The Creative Women program provides mentoring and community experiences to help women develop their career in the creative industries.
WADE KINGSLEY, FOUNDER, THE CREATIVE COACH
“I started The Creative Women program to address a missing gap”
The Australian media, marketing, and advertiser communities need to do more to support women.
In 2025 a leading trade industry website published a list of the Top 30 Creative Directors in Australia. 29 were Male. This isn’t about creative directors - this is about shining a light on a problem that is systemic in the industry.
Women are overlooked when it matters.
This not-for-profit program is designed to grow year-on-year. All women in the program have mentoring that is driven by them and for them. (The last thing I’m going to do is mansplain a Women’s Mentoring Program).
Once we assemble the mentoring panel, our participants are able to choose their own mentoring sessions at times that suit them. They might choose to have all their sessions with one mentor, or multiple sessions with different mentors. Each mentor brings different experience and perspective and can be helpful in very different ways.
We also have guest speakers to join our group meetups, plus an offsite experience where all the participants and mentors come together to discuss some of the bigger challenges for women in the industry.
Thank you for your support of The Creative Women program. I hope it is around for many decades to come.
Wade
The three components of The Creative Women program
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One to one mentoring
6 × 60 minute sessions across the 6 month program. Participants choose which mentors they wish to have sessions with from our expert panel of carefully selected professional women.
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Guest Speakers
Learning from the experience of others through exclusive inspiration sessions. In 2025 we heard from Martial arts expert and personal coach Nadine Champion and leading advertising industry expert Zoe Scaman.
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Offsite Experience
Our program participants and mentors come together in Sorrento (Victoria) for 2 days of discussion, inspiration and community building.
Our 2026 Program participants
Madison Perry
Mandita Narayan
Hilary Wensor
Shamika Perera
Cassidy Loane
Melanie Giordano
Jessica Anderson
Eliza Meyer
Emilie Drocourt
Jennifer Dielen
Sophie Charos
Georgie Brady
Tess Murphy
Ali Plath
Our 2026 Program mentors
Vanya Mariani is an experienced media leader in roles such as Commercial Director of Media at carsales and Wesfarmers One Digital. Vanya arrived in Australia from Bosnia during her high school years in the late 1990s. She remembers feeling a lack of confidence as she entered the workforce, "not because of inexperience but because of my ethnic name. So much so that I legally changed my name from Vanja Mujkic to Vanya Mariani during my first job search out of uni".
Gemma Saunders is a GAICD-qualified board director, former senior executive in an ASX 50 organisation, and an award-winning business owner. Gems (she/her) is the founder of Workplace Edit, a consultancy focused on shaping better workplace experiences through leadership, strategy, governance, and people and culture. Her work centres on creating environments where both people and performance can thrive. Gems is a proud queer woman, gender equity advocate, and mum to two neurodivergent children. She brings a deeply personal lens to her work and is passionate about supporting others to lead inclusively, navigate systems, and build careers aligned with who they are. Gemma has been a mentor for over 10 years to people of all ages and career stages.
With over two decades of Creative Leadership experience, culminating in a stint as Chief Creative Officer in New York, June Laffey's mission now is to inspire, empower and lift-up a new kind of leader. How? Through insights, tools and strategies it has taken her a lifetime to learn. She's always been a creative thinker, cared deeply about people, and always, always come from a place of love. For much of June's career I have had a focus on health comms, but the principles apply through the line. She's also taken a special interest in coaching women, and helping them to shine.
Lisa Lie is the founder of Learna, a microlearning app that helps teams build the people skills to solve real work problems - fast. Think feedback, working through change, managing others - the messy stuff no one really teaches you, but everyone is expected to know. With a background in media, coaching, and people and culture, Lisa has worked to help teams grow through change and lead with confidence. She brings a smart, no-BS approach to learning that’s designed for fast-moving teams who don’t have time for theory. Whether she’s speaking about leadership development, career growth, or creating a culture where learning actually sticks, Lisa delivers practical insights that help people take action - not just take notes.
