The Net Result - Book 1: Profiles of Executive Women

By Lucille Orr

This first book in a series of four books; includes the success stories of business and professional women who won the title of "South Australian Executive Woman of the Year". These women are the founders of the prestigious, "Telstra Business Women's Awards".

This series of books have been used in "Career Study Classes" in High Schools, Universities and Business Colleges since the nineties.

Women wanting to start their own small businesses and those keen to climb corporate ladders or sit on company boards have all gained the valuable knowledge they needed from these pioneering women's stories.

Be sure to collect the four volumes in this set of invaluable books that were originally published for the members of the Australian Executive Women's Network.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9780987159830

Book preview

Network

Why You Will Love This Book

The Net Result series of books (four volumes) contain the success stories of the winners of the most prestigious AWARD in Australia today, for business and professional women. It was originated in South Australia by Lucille Orr and her Australian Executive Women’s Network members’ way back in 1987. It was the Australian Executive Woman of the Year Award and then it became the Telecom Executive Woman Award when Telecom Australia became the naming sponsors and the Award expanded nationally in 1991.

Due to the overwhelming success of the Award in 1995 when Telecom changed its name it also renamed the Award and it became the Telstra Business Women’s Award.

Lucille Orr, Founder and President of AEWN organised the Award for nine years with the wonderful support of her staff and the AEWN members. She wanted to thank the inaugural Winners and Runners Up in both the Award and a Speaking Competition the AEWN organised by way of including the life stories of these wonderful women in books titled The Net Result.

The books have been used by High Schools and Universities in Career Studies classes for almost 20 years and to enable the whole world to enjoy these women and learn from their pioneering spirit in business, we have made them accessible as four e-books.

Please enjoy the stories and encourage others to gain self-confidence and inspiration by recommending they read the four e-books.

Dedication

To our mothers, without whose creativity

and guidance we wouldn’t be;

to our partners at home and/or in business without whose patience and support

we wouldn’t be where we are.

We also dedicate this book to Nancy Robinson Flannery our beloved editor who died on 1st September 2011. Nancy will be with us forever, in our hearts and minds. She did so much for the AEWN members.

An anthology by award winning

business women

Edited by Nancy Robinson Flannery

Produced and Published by Lucille Orr

for the

Australian Executive Women’s Network

107 Carrington Street, Adelaide SA 5000

Telephone: [phone]

Email: [e-mail]

Mobile: [phone]

Re-designed as an e-Book, by Steve Orr

Email: [e-mail]

Published in eBook format by Lucille Orr

Converted by http://www.ebookit.com

Copyright 2012 Lucille Orr,

All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-0-9871-5983-0

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the consent of the publisher.

All the stories in this book are true and personally written by the women in the book.

Part I: Networking

Foreword

by Liz Davenport

Every so often in history an exceptional human being is born: someone who has endless energy, dynamism that never dulls, a leader who can gather people together and lift them to greater heights.

There are elements of greatness in most people but all too often the opportunity to switch on the light is not available and the greatness never reaches its full potential.

In our innermost being we may suspect we are capable of more but opportunity to have a go is not there or the ambition is daunted by not having a starting point.

Lucille Orr is that rare human being to have surmounted those obstacles with the vision to see over the horizon, she’s that shining light who never seems to dull, the beacon who signals that here is a place to gather, to pin hopes and collect ideas. In Lucille we have a catalyst who offers a supportive starting point or a reinforcement of direction: a Network of Inspiration.

The development of the Australian Executive Women’s Network in such a short time, extending to so many thousands of women in every corner of this wonderful country, is a phenomenon.

The stories contained in this book of the achievements of the women who have become winners of the awards are awe inspiring.

Recognition is the warmest reward: the praise after the long haul. All too often that recognition so justly deserved after a path of dedication and determination is not there, because the opportunity to tell the story just didn’t exist. The Network, and in particular this book, gives the framework for this to happen.

The diversity of career paths – the broad spectrum from hospital management to shipping, through funeral direction, banking, and above all the stories give encouragement for younger women to set their sights higher and give them an avenue to enable those first tentative steps to be more positive.

We often hear about discrimination against women in business. A book such as this is a positive reinforcement of a resource all too often misinterpreted, underestimated or overlooked. May many men – husbands, lovers and bosses – also enjoy this book of achievements to broaden their understanding and recognition of the enormous resource that women offer: women of all ages and levels of education in such diverse fields.

If only the most amazingly brilliant and talented birds of the forest were allowed to sing – the forest would be a very silent place.

