Champions of change
As Australia looks to a more equal, representative, diverse and creative future, we recognise female leaders who are fashioning real and meaningful change by forging the way forward with their voices, their talents and their actions.
As Australia looks to a more representative, diverse and creative future, we recognise female leaders who are fashioning real change.
NINA FUNNELL, Walkley Award winning journalist and #LetHerSpeak and #LetUsSpeak campaign creator GRACE TAME, 2021 Australian of the Year and advocate for survivors of sexual assault
Since its launch in November 2018, the #LetHerSpeak campaign has built an incredible legacy for survivors of sexual assault wanting to share their stories and the way media reports on such cases. It has also made a household name of Grace Tame, the woman at the centre who was originally blocked from being identified in her native Tasmania, but whose ensuing advocacy won her this year’s Australian of the Year Award.
Helmed by Nina Funnell, an investigative freelance journalist with 10 years’ experience reporting on sexual violence, #LetHerSpeak was originally launched after Funnell met the then 22-year-old Tame in 2017 and learnt of the gag law that prevented her from sharing her story.
“The idea was that by focusing on a single case study, we would draw attention to the horrific impacts of the existing gag law and that, in turn, would generate awareness about why the law was punitive and harmful to rape survivors,”
Funnell explains.
“By taking her case through the Supreme Court and winning her a single individual exemption and then allowing her to be publicly identified under her real name, that would again show the benefit of allowing survivors the autonomy to decide for themselves whether or not they want to be identified.”
As a survivor of sexual assault herself, Funnell knew that speaking out on your own terms allows survivors to reclaim control, so subsequently worked “every day, literally every weekend, nights, holidays and birthdays” from her living room in partnership with News.com.au, Marque Lawyers and the organisation End Rape On Campus Australia.
Her approach was three-pronged: “It combined media advocacy, which was using the media as an instrumental vehicle to generate awareness of the laws; legal advocacy in the sense that we were taking specific individual matters to court as case studies to continue to highlight the impact of the law; and then government advocacy, which was creating a petition, producing government submissions and letter writing.
Not only did Funnell’s tireless pursuit allow her to tell Tame’s story in August 2019, but it led to direct legal assistance for another 18 individual survivors across three jurisdictions, which culminated in four law reforms – not just in Tasmania, but also the Northern Territory and Victoria – as well as Funnell being awarded three Walkley Awards.
Tame, meanwhile, admits that for a relatively articulate person, she struggles to put her journey into words. “It’s so humbling because people want to offer their support, not just for me, but for the cause,” she says. “I’ve always just been a representative of a much bigger movement guided by truth and justice and a fundamental desire to make progress and unite people, and educate people and empower people. To be part of it, especially in the position I’m in at the moment as Australian of the Year, is such a huge honour and privilege … I get the opportunity every day to experience firsthand what kind of impact we’re making as a team.”
She’s honed her skills as a gifted orator, addressing not just the National Press Gallery, but crowds in the Women’s March4Justice in Hobart and for myriad International Women’s Day events, fuelled by the love and energy she both witnesses and receives. “That’s what you see come to the surface when you are able to relate and connect to another human being in that way. And I’m not talking about deep in love, like, ‘I love you.’ I mean, like, pure goodness that overpowers all manner of evil and makes us collectively resilient.”
Meanwhile, Funnell continues with her leadership and advocacy for victims, although has recently expanded the campaign in Victoria under the new title #LetUsSpeak, which is more inclusive of male and non-binary survivors. Three-and-a-half years in, she is adamant her work is far from over. “Dismantling the legal barriers for survivors to speak out is really just the first step. Now, as a community, we need to pay a lot more attention to the social and cultural barriers that continue to silence survivors and which need to be dismantled.” Jessica Montague
“The idea was that by focusing on a single case study, we would draw attention to the horrific impacts of the existing gag law”
“If we’ve inspired the next generation about Indigenous fashion … I think that we’ve done our job”
GRACE LILLIAN LEE, founder, First Nations Fashion + Design
When Grace Lillian Lee announced the formation of a First Nations Fashion Council, Covid interrupted – in a very real way. “I remember the director of events standing up and saying – straight through our announcement – we have to shut down the event because there were over 500 people,” she recalls of being at the Australian Fashion Summit at Melbourne Fashion Festival in 2020 when restrictions came into effect. It didn’t stop her.
