Women in Business Discussion Group Tuesday 22 March 2016 | 5.45pm – 8pm | CPA Centre Level 3, 111 Harrington St

For our March session we welcome Steve Skinner to present “The Digital CFO and Transforming your Finance Function”.  If you are looking a new perspective on how Finance collects and turns data into valuable, decision making information, attend this insightful presentation.  Steven will guide you through questions such as:

1.       Is my finance function where is needs to be today?  If not, what is tomorrow’s risk for your business?

2.       What plans do I have in place to transform my finance function?

3.       What resources and skill sets do I need to have in order to transform the finance function?

Steven has spent more than 20 years in the corporate world rising through the ranks and becoming a CFO & Company Secretary for an ASX Listed organization.  Steven is an experienced Director, Chaired an Advisory Board and participated on numerous board sub-committees. Steven has led 2 large business transformations programs for Gloria Jean’s Coffees and a division of Sonic Healthcare. Steven created, ran and sold BTO Group, a professional services firms that helped organisations with technology enabled business transformation programs.  Steven is currently working for NetSuite as part of the Finance Centre of Excellence team across the APJ region.  Steven believes that Governance, People, Processes and Systems are fundamental principles for any organization willing to transform their business.

To attend, please RSVP to Reis at cpawibfb@gmail.com or via Facebook by 5pm Friday 18 March.

Women in Business Discussion Group Tuesday 23 February 2016 | 5.45pm – 8pm | CPA Centre Level 3, 111 Harrington St

For our first session of 2016 we welcome Dr Claire Scobie to present Storytelling for Leaders - How to ensure your message is heard in 2016

Have you ever delivered a presentation to your team and known they weren’t listening? It’s not a good feeling. At work we often forget to talk like we do with friends and family. We forget to tell stories and use anecdotes to illustrate what we are trying to say. We rely on power points, jargon and complex language. No wonder people stop listening.

Stories can influence in ways that stats can’t and those businesses that tell the best ones will thrive in the 21^st-century. We are all hardwired to listen to stories, especially value-rich and motivating stories. They create meaning and connection between people. Too often we roll out a new strategy with data and facts, giving our team little reason to listen let alone implement the strategy. If a leader can harness the power of story it has a better chance to stick.

Dr Claire Scobie works with medium to large companies on how to harness the power of storytelling during times of change. She is accredited to deliver the Storytelling for Leaders™ program under license from Anecdote. She particularly enjoys working with women who want to accelerate their careers and communicate more effectively so their message is heard. Claire is the award-winning author of Last Seen in Lhasa, The Pagoda Tree and Basser, Baxter & Goldstein. She writes for numerous publications including Acuity, the Sydney Morning Herald and London’s Daily Telegraph; mentors corporate leaders; gives keynotes and facilitates workshops; and hosts literary tours to India with Abercrombie & Kent. In 2013 she completed a Doctor of Creative Arts degree at the University of Western Sydney. www.wordstruck.com.au.

To attend, please RSVP to Reis at cpawibfb@gmail.com or via Facebook by 5pm Friday 19 February.

Women in Business Discussion Group Tuesday 24 November 2015 | 5.45pm – 8pm | CPA Centre Level 3, 111 Harrington St

For our last session of 2015, we are delighted to welcome Dr Rosina McAlpine to present “Starting 2016 with clarity, conviction and confidence”.

Did you take advantage of the opportunities that crossed your path in 2015 or were you too busy simply trying to keep up with the fast pace of life?

Imagine what it would be like to start the new year with clarity, conviction and confidence – stepping into life with no self-doubt, no self-criticism and no negative self-talk. It is possible when you understand how your negative beliefs limit your potential and how even a small shift in your perspective can open exciting possibilities. In this talk, Dr Rosina McAlpine will explore the difference between self-esteem, self-confidence and self-efficacy and explain how understanding the distinctions can lead to a new self-concept and a more empowering way to approach your relationships, parenting, friendships and work.

Self-esteem and self-confidence are not the same thing, yet most people fail to understand the crucial difference. Self-esteem is the judgment you make about yourself. Take a moment to reflect – would you say you have good self-esteem or low self-esteem? Perhaps you feel confident and have positive words of encouragement for yourself – even when you make a mistake or fail. Or if you’re like most people, you may project confidence to the world, but inside you doubt yourself and your worth. Perhaps you look to your achievements or to others to feel of value. Over the coming weeks leading up to this talk, think about how you esteem yourself. Are your thoughts about yourself predominantly positive or self-critical or a mix of both? Take a mental note of how you talk to yourself and reflect on the choices you’ve made during 2015 based on your beliefs about what you could or couldn’t do.

When you learn to truly appreciate yourself just for who you are – and realise that you’re only limited by your own thoughts and beliefs  –  you’ll be able to step into 2016 with a new clarity, conviction and confidence.

