Women on Boards - Leaders and Directors in Conversation Women on Boards

Associate Professor Ngaire Elwood AM is driven by a strong sense of purpose that grew out of a life-changing experience that inspired her, as an inquisitive science-loving teenager, to dedicate her life to improving therapies for kids with cancer. 
As a teenager, she was treated for osteosarcoma, a common form of bone cancer that had a survival rate of about five per cent prior to the advent of chemotherapy.
After her bone cancer diagnosis, her treatment involved an above-knee amputation, followed by 18 months of high-dose chemotherapy. Even with this ‘aggressive therapy’ the survival rate is about 60 per cent.
Now she is helping others survive cancer as head of the Cord Blood Stem Cell Research Program at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and director of Melbourne’s cord blood bank.
She has devoted her career to investigating, developing and providing improved therapies for the treatment of cancer, leukaemia and other disorders and is passionate about the therapeutic application of cellular therapies. 
Her research includes exploring the different types of stem cells that are in cord blood, investigating the use of cord blood in heart repair and the treatment of cerebral palsy, and improving the use of cord blood in bone marrow transplants for treating blood cancers and other diseases.
Ngaire was made a Member of the Order of Australia AM in the 2024 Australia Day Honours awards for significant service to medicine, particularly through stem cell research - an honour she tells Claire Braund was a “bit surreal” and that it is important as a female researcher and amputee to use the platform as a voice for women in STEMM, people living with disabilities and also to raise the awareness of cord blood therapies in Australia. 
In this podcast Ngaire also talks about the development of cord blood research around the world and in Australia - “it's a really exciting time… there’s so much we don't yet know and understand about cord blood biology and its benefits and ind it’s really fun to find out” -  as well as her board career and what skills and qualities medical scientists can bring to the board table, including strategic thinking, grant-writing, risk management and big picture thinking.
“It's knowing that the work you do makes a difference and can make a difference no matter how small the role may be. Whether it's as a research assistant, student or a board member. Everybody plays a role and can make a difference,” she tells Claire.
About Ngaire Elwood:
Associate Professor Ngaire Elwood AM, PhD BSc(Hons) MAICD, is an experienced senior leader. She has devoted her career to investigating, developing and providing improved therapies for the treatment of cancer, leukaemia and other disorders and is passionate about the therapeutic application of cellular therapies.
Ngaire has broad governance expertise, and holds a diverse board portfolio. She is the immediate past Vice President of the international Board of Directors for the Foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapies (FACT), Non-Executive Director on the Boards of the National Stem Cell Foundation of Australia and international Cord Blood Association, and previous Chair of the Board for the Australian Sickle Cell Advocacy Inc (ASCA). She was previously the Australia New Zealand (ANZ), Regional Vice President for the International Society for Cell & Gene Therapy (ISCT) and is a member of the ISCT Board of Directors (2018-2020; 2022-2024). She is Chair of the FACT Education Committee, is a FACT Cord Blood Bank Inspector and sits on the FACT Cord Blood Accreditation Committee, FACT Cord Blood Standards Committee, FACT Regenerative Medicine Task Force and the FACT New Business Development Committee.
Ngaire serves as Chair of the AusCord network of public cord blood banks and is a member of the TGA Advisory Committee on Biologicals. As Director of the BMDI Cord Blood Bank, a TGA-licensed manufacturing facility, Ngaire has extens

