‘The choices that changed my career’ according to five leaders

Financial rights advocate, Lynda Edwards, credits two women and a single conversation with changing the course of her professional life.

As the proud Wangkumara and Barkindji woman told the FW Leadership Summit 2024 she had been working casually at Financial Counselling Australia (FCA) when two of the company’s senior members approached her with a job offer.

The weight of the opportunity – both personally and to her community – left Edwards to take six weeks to consider her reply.

“It’s really important to understand that for many of our families, being involved in the economy, and having money in our families, is a very, very new thing,” she said.She shared her first hand experience of the financial exclusion many First Nations people face in this country.

“Money wasn’t talked about in my family … My grandparents were paid in rashes. We’re not allowed to have a bank account. We’re not allowed to keep their wages, who’ve known our home and basically told where to live,” she said.

Lynda Edwards and Shireen Morris on the one specific action that changed their careers for good.

“So in terms of that history, I wanted to make sure that my family and our communities were given information and awareness of their rights when dealing with the economy and especially when dealing with considerable businesses that target First Nations people.”Edwards recalled the conversation she shared when she was approached with the offer to become FCA’s Coordinator Financial Capability.

“(She) saw what I was capable of, even when I didn’t think I could, she did,” Edwards said of outgoing FCA CEO Fiona Guthrie.

“What she said was, ‘we need you to be part of our team, because I think you have a lot to offer’. This was huge to me – leaving my family to travel all over Australia, putting together a proactive first nations financial literacy network that looked and dealt with issues. It took me about six weeks to decide to join this national peak body and boy am I glad I did.” 

“As I’ve always said to my colleagues over time, don’t ever think that what you do will not change people’s lives.”

Edwards is not alone in her experience of a life-changing career moment.

“I decided I wasn’t going to let anyone else’s view of my potential determine what I love doing.”

Dr Shireen Morris shared with the FW audience that her career moment centred around an internship as a mature age law student.

“I’m a constitutional lawyer but my journey thus far has been quite circuitous. I didn’t go straight to law after high school. After doing an arts degree at Melbourne Uni I went to London to study acting, and lived there for three years, performing in musicals and children’s theatre all around the UK,” she said. 

“Looking back, I don’t think I would have been mature enough to get the most out of that degree at 18 years old. So I’m glad I studied law as a mature age student because it meant that I brought much more experience and perspective to the task.”

At age 28 Morris returned to her legal studies, discovered a passion for social justice and indigenous rights.  

“While I was at the end of my law degree at Monash (University). I participated in this Aurora internship program that sends law students to volunteer at different indigenous bodies around the country,” she said.

She then travelled to Cairns, during which time she was also reading the writings of Noel Pearson, an Aboriginal leader, lawyer and founder of the Cape York Partnership. He would soon return the favour. 

“So Noel must have been impressed with some of my writing because he unexpectedly offered me a job working on indigenous constitutional recognition – an area I didn’t even know existed,” she said.

“So I took this job, left Melbourne, moved up to Cairns and it kicked off 12 years of collaboration with Noel and other indigenous leaders around the country on this question: ‘How do we recognise indigenous peoples in the constitution?’ 

“So doing that internship changed the course of my whole career, it was a decisive choice and what I’d say to young women forging their own careers is take up those weird and unexpected opportunities that might expand your horizons and take you to meet new people take you to new places, you just never know, those experiences could lead to.” 

These days Morris has a PhD and is a senior lecturer and director at Macquarie University Law School.

Like Morris, Dr Rebecca Deans’s career didn’t start where it is today.

Dr Rebecca addresses a captivate audience at the Shangri-La Hotel.

Before she was a leading gynaecologist and researcher, she was an architecture student who “couldn’t draw straight lines”.  

“I didn’t know where I would be headed next,” Deans shared. 

“I eventually finished a degree in planning and design and then did a masters in building because I thought that’s where my strength is in managing people”.

Then, Deans had a career change. She moved from Melbourne to Sydney and studied medicine, spending her junior doctor years at Liverpool Hospital before switching to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. 

It was here she moved into obstetrics and gynecology, an area, like surgery Deans had always found fascinating.

“Then I had a bit of a reset,” she said. 

“I wanted to do fertility, but there wasn’t a job for me at RPA and so I was told to find a job elsewhere. I then went to the Royal Hospital for Women and there was a job in pediatric adolescent gynecology.”

