positions with a range of health and social justice organisations. She has held senior legal, strategy and management positions in large lawfirms and private equity firms around the world. Balveen is an Ambassador for Endometriosis Australia and a passionate advocate for women and children.

Belinda Drew is the Chief Executive Officer of the Community Services Industry Alliance and has over 20 years’ experience in the community services industry.  CSIA was formed with the support of twenty-eight foundation members - the story of its formation is one of collaboration, co-design and commitment and points to the power of “working together”.

In her role as CEO Belinda is focused on representing the value of the community services industry to government and the business sectors on issues of organisational sustainability, government contracting, outcomes measurement, productivity and much more.

Belinda has worked across the fields of disability, homelessness, child protection and housing and is passionate about contributing to the task of building a strong, sustainable and contemporary industry across Australia.

Belinda also holds a range of advisory and Board roles across community services and social enterprise and is a member of the Australian Advisory Board on Impact Investing, a Board member of Social Enterprise Finance Australia (SEFA) and an advisor to the Credit Committee of SEFA.

Billie Moore is New Zealand’s Consul General for New South Wales and Queensland, based in Sydney. She took up the role in February 2015.

The Consul General plays a key role promoting and protecting New Zealand’s political and economic interests in New South Wales and Queensland, as well as providing consular assistance to New Zealanders living in or travelling through those states.

Before taking up the role Billie served for six years as a foreign affairs private secretary and advisor to successive governments in New Zealand, most recently as chief of staff and foreign policy advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs with particular responsibility for New Zealand’s successful UN Security Council campaign.

A killer Musical Director, DJ, sound designer, creator and advocate, Busty Beatz has been working across the Arts for over 25 years. Defying genres, her forms, politics and message of consciousness and fierce feminism are ever present. A decade of recording and touring has been immortalized via her contribution to Sophie Howath’s Big Day Out book Peace, Love and Brown Rice and her place in Women Who Rock, photographic exhibition of the Victorian Arts Centre. Busty has worked with the likes of Bone Thugs’ n’ Harmony, Screamfeeder, Ancestress, Def Poetry Jam, Qween G, Powderfinger and Sista She to name a few. Her music is featured in cult Australian films Fresh Air, Eleven, Love and Other Catastrophes and The Well. Musical Direction credits include East London West Sydney for Sydney Festival, Polytoxic’s The Rat Trap and the award winning BRIEFS. This beat-making Mama is the Queen Bee of the international smash hit Hot Brown Honey  directed by Lisa Fa’alafi, winning the UK’s Total Theatre Award for Innovation, Green Room Awards for Best Production/Best Design and the Helpmann Award for Best Cabaret. Co Artistic Director of Black Honey Company, Busty Beatz is a sound visionary, activating museums, galleries, theatres and public spaces while leading audiences onto dance floors across the globe.

Caitlyn Nevins was raised in the small town of Echuca on the Victoria/New South Wales border. Like most country kids, Nevins played a variety of sports growing up, but excelled at basketball and netball. Coming through the netball ranks at the Echuca and District Netball Association and later the Echuca United Football/Netball Club, Nevins was “tall for her age” and played shooter.

Having ruptured an anterior cruciate as a 21-year-old she persevered, and eventually prospered with an invite to joins the Vixens. The former attacker bagged her maiden championship with Melbourne Vixens in 2014 before heading north to play a key role in Queensland Firebirds 2015 and 2016 premiership wins.

Being quick on her feet has worked a treat for the fully qualified podiatrist who has settled into life in the Sunshine State with husband Sam. They’ve bought a house in Brisbane, and a new border collie.

A force of nature in the wing attack role, Nevins has a work rate to rival any player in world netball – driving hard to create space for teammates and contributing a bevy of feeds and assists. Her leadership was rewarded last year when she was voted in by her peers as vice-captain.

The Firebirds-flyer made her national debut with the Australian Fast5 side in October 2016 and followed by her first Diamonds cap against the Silver Ferns during the Quad Series tour in England, early 2017.

Cathie Schnitzerling is the ABC’s Regional Editor for Queensland, managing the Corporations 10 bureaux outside Brisbane and a staff of around 110, almost 60% of whom are women.

She was the first woman Director of News for the Ten Network in Brisbane and Sydney and hasworked as a television and radio reporter, presenter and producer on state based and national news and public affairs programs for Ten, Nine and the ABC in three capital cities. Cathie has won awards for her documentary writing and television production.  In 2014 she was recognized for her mentoring and leadership skills with a Queensland Clarion award for her Contribution to Journalism. She has also produced independent documentaries and a short drama.   She’s the proud single mother of a 24 year old daughter and a 17 year old son.

Cathy is a journalist with over 25 years experience in reporting, presenting and documentary making. She is a former Canberra Press Gallery journalist and presenter of ABC Canberra Breakfast.

Cathy was awarded a Walkley Commendation for her ABC coverage of the September 11 terrorist attack.

She regularly hosts panel discussions and conversations at Griffith University’s Integrity 20 conference and the Brisbane Writer’s Festival.

Cathy is a senior reporter for ABC RN Breakfast and is currently filling in as presenter of RN’s Big Ideas.

Dr Chelsea Bond is a Munanjali and South Sea Islander woman and Senior Research Fellow at UQ’s Poche Centre for Indigenous Health. Chelsea has over 20 years experience as an Aboriginal Health Worker and researcher working with communities across South East Qld. An Australian Learning and Teaching Fellow and recipient of an Australian Research Council Early Career Research Award, she is a founding board member of Inala Wangarra, an Indigenous community development organisation in her own community, board member of Screen Qld, a mother of 5 children and co-host of 98.9FM’s Wild Black Women.