It is a source of enormous pride for me to carry the title of number one in the Australian Executive women’s Network’s Top 100 Club. It is an honour I treasure in the same way as the women of this book will treasure their inclusion.

May the energy never cease its inspiring bubble; and may that shining light never, never dull.

Preface

by Nancy Flannery

At times when I’ve watched my four grand-daughters successively becoming toddlers and going through the frequent falls of physical development, I’ve wondered how they’ll cope with the highs and lows of their lives. Will they have the capacity and the temperament to pick themselves up after failures in the same cheerful way in which they now get up after their chubby toddlers’ legs have stumbled and fallen? How well will they be able to pursue new goals in the manner in which they now brush down their dolls before plodding on after a ball, a butterfly, a dog or an older sibling? How much will their gender affect their opportunities?

While this modest book doesn’t necessarily provide definitive answers to those questions, it does encapsulate some of the processes of learning to walk, of picking up after stumbles, of pursuing the bright butterflies which these successful women have encountered in their progress through the business, corporate and professional channels of their choice. It presents a microcosm of women’s climb to administrative positions during the significant period 1950 – 1990. As such, it becomes a social document of interest to Women’s Studies departments as well as of value to the contemporary corporate and small business world.

The vision for the publication was Lucille Orr’s and the concept was incubated between us the day we met at a literary luncheon. While I was completing my previous assignment, Lucille – in her inimitable, decisive style – was contacting the winners and finalists of the AEWN award, inviting them to be contributors.

How they responded to her call and how they varied in their interpretations of her guidelines is now the fabric of this book. As only two had any real experience in writing for publication, the entries arrived (hand-delivered, posted, faxed) in styles as varied as the women themselves. Although I didn’t receive manuscripts stapled together with four-inch nails or tied together with shoelaces (as I did as a publisher in the seventies), there were some handwritten contributions amongst the typewritten submissions. Experience had taught me not to judge on presentation alone, but those submitted double-spaced with both hard copy and a diskette were received with sighs of relief from my capable and tolerant assistant, Roz Lawson.

Most of the authors had to overcome hesitancy at writing in the first person instead of the anonymous third person of their corporate reports or the figures of their balance sheets. Their reluctance has been summarised by one of the entrants to the 1992 Award who, writing to Lucille Orr, said: "I found it surprisingly difficult to compile my ‘life story’. Writing about myself and my small achievements made me feel self-conscious and uncomfortable. When I spoke to other women about this I found that, they too, have difficulty standing up and saying, ‘yes, I am good at this’, or, ‘yes, I did that.’

I think our discomfiture arises from the fact that we are conditioned not to put ourselves forward or talk about ourselves or our achievements. The unhappy result of all of this is that women’s contributions to society go largely un-noticed and young women are denied the positive role models they desperately seek."

If relating their business experiences was difficult for this score of women, expressing their feelings and telling of their personal, family lives was a factor some couldn’t face at all; while others opened out a little only after gentle editorial prodding. Perhaps we need to consider why this is so? Is it that in a business environment still predominantly male, women executives find it necessary to subjugate those feminine instincts of sentiment, caring, compassion?

Is it because big boys don’t cry and don’t discuss their family backgrounds, that their female counterparts making their way in the corporate world are having to play the same game?

And is it significant that the contributors to this book who have been the frankest, about their feelings and their personal lives, are those who are private entrepreneurs and thus not fearing male criticism of being too soft?

The childhood years and the working backgrounds of the contributors range from rural to urban, provincial to metropolitan, Australia to Africa to Europe to Asia. Their educational standards, career paths and philosophies are also diverse.

Many of them cite their parents, or grandparents as role models, while others talk to teachers or work superiors as their mentors. And some have changed jobs many times and also changed direction.

As my pruning, transposing and tidying of the stories has adhered to the traditional editorial concepts of retaining the integrity and essence of the author’s work, the reader will find little consistency of style. There are, however, some common themes, two of which are that these women have not been afraid of hard work nor have they hesitated to take risks. The reader will perceive, too, that these successful career women are feminine but not feminists. As their role model, they have the founder of the Network, the ever-feminine, Liz-Davenport-fashions-clad, Lucille Orr.

When each story had been edited, I called in the authors for proof-reading. Many of these women (all in their thirties, forties and early fifties) could be my daughters. My role has therefore extended in some cases, to being something of a Mother Confessor. I can feel for them as they win or lose promotions, and as they juggle the multi-faceted roles of being dedicated career women as well as homemakers, wives, mothers and even (like me) grandmothers. I was glad that some of them paid tribute to their husbands or partners; and it was generous of so many of them to pass on advice for other women aspiring to climb the career ladder – hints on how to