girledworld Cofounder Edwina Kolomanski shares her story at Melbourne Town Hall event with Lord Mayor Sally Capp

Our Cofounder + COO Edwina Kolomanski will share the girledworld story, startup journey and her career and study pathways at the Melbourne Town Hall this Friday August 2, as part of the The University of Melbourne Young Alumni Cocktails + Conversations series.

Edwina will take the stage alongside Lord Mayor of Melbourne Sally Capp and CEO + Cofounder of Allume Energy Cameron Knox.

In case you didn't know it, Edwina is a serial entrepreneur and university student!, who has a Bachelor of Media and Communications, a Master of Entrepreneurship (First Class Honours) from the The University of Melbourne on scholarship, studied as a Visiting International Student at Columbia University in the City of New York, and is currently completing a Juris Doctor on scholarship Monash University, where she was awarded a Monash Global Discovery Scholarship in 2018 for her demonstrated commitment to innovation.

We don't know how she does it! But she does. Every day.

More info on event below or via this link.

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UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE YOUNG ALUMNI COCKTAILS + CONVERSATIONS
Friday August 2, 2019 7.00pm-10.00pm
Melbourne Town Hall, Swanston Room

What does the Melbourne of the future have in store for you?

The world is changing rapidly. The drivers of change are many and include trends such as the rise of entrepreneurship, business technology, and consumer expectations around sustainability. So how will these drivers influence our city? And how will you be best placed to take advantage of the opportunities these changes will bring?

Join our key note speaker Lord Mayor Sally Capp as she gives her take on the future of doing business in the City of Melbourne. She will be joined by two young alumni guests who will give their unique perspective as young business owners.

Following formalities, you will be able to continue the conversation with your young alumni network over refreshing cocktails and delicious canapes. If you would like to kick-on further, the Business and Economics Young Alumni Committee will be hosting an after-party in the city.

MEET THE EVENT SPEAKERS

Lord Mayor Sally Capp, BCom, LLB(Hons)1991

Sally Capp was elected Lord Mayor of Melbourne in May 2018 and was the first woman to be directly elected as Lord Mayor. Sally was also the first woman to hold the post of Agent-General for Victoria in the UK, Europe and Israel. She has also served as the CEO for the Committee for Melbourne and COO of the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.   Sally began her career as a Solicitor, after completing Law (Hons) and Commerce degrees at the University of Melbourne. Sally has held senior roles at both KPMG and ANZ, and she took the small business she co- founded to the ASX. Most recently she was Victorian Executive Director of the Property Council of Australia. A passionate Magpies supporter, in 2004 Sally made history as the first female board member of Collingwood FC. She is involved in a number of charities, currently sitting on the board of the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute, the Mary Jane Lewis Scholarship Foundation and the Melbourne University Faculty of Business and Economics. Sally is also Honorary Patron of the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, Trustee of the Shrine of Remembrance, Member of the Council of Capital City Lord Mayors, Patron of the Royal Victorian Association of Honorary Justices, Patron of the Royal Women’s Hospital Foundation and Victorian Honorary Vice President of the Australia-Britain Society (Victoria) Inc.

Cameron Knox, BSc 2016, DipLang 2016

Cameron is the CEO & Co-Founder of Allume Energy, a Melbourne based start-up aimed at making solar affordable and accessible for apartment residents. Since its inception in 2015 Allume have grown to 12 employees, secured over $2M in contracted revenue, signed customers in 2 continents and attracted over $2.5M in investment. Allume are an alumni of the UniMelb affiliated Melbourne Accelerator Program. Cameron is a graduate of a Bachelor of Science at the University of Melbourne and juggles his role at Allume with a part time Masters of Mechatronics.

Edwina Kolomanski, MEnt 2016, BA 2012

Edwina is Cofounder of Australian education startup Girledworld, with the mission of upskilling, equipping and inspiring the next generation of female leaders, entrepreneurs and STEM champions.