Dr. Rosina McAlpine is an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney Business School and has a Masters degree and a PhD in education. She is an internationally recognised, award-winning researcher and educator receiving 5 outstanding teaching awards and 5 international best paper awards. Rosina’s research interests include navigating and negotiating work-life balance and gender equality. Since becoming a mother, she has developed the Win Win Parenting program to help working parents overcome the challenges of modern day parenting. Delivering her parenting program in the corporate world, Rosina’s clients include: Lendlease, Macquarie Bank,  CPA Australia, The Australian Human Rights Commission and Red Balloon among others. A keen researcher using the latest research in child development, Rosina has edited a book with chapters from leading minds around the world in psychology, neuro-science and biology for the book entitled Inspired Children: how the leading minds of today raise their children.

This will be a fun, enlightening talk, followed by canapés and lucky door prizes.  To attend, please RSVP to Reis at cpawibfb@gmail.com or via Facebook by 5pm Friday 20 November 2015.

Women in Business Discussion Group Tuesday 27 October 2015 | 5.45pm – 8pm | CPA Centre Level 3, 111 Harrington St

This month we welcome Career Coach and Personal Leadership Expert Holly MacCue for a talk on ‘How to Design Your Own Career Success’.

Have you ever asked yourself what success in your career actually means to you?  Can you relate to the feeling of getting caught up in what you ‘should’ be doing to achieve success, or have you ever found yourself panicking about where you are ‘supposed’ to be by now?

Do you feel that you have done everything ‘right’ to get to where you are today but still sometimes find yourself asking ‘is this IT?’?  Can it sometimes feel like advancing your career and getting to where you want is an endlessly moving milestone? 

Would you love to know how to stop ‘chasing’ your career success and start designing it?

In this talk Holly will share the 7 simple strategies to designing your own career success on your terms.  This is the exact step by step system that enabled her to move from stress and burnout in her marketing career to learning how to align her passions to her work; achieve personal meaning and fulfilment (without quitting the corporate world to teach yoga on the beach), and create two successful businesses in a new country with no networks.  Holly’s passion for this work is driven by the desire to empower other women to connect their career success with what is really important to them.

In this talk she will cover:     

·         The big ‘problem’ with success that could be holding you back from achieving your biggest career breakthroughs, and how to overcome this.

·         How your mindset can make you or break you; an introduction to the ‘science of positive thinking’ to understand how you can mentally and physically keep yourself stuck.

·         The 7 simple strategies to start doing things on YOUR terms so that you can achieve personal meaning and fulfilment in your career.

·         Building our ‘success consciousness’ to easily attract more of the opportunities you really want.

·         How to unlock your ‘Inner Winner’ and channel your ‘Inner Critic’ to learn how to get out of your own way.

·         The best way to fast-track your results (that ironically most people do everything possible to avoid).

·         Proven techniques to achieve your goals in a balanced and sustainable way.

Originally from the UK, Holly has lived and worked in England, France, Spain and Switzerland before choosing Sydney as her home in 2013. Holly passionately helps clients all over the world to find the clarity and confidence to ‘unlock their most courageous self’ in order to design their own career success.

With a background in Brand Management working for leading multi-national organisations on million-dollar brand portfolios, Holly leverages her corporate experience and capability insights to help her clients to create an authentic, personal brand that accelerates their career success and fulfilment.

Having experienced several years in multiple fast-paced and challenging corporate roles, she understands and values the power of a positive mindset as the enabler to long term success.

This personal experience has led to a long term interest in the impact that our ‘Inner Winner’ and our ‘Inner Critic’ can have on every aspect of our career performance, as well as our overall quality and enjoyment in all areas of our lives. Holly leverages the power of the subconscious mind in her coaching programs to help others understand, develop and implement their ‘Inner Winner’ strategies.

Holly is a firm believer that we each have the ability to design our own success, which led her to create her hugely popular ‘Career Success by Your Design’® 1-1 coaching program.

Holly is also Founder of a successful training business ‘Future Focus Training and Development’ through which she delivers personal leadership programs that equip emerging talent across educational and corporate organisations. 

Holly is a strong advocate of personal development and has studied with the industry’s top thought-leaders for the past decade.  A qualified Personal Performance coach, she attained her Diploma with Distinction from the world’s largest coaching organization, The Coaching Academy UK. Accredited in DISC profiling, Workplace Motivators and Emotional Intelligence, Holly incorporates these multi-science tools into her training and coaching programs with powerful results.  She is a Neuro-Linguistic Practitioner, certified by NLP co-creator John Grinder, as well as a Licensed Goal Mapping Practitioner; the unique world-leading success system developed by Brian Mayne, and is proud to be the only Practitioner in New South Wales. 

To attend, please RSVP to Reis at cpawibfb@gmail.com or via Facebook by 5pm Friday 23 October 2015.

