When asked to describe her worst day at work, there are two examples that Terese Edwards wishes she could forget.

The first, as the CEO of Single Mother Families Australia explains, happened when she was 16 years old and working in a country stock and station agency.

“I had a real aversion to duck shooting and I hid the bullets,” Edwards recalls. “My boss found out – and I thought I was going to pass out.”

Another day she doesn’t want to dwell on was when she was named a national target by men’s rights groups for speaking out against domestic violence.

“I’m not going to go there,” says Edwards to the FW Leadership Summit audience. “What I want to do is share something that I think will particularly resonate with us, being women.”

On this day, Edwards was grappling with imposter syndrome – and learning the value of a no-spill drink bottle. It happened after she was appointed as a member of the inaugural Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce (WEET).

Edwards had spent more than a decade championing mothers who, like herself, are raising their children solo. She has spoken at the United Nations, been honoured with an Unsung Hero Award and, as the CEO of Single Mother Families Australia since 2009, helps women navigate complex support systems every day.

As a member of WEET, she was also kicking serious goals.

“We went into the Budget with six policies, and we got them up,” says Edwards.

“The last one we got up was in January 2026 – which was changes to childcare – but what I wanted to share with you is, after the Women’s Economic Equality Task Force report came out, I was approached by the ABC to do one of those fantastic in-studio events [where I] could talk about it.”

Edwards joined the broadcast from her local ABC studio in Adelaide where, inexplicably, she was cut off from the Sydney studio every 15 minutes. Every quarter of an hour, a tech assistant needed to reconnect her.

“The guy came in quite annoyed with me – like, annoyed that a woman was having a say – and then he bowled over my water on my notes.”

She knew her section of the WEET report inside out and back to front.

“I’d lobbied so hard and in fact, the first three things that we got up were of my urging,” says Edwards, who was a key influencer in the decision to expand eligibility for Single Parenting Payment.

“But I didn’t know everything, so the notes were the bits that I didn’t know. And I know that a couple of times, I was trying to pretend that I was completely across it, but I was diving for notes,” she says.

“Stand tall, and if you stuff up, just take it as a lesson rather than a reflection of who you are.”

“I left that meeting and the first call [I got] was a media advisor – not my media advisor – who said, ‘Terese, you seemed all over the place today’. And I took that to heart… I did have a bit of that imposter syndrome. And I thought, Oh no, I’ve stuffed up. And I felt so inadequate, and I felt I’d let everyone down.”

Another phone call, this time from the Chairperson of WEET, shifted her thinking.

“[They] said, Terese, you got us right on where we needed to go.”

Now, Edwards points to something she sees as distinctly gendered about how she felt that day.

“If I was a bloke, I would have walked out and said, ‘Yes, I nailed that. I got cut off. My notes got destroyed. I nailed it’,” she says.

Coming out of the studio, Edwards didn’t reflect on the fact that she was appointed to the task force and that she got her policies up and across the line. Or that she’d be selected by the ABC as a reputable source of knowledge and expertise.

“My solution going forward – and going to ABC – is just have a no-spill drink bottle,” she laughs. But her bigger takeaway is this:

“Stand tall, and if you stuff up, just take it as a lesson rather than a reflection of who you are.”

Image credit: Vienna Marie Creative