In response to a lack of gender diversity in future-facing industries such as STEM and startup, Girledworld deliver large scale World of Work events for high school girls, educators and parents, design in-school career and Future of Work employability programs and partner with schools, industry and governments to better support young women in the critical years of career decision making. 

Edwina has a Bachelor of Media and Communications and Master of Entrepreneurship (First Class Hons) from the University of Melbourne on scholarship, studied as a Visiting International Student at Columbia University’s Barnard College in New York and is currently completing a Juris Doctor at Monash University, where she was awarded a Monash Global Discovery Scholarship in 2018 for her demonstrated commitment to Innovation. 

All event details here.

WHY GENDER NEEDS TO STAY ON THE AGENDA.

At events recently, several successful males have said the following to me: 'I wish women would just stop with all this female founder and leadership and gender stuff and just get on with doing big things and building great businesses.'

They, clearly, completely miss the point.

Some women ARE out there building businesses and doing big things - but nowhere near the rate that males are. 

Some women ARE leading organisations, engaging in public life, policy shaping, and creating the architecture of the new economy.

But nowhere near the participation rate of men. 

And you don't have to look far to see that in the media, in business, in politics, in boardrooms, in startups, in tech and in STEM, women continue to be underrepresented, underpaid, under-voiced, undervalued and under-done - across industries, and across the world.

On top of that, women are predominantly carrying the invisible burden of care, for which there is no trading currency.

So we can choose to shut down the conversations or sugar up the stats, but the facts remain... the scales aren't balancing fast enough.

The gender gap is real.

Bias is entrenched.

And shifting legacy fixed mindsets is going to take multi-generational momentum.
 
Equality? Parity? We're nowhere near there yet. 

So we need to keep gender on the agenda, have the hard conversations, and then as a whole society create action to find a positive, workable solution to bring up the numbers and get the whole of humanity participating in the problem-solving of our age.

We need to get women and the girls after them to step up, lead, succeed, shape, design, learn, listen, speak, start, quest, wonder, run, code, write and win. Alongside men.

The conversations will only go away when the problem is solved, the gap has closed and we can ALL get on with doing big things and building TOGETHER.

@girledworld Building the next generation of female founders and leaders, one girl at a time. ✖️✖️

Bringing up businesses and babies: Why women need mentors to make it work

As a working female who knows all too well the pace and juggle of balancing the needs of four busy daughters with the mid-career portfolio demands of building a startup, speaking engagements, active mentoring and board directorships, time is the core currency I trade in these days.

There are only so many hours in any given day, and the opportunity cost of time ill-spent down an email black hole or in zero-outcome meetings mean I've become more binary about how I will and won't spend my business time.

I choose to work with people and on projects that align to my purpose, and that solve for problems that really matter. It means the work can dial up and down as the projects demand, and it also means I therefore have to know when to flick the switch to family.

But like many women of my generation raising businesses and babies, finding true balance can be a challenge.

Sometimes the mix is just right, other times all wrong. You wing it anyway, and remind yourself that balance isn't static, and life is a continuum of change within which we chart our course, adjusting sails along the way where we need to. Some days are rough and tough, others blue-skied and calm watered (personally and professionally).

But in the mix of busy, I have, and always will, carve out time for mentorship. Because bringing up businesses and babies is not an easy juggle, and to make it work I have relied on the active mentorship of generous, intelligent women to help me navigate the way.

Because I have lived the benefit of having other women empower and mentor me, I believe in paying it forward. Daily, I still draw on the power and knowledge well of my collective circle to stay afloat, accelerate my opportunities and make strategic career choices. In fact some of the best business decisions I've made were shaped with mentors.

Sheryl Sandberg’s 2013 book Lean In: Women, Work and the Will To Lead has a dedicated chapter called Are You My Mentor? and in it she explores the idea of mentorship, and how to find the right mentors for your personal and professional stage.

Some of her key points about mentorship are that at its best it must be:

1.  AUTHENTIC: Healthy and effective business relationships take time to nurture and develop, and most often arise organically from real human connections where there is inherent mentor/mentee chemistry, authenticity and generosity. Find mentors who understand who you are, what your values, vision and purpose are, and who will then bring people into your network who share this, too.