In this first episode of the new Women on Boards Honours Podcast Series - featuring the 12 WOB members recognised in the 2024 Australia Day Honours - WOB co-founder and Executive Director, Claire Braund, chats with Emerita Professor Lesley Hitchens.
Lesley was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for significant service to tertiary education, and to the law. This is only the second year that the majority of honours were awarded to women since the national system formally began on 14 February 1975 – nearly 50 years ago.
Lesley had a long and distinguished legal career, starting in Sydney at Allens before she headed overseas to London in the mid-1980s and became immersed in the world of legal British academia.
She returned to Australia in mid 2000 and took up roles with the University of Melbourne and then UNSW and UTS where she finished up as Dean and then Acting Provost. 
Lesley has received many honours from peers including as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law and awarded the Financial Times Australian Legal Innovator Award in 2018. She is on the board of Shopfront Arts Coop.
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Growing up in South Africa Lisa Carlin experienced apartheid in its truest form.  “I just felt this complete sense of unfairness of it all, and that's really carried with me today” she says.  Through this she has become extremely passionate about transformation to give a voice to those who don’t have one.
Lisa is the cofounder and CEO of global advisory FutureBuilders Group and author of Turbocharge weekly. Her portfolio includes mentoring founders and CEOs in the HRTech, EdTech and workplace talent sector, she is on the Advisory board for Rebelliuz and Chair of the University of Cape Town Australia Trust.
In this podcast Lisa talks to Claire about how her desire to embed transformational change stems from her upbringing in South Africa and how this has carried with her to the workplace today.  She says while it's important for organisations to understand workplace transformation on many levels, it imperative just to stay relevant and ahead of disruption.
Lisa’s professional focus is to accelerate growth transformation and scale ups, which she explains is more about strategy execution than strategy.  She stresses the importance of culture and talks about why it’s one of the main reasons that execution fails. She also discusses her appetite for risk, the reason she sits on an Advisory board and why her mantra is “Communities magnify momentum”.
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Lisa Carlin (guest)

Claire Braund (host)
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Claire Braund spoke to 3AW Drive Host, Tom Elliot on 23 Sept 2023 about a decision by HESTA that they will vote against select director re-elections of ASX300 companies where the board has less than 30 per cent of female representation.
Claire says HESTA and other investment firms are taking a stance on “merit”,
“We like to think of merit as something objective … but it’s actually defined by culture, values and expectations … which means only some parts of merit are to do with how hard one works,” she told Tom Elliott.
Read HESTA's four key expectations for ASX300 companies in 2023-24 AGM season HERE

You may well think Dr Amber Tan has the world at her feet and job offers flowing in. A former Malaysian national who was born and raised in Ipoh (the gateway to the Cameron Highlands hill station), Amber migrated to Melbourne in 2011 with her partner and received an Australian Postgraduate Award scholarship in 2013 to complete her PhD at Monash University. A feat she accomplished in 2017 with no amendments. 
Her thesis critically examined national security and public order laws in Malaysia and their impact on constitutionalism and the rule of law and Amber has also conducted extensive research into human rights abuses under these laws.
Prior to academia, Amber was in private practice as a litigator in Malaysia having won a full scholarship to study at law at Kings College London where she graduated with 1st Class honours in 2007 and as one of only five students in her class to be awarded an Exhibition Prize.
Yet Amber’s employment story is not one of which Australia can be proud. In this podcast with Claire Braund, Amber shares her story  - from her determination as a 14 year old to win an international scholarship to follow her dreams studying law in London to the systemic discrimination she experienced in Australia due to her multicultural background where she says “I felt like my career was crushed”.
Forced to wait tables and sell her paintings to scratch a living for two years, Amber recalls being asked if she spoke English when applying for legal roles. “They weren’t  even looking at my CV beyond looking at my name.”
Today Amber is on a mission to use her research into the challenges and discrimination facing Asian women in the workplace in Australia for positive change. As she says: “I don't want to be just part of another unfortunate statistic. I want to change the statistics".
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Amber Tan (guest)
Claire Braund (host)
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Dr Monique Beedles was not your average teenager. At 15, as well as having posters of Murph Hughes and the Adelaide Oval on her bedroom wall, it was her dream to be CEO of Swiss multinational healthcare company Roche. To this end, she went on to study German and chemistry at school. “I was always interested in medical research from a very young age. But I didn’t know back then that to be the CEO of Roche, your name has to be Roche,” she tells Claire in this podcast.
Undeterred, Monique went on to study pharmacy and gained her first board role with the Australasian College of Pharmacy. Today she is an internationally recognised thought leader and bestselling author of books on strategy, leadership and asset management and a self-confessed cricket tragic. She also has a PhD in strategy, a Master of Finance, 20 years of board experience, is a qualified pharmacist and has been a member of Women on Boards for many years.
“I haven’t really followed the traditional path,” she tells Claire, while sharing her insights on asset management in 2023 - and the shift from traditional ‘physical’ asset management to intangible assets such as data and intellectual property. Monique and Claire also discuss the enduring relevance of her 2011 book Pivot Point about how business decision makers have to prepare for an uncertain future, and look at the challenges for boards post-COVID.
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Dr Monique Beedles (guest) 
Claire Braund (host)
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