Women in Business Discussion Group Tuesday 29 September 2015 | 5.45pm – 8pm | CPA Centre Level 3, 111 Harrington St

For our September session we are hosting a fun Speed Networking event!  In our recent survey, over 64% of members said they want to know more about being effective communicators plus 58% of members want more networking opportunities.  Here is your chance to practice your communication skills, network and increase your confidence in a relaxed, informal forum.  Come along for tips on increasing your communication and leadership skills, learn more about your fellow members and have some fun along the way.

To attend, please RSVP to Reis at cpawibfb@gmail.com or via Facebook by 5pm Friday 25 September 2015.

Women in Business Discussion Group Tuesday 25 August 2015 | 5.45pm – 8pm | CPA Centre Level 3, 111 Harrington St

For our August event, we welcome back Peter Knight, of Knight Partners to discuss Benchmarking:  How to use it in a practical way in your business.

In an energetic and engaging discussion Peter will be sharing:

·         What is benchmarking and how it works

·         The benefits of benchmarking and how people use it to improve their business

·         Practical ideas that can be used to help your business

·         How to bring about improvements in performance

·         How it can be applied to all areas of a business

Peter Knight heads up Knight Partners accounting practice, which does tax and accounting but he has more fun working with clients as a business coach.

He does a lot of work with franchises and last year set up the Franchise Accountants Network. This is for accountants who have franchise clients or who work in a franchise and provides tools and resources to help them.

He has recently been guest judge and adjudicator at The Great Debate, where the best students in the MBA program from Melbourne University took on the Australian Graduate School of Management.

He was also recently the guest lecturer in Shanghai at the Symposium of Chinese Accountants, speaking on practice growth, development and branding.

He has also recently spoken at the Malaysian Institute of Accountants, Kuala Lumpur, on practice development, and was the keynote speaker in Singapore last year at the Master Course for Public Practitioners

Peter was a Contributing Author to the Practice Management Manual published by the International Federation of Accountants, of which CPA Australia is a member.

He was also the Lead Author in the recent Practice Management Manual Update commissioned by CPA Australia, as well as being a Contributing Author to the Firm of the Future White Paper.

Peter was one of the founding Partners of Hayes Knight which was established in 1994.  Within 6 years they had offices in each capital city around Australia and two offices in New Zealand, with 38 partners and 350 staff, making them the 25th largest accounting firm in Australia. 

He has been a lecturer and tutor in Advanced Financial Accounting at Macquarie University and is a regular speaker at Conferences, presenting widely throughout Australia and overseas.

Peter is a Former President of CPA Australia (NSW) and is former chairman of the National Board of Public Practice, and he also served on the NSW Public Practice Committee. He is also a National Judge for the prestigious Small Business Awards, and also a judge for the State level awards.

To attend, please RSVP to Reis at cpawibfb@gmail.com or via Facebook by 5pm Friday 21 August 2015.

“Insights to Meeting Customer Expectations” - Women in Business Discussion Group Tuesday 28 July 2015 | 5.45pm – 8pm | CPA Centre Level 3, 111 Harrington St

At our July discussion, Tony Ward, Managing Director and Ashley Gross  APAC Customer Success Manager at Survey Monkey will present the results of the Women in Business Survey, and provide “Insights to Meeting Customer Expectations”

They will also cover key aspects of communications including:

•             Implicit vs Explicit information (“the what” vs. “the why”)

•             Understanding what question(s) you are trying to answer

•             How to ask a question.  The difference between well and poorly worded questions

•             Asking the right people

•             Using the right platform to help you to make better decisions

•             Interpreting the results

Come to this insightful communications presentation to hear what separates great communication from good communication, hear the membership's feedback and participate in a group discussion. 

Ashley Gross is the APAC Customer Success Manager for SurveyMonkey based in Sydney. Originally from the United States, after graduating with a degree in Economics, Ashley spent the majority of the start of her career as a marketing manager for startups and small businesses in the technology industry. After getting her hands on a tool that essentially changed her life, Ashley made the switch to help others similar to her as a Customer Success Manager, working most recently for Microsoft as a CSM for Yammer and O365. She has a passion for how technology can help change the way we do business and how data should be a major part of our decision-making process.

Tony Ward is a technology executive with 20 years of experience, including MD, COO and CMO of mid to large size organisations in diverse areas such as marketing, sales leadership, product marketing, business operations, strategy and start-ups.  Tony is currently the Managing Director of SurveyMonkey, which is the world's leading provider of web-based survey solutions. They enable individuals and organisations both large and small to make better decisions, faster in a cost effective manner.  Prior to SurveyMonkey, Tony ran the 3rd largest business in the world for LinkedIn as the Director of Talent Solutions in ANZ. He was a founder of a cloud start up, COO and CMO for Microsoft Australia with full P&L responsibility of a $1 Billion+ business. Tony’s primary focus is on building great teams and helping to grow businesses.

 To attend, please RSVP to Reis at cpawibfb@gmail.com or via Facebook by 5pm Friday 24 July 2015