Along with Teagan “TJ” Cowlishaw, now CEO, they founded First Nations Fashion + Design, an independent not-for-profit organisation that fosters the growth of Indigenous fashion, through workshops and mentorships. While born in 2017, they went from strength to strength in the middle of a pandemic. Thriving in the face of adversity is not unlike the path of many Indigenous people, overcoming unimaginable existential threats to preserve 60,000-year-old cultures, yet continuing to make vital contributions to the modern cultural life of the country.
As a Cairns-based creative and designer, she makes scrolling and furling body adornments in vivid colour using a weaving technique drawing on her Torres Strait Islander lineage. Under the tutelage of renowned artist Ken Thaiday, RMIT-graduate Lee began working with communities and artists on Erub Island and Mornington Islands in the Strait. “It really made me see more of the interest and the growing interest in how fashion can really create change for a community,” she says.
This was an idea profoundly felt at the first-ever all-Indigenous fashion runway at this year’s Australian Fashion Week. Produced by Lee, who founded the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair’s fashion show, and has produced the Country to Couture runway shows at Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair, she crafted a musical, visual and spiritual showcase of First Nations fashion.
Entirely self-funded, it was in line with Lee’s vision that the organisation remain independent to support Indigenous self-determination and nurture young talent, from models to stylists, photographers and more. “If we’ve inspired the next generation or change people’s mindsets within our nation about Indigenous fashion … I think that we’ve done our job,” she says.
Having just wrapped another show and workshops at the oldest Aboriginal festival in Australia, in Barunga, Northern Territory, she’s setting her sights on a First Nations’ fashion festival, “dedicated to Indigenous textiles and designers and the ecology of the industry, so creating this really beautiful event annually that people could come and see what’s happening nationally”. Alice Birrell
GRACE FORREST, co-founder and director of Walk Free
Grace Forrest is a natural-born leader. She is a passionate campaigner for human rights. Since she co-founded Walk Free, an international human rights group focused on accelerating the end of modern slavery more than a decade ago, she has pushed for policy, legislation and global systems change to protect basic human rights and raise awareness around the ongoing atrocities of modern slavery.
“There are more women and girls living in slavery today than there are people living in Australia. I am both haunted and inspired by that fact. I was inspired to co-found Walk Free by working with and learning from survivors.”
Now, 10 years on, Walk Free is a dedicated and trailblazing team who work to end the man-made problem of modern slavery. Much of their work is about ensuring survivor voices are heard, believed and amplified. “Their voices, experiences and expertise are central to what we do, from policy recommendations to the highest level of national and international governance, to producing the world’s leading dataset on measuring and understanding modern slavery. When you are dealing with such huge numbers, among so many other major global challenges, the problem sometimes seems too big to solve, but we must never lose sight of the inherent value of every human life. The fact is slavery is 100 per cent a man-made problem. As close as the shirt on your back, the coffee you drink and the smartphone in your hand. And that means that we can each do something about it.”
“The problem sometimes seems too big to solve, but we must never lose sight of the inherent value of every human life”
Forrest is currently in Geneva with the head of global research, Jacqueline JoudoLarsen, working on the next global estimates of modern slavery with UN agencies, the International Labour Organization and The International Organization for Migration. This dataset will inform the next Global Slavery Index and become the new global standard and global effort to accelerate the end of modern slavery.
“Of all the industries in which modern slavery is a major challenge, fashion is one of the worst. This is because exploitation occurs at every level of the supply chain – from the growing of the cotton (say, in China), to the spinning of the fabric (say, in India), to the creation of the garment (say, in Bangladesh or Ethiopia). Much of this exploitation is fuelled by cheaper-than-a-sandwich fast fashion, a seemingly never-ending demand for ‘new’, and a severe lack of transparency.”