After her release from prison in 1992, Debbie Kilroy OAM established Sisters Inside to fight for the human rights of incarcerated women and girls and to address gaps in services available to them and their children. Since then, Debbie has completed five tertiary degrees – in social work, forensic mental health and law.  She was the first and only former prisoner to be admitted as a legal practitioner in Queensland opening her own legal practice in 2013 focusing on advocacy for the human and legal rights for people charged with criminal offences.

As CEO of Sisters Inside, Debbie works at the coalface of human rights activism and her eloquent advocacy to highlight the over-representation of women and girls, particularly Aboriginal women and girls, in Australia’s prisons has earned her many accolades.  She has spearheaded a long list of ground-breaking programs which have broken the cycle of imprisonment.  Overcoming her own personal obstacles to rebuild a life that is lived in service to others Debbie works long and hard to improve the circumstances of the powerless, the voiceless and the disadvantaged.  

Debbie was awarded the Order of Australia in 2003 for her tireless work with criminalised and imprisoned women and girls and the Australian Human Rights Award in 2004.  In 2013 Debbie was awarded as the Churchill Fellow for the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust of Australia and in 2016 celebrated as the Australian of the Year Finalist (Qld) and was appointed to the Queensland Sentencing Advisory Council.

Domino Pateman is Head of Programmes for the WOW - Women of the World Festival. There have been over 40 WOW festivals in 17 cities across 5 continents everywhere from Kathmandu to Karachi, Baltimore to Bradford and Finland to the USA, developed by local curating and producing teams and the WOW programming team in London. The WOW festival celebrates women and girls and everything they have achieved, and harnesses all our creativity to find the courage to move beyond our own circles, and to learn how other women face challenges different from our own.

Domino is half Polish and was the youngest pilot in the UK at the time she got her license when she was 16 years old. She studied Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence, followed by an art foundation course in Leeds.  Domino is on the board of Bryony Kimmings Ltd.

Dominic McGann is the Chairman of Partners of McCullough Robertson, a leading Australian law firm with offices in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Newcastle.  Dominic is a mining and resources expert with over 30 years’ experience and is highly regarded for his expertise in native title and cultural heritage issues.  His extensive experience in communicating and negotiating with indigenous communities, positions him as one of Australia’s leading experts in this field.

Dominic is also the Chair of the McCullough Robertson Foundation, Chair of the Queensland Music Festival and Chair of UPLIT (formerly Brisbane Writers Festival).

His other directorships include Flagship Investments Limited,  the Australian National Development Index Limited, the Frazer Family Foundation, and the TRI Foundation. He is also a Queensland Governor for the American Chamber of Commerce, a Trustee of the Committee for Economic Development of Australian and a Councillor of the Queensland Futures Institute.

Additionally he is  a Queensland Male Champion of Change,  personally and professionally committed to using his influence and position of leadership to achieve change on gender equality issues in organisations and communities.

Dr Esther Achieng Onyango has a background in biological and environmental sciences. She nurtures a keen interest in both laboratory experimental research; and large scale ecological and social research with a specialization in systems thinking, climate change risk assessments, climate change adaptation strategies, multi-sectoral collaboration and translational science. She is currently a Research Fellow with Climate Change Response Program at Griffith University, Brisbane.

Dr Onyango recently completed an innovative and highly commended doctoral thesis; an integrated assessment of climate change and malaria risk in East Africa using systems thinking, mixed methods and stakeholder engagement. For her thesis, Dr Onyango developed an integrated assessment framework and used this with Bayesian Belief network modelling to synthesis transdisciplinary biophysical and socioeconomic data as well as qualitative stakeholder opinions to identify suitable climate change adaptation strategies and pathways.

A key output of Dr Onyango’s work was the need to understand gender differentiated vulnerability, i.e. the barriers, constraints and reduced capacity to cope that women face with regard to climate change impacts, particularly in communities whereby women are primarily responsible for the health of the household yet have less decision-making power. Dr Onyango suggested that having an understanding of such gender dynamics would contribute to the development of climate change adaptation strategies, programmes and policies that promote gender equity.

Eriko Fufurefa is director of Kafe Urban Settlers Women’s Association (KUSWA) a community based organisation (CBO) in Goroka, Eastern Highlands province. She started with the organisation with eight other women from Banana Block settlement in 2001. KUSWA today is a leading CBO advocating for women and family rights throughout the Highlands region.  

Alanna Bastin-Byrne and Jade Collins are the founders of Femeconomy. Women make 85% of purchase decisions. In Australia it is estimated that women spent $818 billion in the 2016-17 financial year. Femeconomy uses consumer activism to progress gender equality by unlocking the power of the purse. If women buy from B2C and B2B brands that have women in leadership, women will impact bottom lines. This leads to more women in leadership to advance gender equality. It’s The Femeconomy Effect.

Companies with female leaders are more profitable, which means more opportunity for everyone. They are also less likely to have a gender pay gap, which equals more money for the whole family. Female lead companies are more likely to have workplace flexibility, which helps women and men.

Femeconomy approved companies have at least 30% female board directors or 50% female ownership. Approximately 2000 brands are listed on Femeconomy and over 800 receive Femeconomy’s approval. This approach directly supports top down strategies to improve gender equality on leadership teams. Any business who meets Femeconomy’s approval criteria can choose to submit their brand.