Tess’s superpower is infectious determination, and you can feel it within minutes of hearing her talk.

In this episode, recorded in Brisbane, Chloe sits down with Tess, a leader at Atomic212. Tess grew up in a country town, saw a Defence Force ad on TV and four weeks after being accepted was on a bus to Kapooka. Over four years in the Army she deployed to Afghanistan, worked on the facility in Nauru, and met her husband Jared. She then built a career in media while raising her two daughters, Lola and Pia.

Tess talks openly about what it’s like to be broken down and rebuilt in basic training. She shares the weekly phone calls home that kept her going, and how she uses her hardest memories to put self-doubt in perspective. (“Tess, you went to Afghanistan. You can sit in this meeting.”)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"When it comes down to it, it's creating rather than operating."

Emily Cook is Managing Director of dentsu Queensland, leading a team of more than 75 people. Her superpower is limitless entrepreneurial spirit.

We start with what that means for her. She's curious about how else something could be done, then gets stuck in and builds it, always with the goal of setting her people up for success. We get into the assumed knowledge in our industry, why every leader needs to understand the commercials of how a business makes money, and the difference between being told you're smashing it and actually knowing where you're heading.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"I actually really like feeling uncomfortable."

Leisa has never quite known what comfortable feels like. She lives in shades of uncomfortable, and she's built a life and a career around seeing how far she can push herself.

Leisa is CMO at QUT, the university she studied at, after a decade as Audience Director at the ABC and earlier years at P&G and Coca-Cola. She was ranked Australia's #1 CMO in 2020. She's also climbed Kilimanjaro, paddled the Hawkesbury for 100 kilometres, and trekked Nepal just months after breaking her tibia.

We start with her superpower, limitless adventure, and why the bigger the challenge, the better the planning needs to be.

We get into the launch of Mother at Coca-Cola, a product that flopped so badly she thought her career was over. She takes us through the war room, the tank and the relaunch that turned it into a success within six months.

She tells me about her friend Jo, whose final wish was simply for Leisa to have a good life, and how that wish has shaped every career decision since.

And we land on leadership: the bosses who showed her what good looks like, and something she realises out loud for the first time on this mic. She's still doing the work when she wants to be leading it.

This one stayed with me because of one line Leisa left me with: this is a special time. Whether we're in the hard bits or the good bits, we so rarely stop to notice.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.