Successful women in business, part 1
- Marguerite McKinnon
- 27 January 2010
Photo credit: Kris Lloyd, CEO of Woodside Cheese Wrights
The scientist: Dr Cathy Foley
Winner of the Nokia Business Innovation Award
The judges felt that Dr Cathy Foley is a great advocate for women in science. She has led a multidisciplinary team over many years to produce significant technological breakthroughs and she is an outstanding example of the convergence of business and science.
"I think I'm very different to most physicists. In Australia, physics tends to attract a certain personality type and I guess I act quite different, almost the opposite. I'm very outgoing I suppose. I am from a large family and being in the middle, it's about knowing how to get on with a large group of people all of the time," said Cathy.
The only female in her year to complete a PhD in Physics at Macquarie University, Cathy spent the next twenty-five years at the CSIRO perfecting her research on super conductors - particularly YBCO (Yttrium barium copper oxide), which, when cooled by liquid nitrogen and used in her team's rotating gradiometer system, is used in mineral and marine exploration. She's one of Australia's top scientists, in charge of more than one hundred and fifty people and the first female president of the Australian Institute of Physics. She also has three children - and set up and ran a childcare centre and after-school care, at the CSIRO.
In many ways, Cathy has been a trailblazer. "I'd be honest in saying that it hasn't always been easy being a woman and being taken seriously. Some people found me threatening or a bit over-the-top."
The trick, she says, is breaking down those initial barriers.
"My management style is very much one of bringing people with me, rather than command and control. So it's recognising that some of the best ideas come from the people I work with rather than everything being my idea. Thank goodness they're all very clever and terrific people!" she said.
"I've found that having a huge amount of flexibility has meant that people will go the extra mile to make sure that as a team we are very successful."
The cheesemaker: Kris Lloyd
Finalist in South Australia's Commonwealth Bank Business Owner Award category
If cheesemaking was an Olympic sport, Kris Lloyd would be one of the world's greatest athletes. She's won a swag of awards since starting up her cheesemaking business, Woodside Cheese Wrights
, ten years ago.
"My family owns a vineyard in McLaren Vale. One of the things we always thought would be really nice would be to not only to do wines, olive oils, vinegars and verjuice, but also cheese, to just sort of finish it off."
The business employs the equivalent of seven full-time staff, but has a lot of casuals, as is the nature of her business. Most are females, a lot of them mums. Kris' philosophy is definitely inclusion.
"I let them do what I do, generally as far as cheesemaking and making decisions - things like that will empower them, that's the best way the business will run. I've just seen people grow and very I'm satisfied with what they're doing," she said. "If you believe in people, give them the opportunity to prove themselves and make them feel confident about what they're doing, it's a fantastic thing to do."
Kris is married with two teenage boys, fifteen and sixteen. They are definitely involved and extremely proud of what mum has achieved.
"If you're passionate about what you do, that's a big part of success: knowing that you're going to wake up in the morning and think, ‘This is actually what I want to be doing.' I've met the Queen through making cheese, Antonio Carluccio, the former Prime Minister John Howard, Neil Perry - a whole host of different people. I just think, ‘Wow. I've travelled to Italy, France, UK, Germany and Switzerland - there's no way that I would have done that if I hadn't have done cheese!'"
Kris says she is efficient simply because she doesn't have time to waste.
"I don't think women have got as much time, so to me I look at the way I operate. I've got two boys, my husband and I have many interests myself other than my cheesemaking. I exercise, I jog, I go to the gym; there are a whole lot of things I want to achieve in a day, so I just get on with it. I don't procrastinate. If I have to do something, I just do it." #
