Every story about leadership I'd ever read started with someone who wanted the job. Mine starts with someone who applied for a completely different one.

To paint the picture: it was the beginning of COVID, the contract on my day job ended early, I was the live-in carer for my grandmother, and my dreams of producing films were firmly on the back burner. By nature, I am inherently a busy person, busy in mind, body, and soul, and I was terrified of slowing down and convinced that if I did, I would become obsolete.

So during the great quiet of the pandemic I signed up for absolutely everything in the hopes that a miracle would occur. A Sundance Collab producing course with classes at 3am. Stage 32 short film courses. Developing an abundance of narrative podcasts and features for the Iris Arc Pictures’ slate. Anything to keep moving.

The Phone Call I Never Expected

Then WIFT Vic put out a call for a membership coordinator. A couple of hours a week. I thought, hell yeah, I could do that. It's not like I was "working".

The year prior to COVID hitting, I had attended The Power of Inclusion conference in New Zealand, where WIFT International held a summit of its global chapters, and members were invited to attend. I sat in those rooms surrounded by extraordinary women mapping out how to raise the profile of women and gender diverse screen practitioners around the world, and a seed was planted: maybe, just maybe, I could make a difference too.

So I applied. I met the WIFT Vic board, felt great about my chances, and then got the call: I hadn't got the position - but would I consider joining the board instead? Reader, I had just been rejected into a promotion.

A month later, another call. The President was stepping down. Would I consider stepping up?

I was completely flummoxed. I'd been on the board for a month. A MONTH. I was someone who hadn't yet produced a feature film. Me? President?! My imposter syndrome reared its ugly head in full technicolour, surround sound and premium large format presentation. The spiral was real. So I did what any rational person does when handed an enormous opportunity: I conducted a full stocktake of my own inadequacy. I audited my career, my education, every decision that had led me to this point, searching diligently for the fine print that would disqualify me. I consulted my business partner. I polled my peers. I laid out my case for why I was clearly not the right person, and waited for them to agree with me.

They did not agree with me. Joining the board came back strongly encouraged. The presidency came back with a resounding, borderline aggressive ‘yes’. When the only person in the room voting against you is you, it's worth asking who briefed your inner critic, because they clearly hadn't done the reading.

And looking back, saying yes was the best decision I ever made.

Learning to Lead a Networking Organisation When Networking was Illegal

On paper, becoming president of an organisation that prided itself on connection and live events at the precise moment the world locked down was objectively terrible timing. In reality, it taught me the lesson that would define everything that followed: connection isn't a nice-to-have in this industry - it’s absolutely everything.

For those first six months I leant on the board. We ran online events, became experts in the phrase "you're on mute", focused on our membership offering, and started imagining a world for our members beyond lockdowns. We asked ourselves what we could do to enrich the lives of not just our members, but the industry as a whole. And while I learnt what it actually means to run a volunteer board, we lifted each other up. We became a community first, and an events organisation second and that order of operations never changed.

The Anatomy of a Volunteer-Driven Event

What people don't see when they walk into a beautifully styled room, ready to connect and party is that an event is an iceberg.

Above the waterline is the party and the networking. Below it are the months of unpaid, unglamorous hours. The sponsorship decks. The partner conversations. The venue negotiations. The run sheets timed to the minute (which the universe invariably treats as a light suggestion). The volunteer rosters. The registration desk logistics. The prize wrangling. The speech you rewrote four times and printed anyway. All of it done by people who have day jobs, freelance careers, families, and their own creative dreams, and who give up their evenings and weekends anyway.

Our first big event back after lockdown became the perfect case study in volunteer persistence. Christmas in July was postponed so many times by Melbourne's many, many lockdowns that it became Christmas in August, then Spring Fling, then New Year New Us, and finally the Easter Extravaganza! Five names. One party. And a board that simply refused to give up. That stubborn, joyful persistence is the backbone of who WIFT Vic is, and that shape-shifting little party evolved into WIFTmas: now one of the Victorian screen industry's most coveted all-guild networking events, where we have given away more prizes than I can count and sparked more meaningful connections than we will ever be able to measure.

But I want to be honest about the other side of the iceberg, because I think we owe it to every volunteer-run organisation to say it out loud: volunteer burnout is real, and it is the quiet tax on everything good that volunteer boards create. When your labour is fuelled by love, it is dangerously easy to keep drawing on that love past empty. I have watched brilliant board members give until they had nothing left, and I have been that board member myself.

The lesson here is that sustainability is a leadership responsibility. Celebrate people loudly, share the load deliberately, normalise stepping back, and build organisations that don't depend on any one person running on fumes. The mission survives when the people do.

How an Event is Born

People sometimes ask where all these events come from, as though there's a catalogue somewhere. There isn't. The truth is that the best ones come from noticing a gap and refusing to leave it unfilled.