She adds: “Seriously, right now, Google your favourite brand and see what information they have about their garment workers and supply chain. If they have none, feel free to assume the worst. Or if it is there, but seems too good to be true, or just a lot of words without any legitimate protections (policies on forced and child labour, independent auditing or a commitment to a living wage for their workers) then generally it’s green washing. This makes it incredibly hard for consumers to do the ‘right’ thing. Sustainability is trending, but that doesn’t necessarily equate to fair working conditions for people or protection of our natural environment.” Alison Veness
MELISSA HOPKINS, head of marketing Optus and mental health advocate
Sitting propped up in her bed the night before R U OK? Day in 2018, Melissa Hopkins made a spur-of-themoment decision that has greatly impacted her life since. In a post on LinkedIn, she revealed her “deepest, darkest secret” – that she’d been suffering a severe form of depression since her early 20s.
It was an off-the-cuff moment of vulnerability laid bare in front of thousands of colleagues and connections who only knew Hopkins as the highly successful, effervescent and energetic head of marketing for Optus. The post – which Hopkins signed off with the mantra “Let’s smash stigmas around mental health together” – went viral and notched up hundreds of thousands more views from strangers, many of whom reached out to Hopkins directly.
“I was blown away with the response. I really felt I’d reached so many people in a way I hadn’t intended to,” she remembers. “I think, for me, putting it on LinkedIn was me accepting this is part of who I am and that’s not a negative … For me, talking about it and sharing it, validated it. For probably the first time in almost all my life I put out there who I really was.”
Sharing her truth not only allowed Hopkins to start a new chapter personally (“a journey I’ve still been going on,” she says), but placed her on the path to an authentic and intuitive type of advocacy. She now sits as a nonexecutive director on the board at batyr, a preventative mental health organisation created and driven by young people for young people, and has recently been invited by the government to be a special advisor for the Public Stigma Technical Advisory Board, a move Hopkins says she’s “blown away with”.
She believes the key to breaking down stigma around mental health lies in authentic storytelling. “For me it’s just the normalisation, and for people to feel okay if they’re having these thoughts or suffering from the different varieties,” Hopkins says. “I’ve just realised I’m now actually in a position of influence at some level and just by sharing my own story and other stories could help others going through it.” Jessica Montague
LISA HAVILAH, CEO and EMILY McDANIEL, director First Nations, Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum
So much has been written recently about the grit and grace of female leaders, and what seems to set their leadership style apart is the way in which it transcends the individual to embrace the collective. It’s less about one woman’s achievements, and more about what her vision and ambition will do for the greater good. When a leadership team is made up of multiple women, like at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, that dynamic only proliferates.
Leading its recently announced $500-million renewal is chief executive Lisa Havilah, who joined in
“I was blown away with the response. I really felt I’d reached so many people in a way I hadn’t intended to”
“We’re thinking about how we can work closely with the local industry to sustain and grow fashion and design talent. It includes providing subsidised space for designers to be based at the Powerhouse”
2019 and was instrumental in securing the funding from the New South Wales government, and Emily McDaniel, an esteemed curator, educator and writer from the Kalari Clan of the Wiradjuri nation in Central New South Wales, who was recently appointed the museum’s inaugural director, First Nations.
They share the desire to radically rethink the role of a museum in contemporary Australian society, especially as it pertains to promoting our First Nations history, culture and knowledge.
“The Powerhouse is over 140 years old and, with a few exceptions, what we collect has come from a very Western perspective. It’s been very hierarchical – even the word ‘museum’, it’s very sandstone,” Havilah tells Vogue. “We really want to break down and reconsider what hierarchies exist; who should be leading and telling the stories.”
“We want to think about exhibitions as conversations,” adds McDaniel, who played a major role in co-curating and commissioning the Powerhouse’s current exhibition on the cultural history of the gum tree, Eucalyptusdom (on until May 2022). “They’re never finished in their entirety, they just open up new ways of considering and expressing thought and meaning.”
