I recently became a committee member for my employer's Women’s International Network group. I sought out this role, and our first event is to celebrate International Women’s Day. As part of that celebration, I decided to tell you what International Women’s Day means to me.

I’ll do it by telling you about the amazing women that have impacted my life in subtle and large ways. But I won’t mention my mother, even though she has had an amazing impact on me. If you want to read more about her, you can read the article I wrote for Mother’s Day. …

One of the very first birthday presents I remember from my childhood was a ‘cops and robbers’ kit. You know, the plastic holster and small metal cap gun with a badge. It must have been around my 8th birthday. I didn’t get it from my family, or even my friends, I got it from the couple who were staying at the next-door campsite during a summer camping holiday.

Fast forward to when I was a teenager, my best friend and I stayed awake for a full day to complete a 24-hour race on the PlayStation game Gran Turismo. It was…

On one of my long car rides, I listened to my favourite podcaster Ryan Hawk interview a researcher and author. The information I heard on that trip has helped me understand more about myself and those I interact with.

The author, Gretchen Rubin, asked a few questions of the host;

You are standing in a line at the coffee shop, and there is a big sign that says ‘no mobile phone use in the line’. The person in front of you takes out their phone to use and can obviously see the sign. How does that make you feel?

It’s…

In 2019, the Burger King Marketing Executives hired a firm to help with their marketing strategy.

First, they started liking tweets from 2010 from people with massive Twitter followers. The Twitter Influencers like gaming superstar NadeShot and YouTube superstar Casey Neistat had tweets from 2010 that no one else had liked, interacted with by the official Burger King account.

Sean Kernan did a brilliant piece on it here. Through this, they utilised the influencers to reach markets for minimal cost. This campaign was an exploit-marketing entry and was exceptionally successful at increasing the reach of the company.

The same marketing firm also convinced the company to invest in the sporting market to gain exposure, but they…

Fiona ran out of one meeting room, juggling an empty coffee cup, a notebook and laptop, and a full bladder down the hall to the next room. A finance meeting just finished, and now there is a meeting on HR policy.

Even though she was in the previous meeting for 30 minutes, she isn’t sure of what the actual outcomes of the meeting were, and if she had any actions, she didn’t write them down.

At the end of the day, she’ll know that she spent most of her day in a meeting room and none of it progressing the…

My thirteen-year-old daughter is struggling at school. Teenage girls throughout the generations appear to all go through this phase. They look for things that make people different or magnify their own insecurities by demeaning others around them.

It isn’t nice to watch the effect, but there isn’t a great deal you can do. So I’ve focussed on trying to let her know what she can focus on. And I want her to focus on lifting people up, rather than trying to bring them down.

It made me reflect on the people I’ve met. There are those who everyone seemed to…

I was asked this question during a chat with a friend the other day, as we reflected on the last few years. I had been fortunate, he had not been. But in truth, over our working lives, there had been very few great leaders. Very few people that genuinely made you better and supported you through that growth.

It made me reflect on those that I have had, and start to contemplate what it was that made them great leaders. Was there a common theme? Or were there unique traits that made them great leaders in their own ways?

There…