2.  RECIPROCAL: Mentorship cuts both ways, and provides both parties with the opportunity for growth, transfer of knowledge, personal learning and professional extension. The mentor can sharpen and shape their leadership style through mentee feedback, and the mentee can also provide “grassroots intelligence” on industry insights, market intel and internal culture (access the mentor would not otherwise gain). In turn mentors can push you to your limits, challenge your thinking, strategically connect you to key stakeholders, champion your cause and actively market you and your business to amplify your message/vision.

3.  ACTIONABLE: Mentors and mentees must commit to progress, and measurable outcomes. In order for both parties to benefit most from the relationship, mentees must create actions around advice dispensed, embed key learnings, and then circle this back into the learning loop with mentors.

4.   AUTONOMOUS: Great mentors don’t cut the path but light the way. The greatest learning for mentees is learning by doing, even if it means failing and floundering a few times before charting the right path. Taking autonomous steps but knowing you have someone to bounce off when the going gets hard can be just the support you need to realise your potential and better achieve your goals.

Some of the most successful women I know have attributed active networking and mentoring to their success, saying that by putting themselves out there, finding their tribe and building a trusted group of people around them, they have achieved far more than could ever have done on their own.

If you’ve been thinking about becoming a mentor or seeking active mentorship as a mentee, there are now multiple organisations, digital platforms and online communities offering professional and personal coaching services if you’d like a hand to get started rather than reach out to your existing networks. Everwise, Mentorloop, Inspiring Rare Birds, Business Chicks and Mogul are just a few.

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SHE MENTORS - SUMMER NETWORKING PARTY

Inspire9, Richmond, Wednesday November 1, 6.00pm-8.00pm

Alternatively, if you’re in Melbourne and would like to connect in the real with a room full of female business women from all walks of life, register for the She Mentors Summer Networking Party at Inspire9 in Richmond on Wednesday November 1 6.00pm-8.00pm, and join me alongside Gemma Lloyd of Diverse City Careers as part of a She Mentors event celebrating female mentorship and the power of networking.

Lloyd is the co-founder of DCC Jobs, Company Secretary of the Diversity Practitioners Association (DPA), winner of the Sue Wickenden 2016 Entrepreneur Of The Year Award and has served on multiple not-for-profit Boards including IT Queensland Females in and Technology and Telecommunications (FITT).

In this event Lloyd will share her journey at the helm of DCC Jobs, where she has been campaigning for flexible working conditions for women, and regularly presenting on topics including diversity and inclusion, entrepreneurship, developing confidence for career success, and personal branding strategies, so will have a wealth of knowledge to impart to the audience.

DCC is a social enterprise helping women pursue rewarding careers, particularly in sectors with high gender inequality rates. Since its conception, DCC has grown rapidly and is now regarded as one of Australia’s leading authorities on gender diversity.

The DCC jobs board is Australia’s only exclusive jobs board, meaning employers must be pre-qualified before advertising to ensure a strong focus on diversity and inclusion. DCC were winners of the 2016 #techdiversity awards and finalists in the 2015 ARN Women in ICT Awards in the Innovation category.

I’ll also be sharing my story and some of the thrills and spills as a social entrepreneur, Mum, mentor and co-founder of girledworld.

Mainly, I’ll be chatting about how I’ve charted my career path around businesses and babies, built connections and communities along the way, and what I’ve learned from mentors and other extraordinary business women in my network.

There’ll be plenty of time for Q&A and networking afterwards, so we can all share stories, forge new connections and learn from each other.

I look forward to seeing some of you there.

Madeleine Grummet
Co-Founder & CEO girledworld

She Mentors Summer Networking Party.
Bookings here.

How to teach girls Design Thinking - girledworld Summit 2017

At girledworld we get a little bit excited about innovation, ignition of ideas and problem solving. It’s why we train in and keep a hand on Design Thinking, Lean Startup, agile and anything that keeps us moving, questioning, pivoting and coming up with awesome ideas to solve the wicked problems of the world.

