Dr Elsa Licumba, author of Freedom To Belong, migrant wellbeing coach and all round amazing woman is truly helping migrants in Australia with belonging, (not integrating!) which she explains in the interview. She is a migrant from Africa, and when she arrived she found Australia to be a little bit bewildering and unusual. Elsa believes that one of the biggest challenges migrants face when they arrive in a new country is blending cultures, so she is passionate about assisting other migrants to attain a ‘belonging’ mindset and redefine their cultural identity and sense of belonging while living in a new country.
When Elsa first arrived from Mozambique she was homesick all the time, comparing and constantly criticizing the values of her host land because it was all so unfamiliar. She was suffering from culture shock! Having grown up in a close family, and studied in Mozambique, she had assumed that studying in Australia would be a great opportunity and filled with joy and happiness. But it didn’t turn out to be quite like that.
Her sense of identity and sense of belonging were significantly bruised and she later discovered that belonging is not about a place or geographic location- it’s a mindset. This interview with Elsa covers some pretty deep subject matter and yet it’s filled with laughter. I encourage you to listen and be inspired by this wonderful women!
Lisa Macqueen is amazing! After many years working in sales and marketing for the hotel and resort industry globally, she left to work with her husband in his corporate cleaning business, and it took off! In this interview she talks about the first 20 years of her career – in the BEST job ever! – and how she is so thankful she joined her husband as they grew the business to a multi million dollar turnover. Lisa is a gorgeous woman and was very generous with her tips and advice for growing a business. You’ll love this story!
Janelle Bostock, CEO and owner of WNA is an incredible woman! Her story is bound to keep you gripped. Having grown up in rural Queensland, milking the cows every day before and after school right the way through to year ten, Janelle knew what hard work was all about. Her purchase of the networking group was prompted by the premature death of her husband and the need for both support from her network (she had been a member since 2000) and for a new direction for her career. Janelle knows first hand the importance of having that support group around you as running your own business can be lonely!
Janelle and her husband were a tightknit team. He worked in IT and Janelle worked in Admin for Queensland health. She also organised huge parties for the company – 600 and 1000 person events – in her spare time! She was a natural.
After years of working full time and managing a block of units in Brissie, Bruce, Janelle’s husband was diagnosed at 30 with a genetic heart condition that was terminal. After having their son, who was also afflicted with the same disorder, Bruce sadly died, and Janelle was looking for a new challenge – so when the founder of WNA called and asked if she would like to buy it, she jumped at the chance.
You will love the tenacity, humour and warmth of this extraordinary woman!
Tanya Meessmann is the proud owner of two businesses. The first one is called Girl Shaped Flames and it’s a social enterprise focused on developing confidence in high school-aged girls. This was Tanya’s first foray into entrepreneurship. The second business is a sister company and a not for profit called Unique You and Tanya is the CEO and a board member of Unique You. Unique You is a service where careers and guidance officers can peruse a database of women in male-dominated industries with their female teen students. They can book a 30-minute phone call with these women and are able to connect with strong female role models. Tanya’s purpose has always been to do a good job all the time and she has always found herself guiding and mentoring young girls in believing in themselves, developing confidence and a drive to do well. Her first job was in advertising and her passion has always been creativity and filmmaking.
Tanya switched from advertising and spent 12 years in the film industry producing films. Her epiphany moment came to her whilst walking her dog in a dog park. She had a moment of peacefulness and found herself thinking about helping young girls who are struggling with confidence and self-belief and decided that she wanted to inspire them. Tanya now runs camps twice a year called “Camp Courage.” This idea came to her after asking herself, “How do I connect hundreds of girls with hundreds of women?” At Camp Courage, these girls are taken out of their environment and given the freedom, space and advice to overcome fears. Tanya grew up in a small town in Central QLD and was brought up by her single mother. She also has a younger sister.
After school, Tanya attended Bond University to study IT, through a scholarship, but after three weeks, switched degrees to Communications. One quirky fact about Tanya is that she learnt how to DJ at the age of nine and she was lucky enough to travel the world and skipped year five.
Ayla is the wedding coordinator and founder of the ever-growing and unique business called Wed Sites. Basically, Wed Sites is an online platform helping couples plan their weddings. It can be accessed from anywhere and is your one-stop shop for keeping everything you need to keep track of your wedding in one place including budgets, guest list tool, digital invitations, dietary requirements and absolutely everything else! It’s a personal experience for couples and the most appealing thing about Wed Sites is that it does not contain advertising. Ayla was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan and is an only child who was brought up by her single mum. After graduating from high school, Ayla moved to the US where she completed a law degree at university. Upon completing, she returned to Japan to look after her mum and studied web design. She later travelled to Australia with her partner and loved it so much that they returned to Japan for two weeks and proceeded to pack their belongings and returned to Australia on a student visa. Here in Australia, they developed an idea to create a WordPress theme and this was the beginning of Theme Boy, an online store based around creating sports club software.
After moving to Melbourne and searching for community, she discovered that the industry was male-dominated and began searching for female connections. Wed Site came about after burning out and Ayla found she developed a passion for wedding planning. She developed it after she got engaged and it was officially launched in late 2019. In the past 12 months, since covid hit, Wed Sites has had a 400% growth. Along her journey, Ayla realized that pricing is everything. Once she increased her pricing, her sales numbers also increased.”Perceived value” is everything according to Ayla, especially because her product offers so much more than competing products and services. It’s worth more and does more! Increasing her pricing has been her biggest pivotal moment, along with covid. Now that Ayla is 10 years into her journey, she’s able to have a better work-life balance and chooses not to work on weekends. During the week, she has reduced her hours and now only works from 9-5.
Melanie De Gioia is my latest guest for the She’s The Boss Chats podcast. You’ll love this amazing STEM advocate and a podcasting guru as she explains her career path and how she went on to create Ramaley Media.
Discovering podcasts was a pivotal moment in Melanie’s life. It was a moment that led her to create Ramaley Media, a podcast agency and network that specialises in sharing stories of STEM and innovation. Her podcast, Engineering Heroes is now one of the top 4 engineering podcasts in the world!
With no background in engineering (or podcasting for that matter!) Mel started her podcast to gain some understanding of the industry and what engineers do. Since then she has interviewed engineers from all over the world, including NASA!
For over 20 years, Mel worked extensively in the IT space, never realising she should be considered as working within STEM. It wasn’t until she started her first podcast – Beer with an Engineer – that Mel really realised her passion of being a STEM Advocate.
And through Ramaley Media, Mel is shining a light on all things STEM to encourage and inspire the world. Mel’s story is really inspiring and you will love this woman and what she is doing!
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