Lifecycle of Film, the event I am perhaps proudest of, was born during a period when I was doing a lot of mentoring and working with students. I had also finally produced my first feature, and everything I knew in theory was suddenly being tested in practice. What kept surprising me was how little practitioners understood about the full lifecycle of a film. People knew their roles and their departments intimately, but the interconnectivity of a production, how development feeds financing feeds production feeds distribution, was a mystery to most.

Years earlier, I had attended the Produced By conference in Los Angeles, run by the PGA, and it stuck with me. They had a round table format that placed you in intimate sessions where every person at the table could ask a question and spark a conversation, and what struck me wasn't just the access to people whose careers inspired us. It was the importance of learning alongside your peers. We spend so much of our careers looking up, seeking validation and work from those above us, when the real magic is beside us. The peers you grow with are the ones who, when they land the opportunities, bring you along with them.

So, in partnership with the Melbourne Women in Film Festival, we built an event around exactly that philosophy. Experts from each stage of the lifecycle of film, guiding attendees through three round tables each. Participants submit preferences for two tables, but the third is allocated at random, a deliberate design choice to nudge people towards a corner of the industry they had never considered... because a rising tide raises many ships, and silos serve no one.

Partnerships: The Ecosystem Effect

None of it happens alone. Over six years we flourished alongside partnerships that multiplied everything we could offer: Lifecycle of Film with the Melbourne Women in Film Festival, Shifting The Gaze with St Kilda Film Festival, Make It Conference with MediaMentors, Playback with Midsommar, ReFrame with WIFT Australia and SXSW Sydney, MentorHer, Trans and Gender Diverse Bendigo and Beyond, State of Screen bringing Paul Feig and Laura Fischer into (virtual) conversation with our members, Perfect Match playing professional matchmaker each Galentine's Day, and countless panels, screenings, Q&As and giveaways alongside sponsors and industry partners who believed in what we were building.

Some formats stuck. Some need reworking. And I maintain that every idea is a great idea until a RSVP list politely informs you otherwise. That's the nature of experimentation, and volunteer organisations should never be afraid of it.

Going Global

In 2024, I received an email from the wonderful Lisa French, who was at the WIFTI Summit in Helsinki. She had put my name forward as the Australian representative on the board of Women in Film & Television International, and I had been voted in unanimously. I had no idea it was even a possibility. I hadn't realised the work we were doing at a state level was being noticed globally.

So when I first met with Dr Susan Liddy, I was sceptical. Not of WIFTI or its work, but of my own ability to contribute at that scale. The old imposter syndrome, back for a sequel nobody asked for but got greenlit anyway. What I found instead was camaraderie. A board of people scattered across time zones and continents, united by the same stubborn belief in what our industry could be. Who welcomed me not as the new recruit who needed to prove herself but as a peer who already belonged. Their support and confidence allowed me to see our organisations, at both a grassroots and a global level, with completely new appreciation, and together we built things I'm deeply proud of, like the Global Lens programme, which first launched with our Jamaican chapter, and the following Australian episode sparking insightful conversations.

But it was the WIFTI Summit in Ireland earlier this year that captured everything I love about this board. Picture chapter leaders from all over the world, colleagues who had mostly only ever existed to each other as faces on video calls, travelling into Limerick together and greeting each other like old friends. We networked with chapters from every corner of the globe, celebrated each other's wins, and bonded over the fine art of Irish coffee making (a masterclass I took very seriously). And in between all that joy, we sat with the tough questions around gender equality in our industry, the stubborn ones that don't resolve themselves in a single panel, and acknowledged honestly just how much work there is still to do. That is what this community does so well. It holds celebration in one hand, and hard conversations in the other, because you cannot do this work properly without both.

As Australians, we travel further than almost anyone to be in that room, and it is worth every mile. Because being in the room changed something for me. The people I have met through this board are not just colleagues I happen to like, they are friendships that will carry me through my entire career, and honestly, my entire life. There is nothing quite like being surrounded by people fighting the same fight in dozens of different countries to make the work feel less like pushing a boulder alone and more like a relay.

Months earlier, I stood at Cannes speaking on behalf of WIFTI alongside Stage 32, spearheading our global partnership, and had a genuine pinch-myself moment. Not just because of where I was standing, but because of what I finally understood. Connection scales the way all good stories do. It’s what carries a freelancer through a quiet year and also a global movement through the long fight for equity. This work has given me access to some of the most awe-inspiring women and gender diverse creatives in the world, and to be considered a peer amongst them, and to call them friends, is a dream I didn't realise I had.

A Note on Fear

Here's a confession for anyone who has ever seen me on stage or speak in a public forum: I am notoriously terrified of public speaking. People never believe me, but it's true. I have a deep fear of being made fun of, of standing in front of a room and getting it wrong.