So we’re super excited to have education consultant and design thinking facilitator Kirsty Costa from Cool Australia joining us for the girledworld Big Ideas Leadership Summit 2017 to get hundreds of secondary school aged girls immersed in a Design Thinking workshop on Saturday June 24!

Design thinking helps us create, analyse and rebuild products and ideas. It can also be used to find creative solutions to big problems, and in this experiential workshop, participants will experience and apply each step of design thinking – from immersion to prototyping – as they work in teams to solve a live world environmental problem: the shrinking habitat of marine turtles and how Design Thinking can be used to create a prototype solution to protect their endangered nests.

Costa started out as a primary teacher, became an award-winning education consultant and now is the Head of Professional Development at Cool Australia, enabling more than 65,000 teachers to connect their lessons to the world outside the classroom every day.

Costa was awarded the 2013 Victorian Environmental and Sustainability Educator of the Year and trained by Al Gore as a Climate Reality Leader in 2014. In recent years she has helped hundreds of organisations and individuals carry out exciting change projects across Australia, and worked on global environmental initiatives with Greenpeace Japan and Oxfam Community Aid Abroad.

We can’t wait for Kirsty Costa to bring her expertise, energy, turtles and big thinking to the girledworld Big Ideas Leadership Summit 2017.

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Please join us alongside some of Australia and the world's most remarkable business leaders, startup founders and STEM champions to up-skill the next generation of girls in leadership, innovation and enterprise.

girledworld Big Ideas Leadership SUMMIT 2017.

Saturday June 24 & Sunday June 25

University of Melbourne @unimelb

Wade Institute of Entrepreneurship @wadeinstitute

#stepup #startup #STEM

TICKETS ON SALE NOW!

Why STEM Matters to Girls.

We wish we could candy coat the stats but the numbers just aren't moving - women and girls remain grossly underrepresented in #STEM fields, and according to a recent Australian Government National Innovation and Science Agenda Report only one in four IT graduates and fewer than one in 10 engineering graduates are women.

Further, women occupy fewer than one in five senior positions in Australian universities and research institutes, and represent just one quarter of the STEM workforce overall.

This is a critical problem. Why?

Because STEM matters.

It matters because to secure Australia’s future economy, we need STEM to drive innovation, so we desperately need girls to step up to STEM, to grow their tech skillsets and mindsets, and to equip themselves for the future of work.

This will take a concerted, national effort as there are multiple cultural, institutional and organisational barriers that discourage girls and women from studying STEM, and that limit their opportunities to pursue careers in this space.

We need a movement. And it will take time.

But a big part of this is actually showing girls what they can be.

STEM role models matter. 
Girls can't be what they can't see. 
And don't know what they don't know.

So we need more STEM role models inspiring girls, science teachers, educators, media, entrepreneurs, executives, manufacturers, editors and policy-makers so more girls start to select into the mix.

This is what will start to sweeten the numbers. 💓

At Girledworld we're honoured to have the support and expertise of amazing female STEM mentors talking to and teaching girls STEM, and showing them some of the great careers built on STEM.

You can learn, meet and have the chance to chat with them at the girledworld SUMMIT at the University of Melbourne's Wade Institute the weekend of June 24/25.

Be inspired by global and local leaders in tech, deep dive coding, hear from extraordinary STEM leaders about how they started, and push your career thinking to reimagine what you and your daughters can do to embrace STEM and equip yourselves for the future of work.

Join us to make the change.

GIRLEDWORLD SUMMIT
A life-changing event for girls/Mums/Teachers/Mentors ✖️✖️
EARLY BIRD TICKETS ON-SALE NOW!! 
Get in quick before they're gone!
See you there!

Social Entrepreneur & Summit Speaker Laura Pintur wins Young Achiever of the Year 2017!

Who decides what's normal? 

When you're a teenager, it's hard to know, hard to keep up with who's making the rules, and mostly, hard to back yourself and work out how to build up the you on the inside when you just get judged a lot on the outside. 

