A/Prof Francine Marques is a National Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellow, Monash University. A medical researcher, Francine currently leads a team of 13 scientists who are working toward discovering new ways to prevent heart disease through our gut microbes. Francine’s leadership has been key to new programs to support those working in science, particularly women. Examples include national and international mentoring programs, a podcast about mentoring with world leaders in heart disease, and a woman in heart research spotlight. She has led a national survey of researchers to determine how to improve their work conditions and retention.

Aminata Conteh-Biger is an Australian author, speaker, advocate, special representative for Australia UNHCR and performer as well as the founder and CEO of non- profit organisation, the Aminata Maternal Foundation, saving the lives of hundreds of mothers and babies in her home country, Sierra Leone. Determined to “be change” while on earth, Aminata describes this as her vow to her integrity. In 2020, Aminata’s memoir ‘Rising Heart’ was published by Pan Macmillan; recalling her trauma at being kidnapped from her father’s arms as a teenager and used as a sex slave.

Naureen Alam is the Senior Manager, Future Business and Technology at AGL. A change-maker in the clean energy industry, Naureen is passionate about operationalising innovation & tech to realise a sustainable energy future. Recognised as an Engineers Australia’s Young Engineer of the Year finalist and selected for EnergyLab’s Women in Clean Energy Fellowship program, Naureen has also completed a Masters in Sustainability Leadership from Cambridge University, UK. Naureen has delivered $10million value by leading a gender balanced and technically diverse team.

Susana has over 20 years of experience in community development, policy and leadership development. She has been nurturing a new generation of activists and community development professionals by supervising over 150 Social Work and Policy students. Susana has also developed and managed the award winning International Student Leaderships and Ambassadors Program (ISLA) since 2013. Angered by rising interpersonal and systemic racism, and the lack of safe spaces for people of colour to have a voice about racism, Susana initiated and convenes the NSW Anti-Racism Working Group which uses a collaborative impact approach to address racism.

Mani Thiru is the APAC Business Lead within the Aerospace & Satellite Solutions team at Amazon Web Services. Mani works to enable the space sector achieve its most ambitious goals by leveraging cloud computing and transformative services like machine learning, artificial intelligence, satellite & data analytics to deliver innovation in a range of areas; from space enabled agriculture & emergency disaster response through to space exploration and earth observation research.

Joanna is the president of Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action, a unique organisation changing the conversation around climate. Her powerful storytelling about the devastating losses of individual Australians, sidelines political brawling and instead creates compassionate engagement. In 2021, Jo attended COP26, the major United Nations climate change conference currently being held in Glasgow. Her goal was to ensure the voices of Australian bushfire survivors were being heard.

Source: Women’s Leadership Awards

Antoinette Lattouf is an award-winning Network 10 journalist. She’s the Director and co-founder of Media Diversity Australia. In 2019, Antoinette was named among AFR’s 100 Women of Influence. While continuing her day job as a television journalist, Antoinette led landmark research into the lack of diversity in the news media which made national and international headlines, introduced paid internships for CALD entry-level journalists, oversaw the launch of a free directory of CALD professionals for journalists to use as talent interviewees. She also leads a team of 30 volunteers who help run MDA and is about to hire full-time staff to help the charity grow.

Source: Women’s Leadership Awards

Lawyer turned technologist, Priyanka Ashraf is the Founder and Director of The Creative Co-Operative, Australia’s first 100% migrant Women of Colour owned, led and operated startup dedicated to lifting the economic access barriers faced by migrant WoC as a result of systemic racism. Structured as a social enterprise and operating as an agency, the CCO employs migrant WoC across creative, marketing and digital services and in the space of roughly 6 months of bootstrapping, has already created over 40 paid work opportunities for migrant WoC. The CCO applies a Pay It Forward model, where its commercial work helps fund community projects to amplify WoC.

Source: Women’s Leadership Awards

Right now, there is an unprecedented opportunity to take your power back.

The world has gone through a collective and simultaneous hurtling of all their playing cards in the air. The game rules you might’ve been adhering to are now no longer relevant or even available to you.

Perhaps you made the choice not to catch that card and put it into play again. Or perhaps the other player decided it was outdated, and took it off the table.  Either way, the game has changed, and there are opportunities everywhere – if you choose to see them.

Seeing them takes awareness on a heightened level. It takes viewing change through the lens of life happening FOR you, not TO you.

Ask yourself “if this change was happening FOR me, what are the opportunities here?” Share on X

The kicking and screaming will come from those who thought that the game you were playing had a conclusive ending. For them there will be grief, toxicity, blame, shame, guilt – all of the emotions. Their projections needn’t impact you showing up in your empowerment.

For you, beautiful unique woman of flex, empathy and love, using this framing question as an approach to life will gift you an endless reservoir of opportunity.

EVEN when the “happening TO me” crowd is throwing all their toys out of the pram – straight at you – all you will see is opportunity.

So how do you re-orient your life and career around opportunity rather than consequence? Share on X

Stop: judgement, blame, theorising, accusations…just stop.
Surrender: understand you can only change your reaction and how it all makes you feel.
Choose: see how this is working FOR you rather than against you
Be led: imagine the opportunity as a thread of string in front of you… let your curiosity and intuition follow it by asking yourself ‘if this was an opportunity where would it take me next’.
Keep opening: don’t stop at the first destination or awareness that presents itself on that string, open up more – when you see the first opportunity, re-orient again by asking “so if I had that opportunity then where would we go?”
Gather: all the gold in that line of curious and intuitive thought.
Alchemise: bring the gold back to your conscious mind and alchemise it into a new form
Reassess: now take another look at the orientation of your situation, and see if it feels more open and expansive!

I bet it does! I bet there are powerful opportunities EVERYWHERE right in front of you!

Things look different depending on what lens you view them through. It’s not about “doing it the right way” according to the rules that were set up in a game that is no longer relevant to you.

It’s about constant reorientation to your life principles. Share on X

That is how you show up in your unique contribution every day, and make the impact you’re here to make.

Make it your only commitment, to generate from your contribution principles every day, in every moment and the outcome is always positive impact.

That in fact, is the only foregone conclusion.

Ticker News_Kath Clarke Interview

Ticker News interviews Kath Clarke on #greatresignation

 

As we transition into a new normal, you might be reflecting. Perhaps you’re feeling a little unfulfilled like you might want a change, but don’t know how the wonderful patchwork of your life experiences adds up to what’s next for you!

The good news is we are in a highly creative new normal, which means anything could be possible! And YOUR ‘possible’ can start to unfurl by becoming aware of what your unique contribution is through some guided identity discovery work.

When you discover what YOUR unique contribution is, you have the basis of a personal brand, which directs really powerful choices of what to do next, who with, and in what ‘vehicle’…be it a new challenge, new job or new business.

I was interviewed on Ticker News about just this, how it fits with personal branding, and the bigger picture of the ‘epidemic of the unfulfilled’ workforce.

More recently Anthony Klotz (Associate Professor of Management at Texas A&M) named the trend I was hinting at #greatresignation. Much hot debate has come from this now too, and many think it’s more of a #greatrealignment.

Whatever the thoughts of the academics, I’m more interested in YOU on the ground in the workforce! What do you think  – hit me up in the comments below!

Kath x

When you discover what YOUR unique contribution is, you have the basis of a personal brand, which directs really powerful choices of what to do next, who with, and in what ‘vehicle’...be it a new challenge, new job or new business. Share on X

Busy designing ‘Impact Alchemys‘ for clients wanting to know what to do, with who, and how, to create a fulfilling and impactful business or career.

It all starts by unearthing and reconnecting you to your Unique Contribution!