The first event I fronted as President was a retrospective screening of a trailblazing female filmmaker at ACMI. There were only twenty people in the audience. Twenty. I have since done the maths and can confirm this is not, in fact, a stadium, but try telling that to my nervous system at the time. It would be my first time speaking publicly on behalf of this organisation I loved so much, and I was convinced it would be the beginning of a legacy of stuffing up. Our comms director took me aside beforehand and said three words: “remember to breathe”. Revolutionary advice as I had apparently forgotten how to. I stood behind that lectern with a speech I had spent a week writing, researching and rehearsing, shaking (and sweating) like a tree in a storm, found her face in the crowd, breathed, and got through it.

Since then, I have given more speeches than I can count. And here's the honest truth: I still print out every speech. I still rehearse. But somewhere along the way, something shifted. These days I can lose my place mid-speech and ad-lib my way back without an absolute brain-fart meltdown. I can look up from the page, riff on something that just happened in the room, and find my way home. That, for someone with my particular fear, is nothing short of a miracle. Six years ago I could not have imagined any of it. So I guess practice makes (im)perfect?

Community is the Currency

If six years in this seat have taught me one thing above all others, it is that your network is your currency. Not in the transactional, business-card-collecting sense that makes creatives shudder, but in the truest sense of the word. It is what you draw on when the industry contracts. It is what carries you through the dormant years between projects. It is what finds you the collaborator, the mentor, the job you didn't know existed.

Talent matters. Craft matters. But talent in isolation is a rumour; community is what turns it into a career. Every opportunity I have ever been given can be traced back to a room I turned up to, a conversation I stayed for, a person I helped without any expectation of return. The industry likes to mythologise the lone genius, but films are the most collaborative art form humans have ever invented. Nobody makes one alone, and nobody builds a career alone either.

This is why organisations like WIFT exist. Not to run parties - though we throw excellent ones - but to build the connective tissue of an industry. To make sure that when a woman or gender diverse creative walks into a room, they already know people in it. That is the quiet, compounding, generational work. Every connection made at a WIFTmas or across a Lifecycle round table keeps paying dividends years after the chairs are stacked.

Invest in your community the way you invest in your craft. It is the single highest-return decision you will make in this industry.

The most practical way to do it is to join your local WIFTI chapter, and don't just join, get involved. Put your hand up. Volunteer. I say this as someone whose six-year adventure started with an application for a couple-of-hours-a-week volunteer role that I didn't even get.

The best organisations in our industry are fuelled by volunteer spirit, by people giving their evenings and weekends to build something for everyone, and we do not give them anywhere near enough credit. Wherever you are in the world, there is a chapter full of people who would love to meet you, and a board that would love an extra pair of hands. You have no idea where that first small yes might take you. I certainly didn't.

Legacy is Important. Legacy is Also Not Important at All.

I have thought a lot about legacy this year as I prepared myself to step down from this role, and I have landed somewhere that surprised me.

Legacy matters, in the sense that the structures you build should outlast you. Events that run without you. Partnerships that don't depend on your relationships. A board culture that regenerates itself. If an organisation collapses when its leader leaves, that isn't legacy, it's dependency.

But legacy is also completely unimportant, in the sense that it was never about you in the first place. The moment you start protecting your legacy is the moment you stop serving your community. The healthiest thing a leader can do is become gloriously unnecessary. The goal was never a plaque with my name on it. The goal was a room full of people finding each other and lifting each other up.

So when people ask how it feels to let go, here is my answer: letting go is not the end of something, it is the beginning of something. For the organisation, it gets the fresh voices and new ideas it deserves, and for me, well my producing dreams are no longer on the back burner. We tell stories for a living. We, of all people, should know that a great chapter ending is what makes the next one possible.

Thank You

I want to end with nothing but gratitude.

To the WIFT Vic board, past, present and future. You took a flummoxed applicant for a membership coordinator role and entrusted her with the presidency, and then you spent six years making sure she never once carried it alone. You have taught me patience, courage, humour in a crisis, and the radical power of simply showing up for one another. Every single one of you has shaped and evolved my view of the world, and every one of you left this organisation better than you found it. To those who served and moved on: your fingerprints are still on everything we do. To those serving now, the future of WIFT Vic: your energy and your ideas remind me daily why this work matters, and I could not be leaving this organisation in more capable hands.

To the WIFT International board. You saw something in me before I saw it in myself, and you gave me the extraordinary gift of perspective: the understanding that the work we do in a room in Melbourne is part of a movement that spans the globe. To sit among you, to learn from you, to be considered your peer, is an honour I will never take lightly.

And to our members. You are the reason for all of it. Getting to know you, celebrating your wins, watching first shorts become first features, seeing you land the job, win the award, take the leap: this has been the great privilege of my life. These organisations have become an intrinsic part of my DNA, and I will be eternally grateful, and forever will be, for the confidence, the connections, the guidance, the friendships and the collaborators you have given me.

I'm stepping back, but I'm not stepping away. You'll find me in the membership, in the audience, and at every WIFTmas to come, cheering as the organisations I love so much continue to flourish.

Your community is your career. Your network is your currency. Lift the person beside you. Share what you know. Turn up to the party. And every now and then, be the one who throws it.

And when it's time, let go. That's where the next story starts.

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