We want to talk about that. Bust it wide open. And talk the truth about body image and the objectification of women and girls in our culture. 

So we're very pleased to announce Young Victorian Achiever of the Year 2017 Laura Pintur as one of our keynote speakers at the girledworld SUMMIT at the University of Melbourne's Wade Institute of Entrepreneurship on Sunday June 25 (think TED for girls - education, empowerment and enlightenment all jammed into one very big weekend!) EARLY BIRD TIX ON SALE NOW 🔝

We had an amazing conversation with Laura recently and were blown away by her courage, conviction and crusade to stop the objectification of women and damaging over-sexualisation of girls in today's world. 

Laura is strong, sassy, smart, a passionate advocate, speaker and social entrepreneur, and the Founder of www.whatsnormal.com.au which advocates to put a stop to the rise of pornography, address the negative effects of sexualised self-worth and explore the broader ramifications on society (the recent film Embrace @bodyimagemovement tackles this issue with a global lens).

In 2015 Laura found herself at the helm of a movement with a campaign run by Collective Shout to 'close down the Zoo Mag', which actively engaged thousands of public supporters across Australia to have the salacious lads mag removed from supermarket shelves. It worked. This public pressure exposed Zoo for what it was, and caused the closure of the magazine completely.

Laura is a previous Foundation For Young Australians Young Social Pioneer, and now travels Australia speaking to high school students about the increasingly problematic sexualisation of young people in mainstream and social media, appears regularly on TV, pens multiple articles on the topic, and is an incredible example of a young woman paving the way as a social entrepreneur.

We are so thrilled to bring Laura's BIG ENERGY, BOLD VISION and BRILLIANT LEADERSHIP to our stage at the Girledworld APAC Leadership SUMMIT 2017.

Please join Laura and an incredible lineup of founders, leaders, STEM champions and bold women who back themselves on Sunday June 25.
Be prepared to be changed. ✖️✖️  

Young Musical Talent Tilly Vickers Willis to perform at girledworld SUMMIT!

We love celebrating talent, especially extraordinary up-and-coming girl talent. 🎙

So we're thrilled to confirm Tilly Vickers-Willis, a 17-year-old amazing musician from Melbourne, as part of our talent-studded lineup for the @girledworld SUMMIT at the University of Melbourne on SUNDAY JUNE 25 (Early Bird Tickets selling now here!)

Playing piano, guitar and singing for most of her life, Tilly started writing songs around the age of 5 and turned to it as a serious craft aged just 12.

Says the songwriter: "My songs form out of necessity and reflect my careful observations of the world around me, exploring ideas such as youth, societal expectations, young love, nostalgia and an exploration of political & world issues."

Her big, bold and haunting sound is acoustic and simple, inspired by strong female artists such as London Grammar’s Hannah Reid, Missy Higgins, Lorde, and Isabella Manfredi, and to date Tilly has performed at a range of events and backyard gigs including scoring her first radio gig on 3AW with Billy Pinnell, Grubby and Dee Dee last month. 

You can lose yourself in her sound on soundcloud at soundcloud.com/tillyvw

And see her power and talent in the real @girledworld @unimelb SUMMIT (link in profile 🔝)

BOOK YOUR EARLY BIRD TICKETS NOW for the GIRLEDWORLD BIG IDEAS SUMMIT
Saturday June 24 & Sunday June 25 at the University of Melbourne ✖️✖️ 

Featuring a seriously amazing lineup of speakers and experiential workshops from @unimelb @wadeinstitute @ibm @airbnb @atlassian @tomorganic @airwallex @girlgeekacademy @adorebeauty @frank_bod @startupvictoria @wiseunimelb @whatsnormal_  @fya_org @doremecreative @mumtaza @oneroofwomen @mapunimelb @theleaguewomen @coolaustralia @philipdalidakis @launchvic and stacks more!  ✖️✖️ 

@girledworld - Building the next generation of female leaders, founders and #STEM champions.

It takes a community of many to change the life of one.

And just one empowered girl to change the world of many. 🎙✖️✖️