Women in Property
The WA’s Property Council of Australia’s annual Women in Property signature lunch was held last Thursday 12th of April at Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre. – As usual, the event was a success, this time with 540 attendees!
Niamh Kennedy (Engineering Consultant) and Tayla Knox (Consultant), represented HFM Asset Management. They both enjoyed the conference and found the speeches inspiring.
They both enjoyed the conference and found the speeches inspiring.
Marie Taylor
Noongar Elder
The Women in Property event commenced with a Welcome to Country from Noongar Elder, Marie Taylor. Marie spoke about her traditions and spoke in her traditional language with blessings and well wishes. She shared a captivating story related to property and also shared her footy preferences with the crowd (Marie is a Dockers supporter).
Tanya Trevisan
President, Property Council of Australia (WA)
Following Marie, Tanya Trevisan, who represented PCA, welcomed guests to the lunch with a brief but great speech.
Hayley Mitchell
Metro Response (Operations) Manager at Western Power
During her speech, Hayley took the attendees through her professional journey, starting with her first career choice to study Music as well as trailing out a range of other industries before she decided to complete a BCom at Curtin which in turn lead her to her current role at Western Power.
She had a few influential leaders at the beginning of her career development which supported and inspired to dream big and get where she wanted to be at the end of the day.
Diane Smith-Gander
Non-Executive Director AGL Energy, Wesfarmers Limited
Diane’s speech was quite powerful, she also shared a bit about her personal life, as well as her professional career development.
She highlighted that gender equality needs to start with communication and planning from leadership teams.
* CEDA (Committee for Economic Development of Australia)
Hon. Rita Saffioti
Minister for Transport; Planning; Lands
With her speech, Hon. Rita Saffioti took the attendees on a journey through some of the highlights of her life, starting at her childhood, she also talked about her family, personal/professional development process and her experience having 3 children over a 4-year period.
She actually made the front page of the Sunday times for asking if she could bring her baby into the Chambers when they were taking a vote!
Panel Sesssion
Parental leave was one of the topics discussed during the Women in Property panel, focusing the attention on parental leave equality.
Mr Chris Sutherland advised that until investigating their company didn’t actually give males as much opportunity to take parental leave as females. As a result, they made a number of changes which altered this and put them in the right direction in regards to a culture change so that there was more awareness around male and female parental leave equality.
Mission Australia - Meekatharra Women's Refuge
The cause supported during this event was domestic violence. The $15,000 target was reached – Well done!
Congratulations to Property Council of Australia for putting together this great event, WA’s PCA Diversity Committee for their input and CBRE for sponsoring.
If you liked this article, then you might also want to read about the PCA Women in Property Signature Lunch.