This podcast partnership with Women Making it Work aligns with but slightly deviates from my The Human Behind the Career Brand podcast series. The Human Story Behind the Business and Brand delves into those poignant moments, experiences and life lessons that shaped these high-performing professional women into who they are today. It discusses their fates, flaws, feats, fears and all the other fabulous human elements that have driven them to perform so well in their professional and personal lives. As has been encapsulated in the Women Making it Work celebratory anthology entitled Beyond the Business – Stories of Women Who Dared.
The guests in this podcast episode are Mary Benton, Emma Zoobi and Amanda Wright. Three of the authors and storytellers in Women Making it Work’s Beyond the Business anthology, representing those women who saw opportunities, took chances, put in the extra mileage, and confronted fears and doubts to enable them to grow both personally and professionally.
Mary is one of the original committee members and the former chair of Women Making it Work, and is also the founder and owner of financial advisory Plan4Wealth. Mary stepped out of the safe, reliable corporate world to start up her own financial planning business shortly before she became involved in Women Making it Work that was also at its embryotic stage. She knows what it’s like to learn as you go, while operating with minimal business capital or funding, and to keep navigating feelings of dread and trepidation. Mary also understands the benefits of continuing to experiment and to be willing to be imperfect, as long as you keep trying. She played a pivotal role in Women Making it Work becoming the highly regarded local voice and businesswomen sisterhood that it is today, 20 years later, while also continuing to build and expand her own business Plan4Wealth.
Mortgage and lending specialist Emma started up Loan Market in 2023, which follows on from her former Elevate Lending Solutions business. Emma has been involved in both property and business ownership for many years, after an earlier career in the corporate world, and is particularly passionate about empowering women and young people via deeper financial literacy. She believes that financial security is a freedom that can change people’s lives for the better, and she has first-hand experience in feeling rejected and neglected by Australia’s major financial institutions. Her earlier disheartening encounter with the bank lending system is what inspired Mary to become a lending specialist back in 2022.