Fashion and design will play a major role in the museum’s overhaul – the government’s decision to grant funding based on this is a monumental vote of confidence, not just for the local fashion industry, but all of the many sectors it touches. Havilah has ambitions for the new Powerhouse to hold its ground against the great fashion museums of the world – The Met in New York, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and Belgium’s ModeMuseum – but not at the mercy of the local sector.
“We’re thinking about how we can work closely with the local industry to sustain and grow fashion and design talent, and that doesn’t just mean doing international fashion exhibitions,” Havilah says. “It includes providing subsidised space for designers to be based at the Powerhouse – and that applies to young people wanting to move into fashion and design, but also emerging designers who are moving into a national or international career.”
If the respect and admiration McDaniel and Havilah have for each other, professionally and personally, is the foundation upon which the Powerhouse’s new era is being built on, there’s much to look forward to.
“Lisa doesn’t just see First Nations representation as an option,” says McDaniel. “It’s not an afterthought. It’s woven and embedded in everything the Powerhouse wants to be, and commits to being.” Amy Campbell
ANGIE FIELDER and POLLY STANIFORD, founders of Aquarius Films
Even as a child, growing up in Townsville in the 1980s, Angie Fielder knew she wanted to make movies. The Oscar-nominated producer of Lion was “really obsessed with all those big Making Of … one-hour specials on television,” she recalls. “I found the whole process fascinating.”
Some 17,000 kilometres away in London, Polly Staniford was having a similar revelation. “It’s a little bit of a cliché, but I did always love storytelling as a kid,” she says. Staniford recalls play dates with the daughter of director Terry Gilliam in a house full of filmmaking ephemera. “I went: ‘Oh wow. I want that job,’” she reflects.
It would be several more years before the pair would meet in Melbourne, working on an awards ceremony for Inside Film magazine presided over by then-editor David Michôd.
The three of them got on so well that Michôd – a filmmaker himself, who would eventually go on to direct Animal Kingdom – approached them to produce his debut short film. The pair worked so easily together that they co-founded their production company Aquarius Films in 2007, dedicated to telling diverse and female-led stories. The real magic of their partnership, Fielder reflects, is that they are incredibly similar people. “We seldom disagree on things,” Fielder explains. “We literally do finish each other’s sentences. If we write script notes, they will almost always be exactly the same. It’s kind of uncanny.”
Since its inception, Aquarius Films has become a leading voice on the Australian film and television scene, and Fielder and Staniford have earned a reputation for identifying cultural changemakers. They’ve worked with Black Widow filmmaker Cate Shortland on her 2017 drama Berlin Syndrome, and Matt Okine, whose debut feature they are currently producing following the success of their television series The Other Guy. “It’s really important to us we’re able to make films and television series that inspire change,” Staniford says. “We want to keep doing that: telling unique stories and pushing diversity, but in a way that gets a big audience in.”
One of Aquarius’s aims, adds Fielder, is to ensure that all of their productions amplify diverse voices behind the scenes. “Producing, writing, directing, heads of department,” she explains, “the key creative driving forces.” That includes their recent SBS series The Unusual Suspects, written by Jessica Redenbach and Vonne Patiag, as well as their booming forthcoming slate. There’s the television adaptation of Clementine Ford’s memoir Fight Like a Girl, a film version of Hannah Kent’s novel The Good People, and The Geography of Friendship, a psychological thriller produced in partnership with Rose Byrne’s Dollhouse Pictures, with Gracie Otto set to direct.
Aquarius is “really trying to put diversity not only in front of the camera, but also behind the camera”, explains Fielder. Adds Staniford: “It’s about giving new voices a go … Making sure we’re giving opportunities to under-represented creatives, so that eventually they can be the ones who are running companies and making decisions.” Hannah-Rose Yee
“It’s really important to us we’re able to make films and television series that inspire change. We want to keep telling unique stories and pushing diversity, but in a way that gets a big audience in”