Her new chosen area of specialty proved to be Deans’ calling and she travelled to London to continue her training. It was during her time in London that she first heard about uterus transplant. It was being conducted in Sweden.

“Number one, show up. Because when you show up, wonderful things will happen.”

“I thought, right, I’m in London, I’m going to go and visit this guy, (Swedish surgeon) Mats Brännström. So I sent him an email and when I visited him he had just received ethics approval for doing the first human study for uterus transplantation,” Deans said. 

“Interestingly, this idea came from Adelaide when he was a fellow in gynecological oncology. And then he took that idea back to Sweden and then spent 10 years doing extensive research in that space.” 

Inspired by his work, Deans returned to Australia and attempted to set up a team to follow in Brännström’s work. She hit many barriers.

“I spoke to my seniors and they said: ‘Why the hell would you do that? There’s perfectly good options. You can have surrogacy to have a baby, adopt. “Why do you need to put two people through a large operation? It’s expensive and dangerous,” she recalled being told.   

In 2023 she and her team performed the first Australian uterine transplant, earning her the NSW Woman of Excellence award.

The experience, as a whole, reminded Deans about the importance of sticking to your goals.

“What I’ve discovered is sometimes when you have adverse situations or times when it’s tricky, that’s what you learn from,” she said. 

“So don’t shy away from those things. Learn from them, look to those moments.”

When Lieutenant General Natasha Fox AO began her career in the military, she was just 17 and one of just a handful of women in the Australian Defence Force.

“I was in a group of 24 young men in my first year army cohort and we had committed that journey of integrated training. But in that time, only one in 10 people in your Australian Defence Force were women,” she told the FW crowd. 

“It was more about what we couldn’t do, then what we could do.” 

Fox said at the time of her training, women were not allowed to go into combat roles, they couldn’t be clearance divers, couldn’t go to special forces or fly jets. Yet, when she graduated from Duntroon, many of those roles were open to her. 

“I went to the combat brigade in Townsville and by the time I reached what would be considered in our military, middle management, I was ready for a milestone appointment. That is something that we call command,” she said. 

“Unfortunately, I was not selected for command in favor of my colleagues and I remember thinking, like probably many people in this room have done: ‘Why not me? Why not me? I knew that I was competent, that I was caring and that I had capacity. I knew that I was astute and I was smart. So why not me.” 

Lieutenant General Natasha Fox AO and Professor Yvonne Breyer address a sold out Summit in Sydney.

Fox said the experience dented her confidence, but she refused to give up.

“I decided I wasn’t going to let anyone else’s view of my potential determine what I love doing,” she said. 

“Towards the end of that year after that decision, another opportunity came up and I made the choice to take that opportunity with a supportive family, and I became a commanding officer and so I was appointed the commanding officer and chief instructor at the Australian Defence Force Academy.”

Last year in 2023, Fox was selected as the inaugural chief of personnel for the Australian Defence Force and in an ADF first, was promoted to the first female Lieutenant General.

As Professor Yvonne Breyer stepped to the podium, she reflected on the speakers who went ahead of her. 

“I mean, seriously, it’s a pretty hard act to follow. So I needed to bring up the big guns,” Breyer, the Deputy Dean Education and Employability at Macquarie Business School, joked.

She regaled the audience with a story about a recent visit with her sister-in-law who travelled to Sydney with her daughter for the Taylor Swift concert. 

As well as being a mother, Breyer’s sister-in-law is also a Supreme Court judge.

“I was telling her about this conference, and I said, you know, I’m a little bit nervous, and I’m going to speak to all these amazing people, and I have this incredibly accomplished women in my panel,” Breyer said. 

“And she said, you know, what Yvonne, when I was standing there being sworn in as a judge, I felt like an imposter. I felt I wasn’t really good enough, I didn’t think my accomplishments were quite as good as the men who had a very long list of things being read out.”

Breyer turned her comments to moments of self doubt and impostor syndrome.

She said while she cannot proclaim to fix impostor syndrome, there are three she wanted the audience to consider. 

“Number one, show up. Because when you show up, wonderful things will happen and when the going gets tough, and you show up, things will get better,” she said.

“Be curious, ask for help and ask for support because when you do, usually help is available. The third thing is, you’ve got this. So to our students, we always say, we have all the faith in the world, that you can do this. So you now need to believe in yourself and go out and do it.”

Thank you to our Presenting Partner CommBank and our Major Partner SG Fleet.