Virginia Scully is an award-winning people and culture expert with nearly three decades of experience in the creative and media industry. As the founder of Human Kind Collective, she provides specialized HR consultancy services that help businesses and their teams thrive in the evolving workplace. Having worked in media and creative agency roles she transitioned to People and Culture later in her career and believes in life long learning and leaning into opportunities when they arrive. With a proven track record in organizational development, Virginia successfully led the People and Culture function at Hatched Media, scaling the company from 5 to 80 employees across two markets while maintaining a connected and collaborative culture that sustained profitability through rapid growth. A dedicated mentor, Virginia devotes time to supporting women. She is passionate about gender equity, mental health awareness, and empowering women in the workplace. As a certified Mental Health First Aid instructor, and a co-founder of Never not mentally healthy - she also educates community and workplaces on mentally healthy practices. She believes the world needs more Human Kindness and seeks to collaborate with like-minded people and business'
Sarah Mazur has spent the past 29 years at the intersection of creativity and commerce, first in full-service and media agencies, later as national sales coach and trainer, and now as founder of Agent for Change. Her goal in every role has been the same: help good ideas land and help the people behind them thrive. She learnt her craft at JWT and Mindshare, moving into a leadership position as Managing Partner, successfully navigating a male dominated world. From 2010–2016 Sarah was Southern Cross Austereo’s dedicated national sales trainer and coach, collaborating with stakeholders across metro and regional markets to build the company’s Sales Playbook while coaching leaders and delivering workshops to lift performance. She founded Agent for Change in 2016, partnering with agencies, media networks, high-growth brands and individual leaders to sharpen communication and embed competencies to power performance. Licensed facilitator of Coach U’s Coaching Clinic · DISC practitioner · Master NLP practitioner · Currently completing a Diploma of Counselling to deepen my work in behavioural change, relationship dynamics, and grief & loss. Outside of work her passion project is my volunteer role with Horse Shepherd Equine Sanctuary. You can also find her kayaking on the Noosa River, at yoga or ceramics and walking my gorgeous Vizslas on the beach.
Danika Johnston is a passionate leader with twenty six years experience in the media, entertainment, digital and technology sectors, driving strategic and commercial direction for businesses and implementing transformational change. Having worked across mainstream media companies and also start-up businesses, Danika is well regarded for leading teams to operational and commercial success and for building credible brand partnerships to deliver business capabilities and outcomes. Danika is passionate about people and performance and using creativity and strategy to solve business challenges with a future mindset. Danika is also a board director, wife, mum of three boys, ocean obsessed, and a board advisor and mentor for women in sport.
Chloe Hooper is on a personal mission to make a million women believe in themselves. She is the host of The Limitless Equation podcast where she interviews senior women around the industry to uncover their superpower. From this experience, she has gained a wealth of knowledge in how to build your career. Chloe’s approach to coaching is authentic, she is not afraid to help you reach solutions and has a unique ability to see the bigger picture which helps set you on the right path.
If you are part of our 2026 cohort, here’s where you book mentoring sessions.
You can book anywhere from 1-6 sessions of your total allocation (6 x 1 hour mentoring sessions between now and end of July).
We recommend booking one session to start with, with one of the mentors.
Then after your first mentoring session book multiple sessions with mentors.
Remember, this program is all for you!
Once you’ve submitted the form we’ll get in touch with your mentor and connect you up to set up a time to meet with your mentor.
Book a mentoring session
Feedback from our 2025 Participants
Diversity
“I have loved the diversity of companies within the group. You should be really proud of what you are creating Wade. You are at the beginning of something really special”.
Community
“Finding a sense of community of amazing women who have similar lived experiences made me feel seen and heard. We work in an incredibly fast-paced industry where these conversations can be put on the back-burner, caught up in being ‘busy’ and it was so important to take the time to have them”.
Discussion
“Loved the round table discussion. Very open and vulnerable room that left me feeling very inspired. Great opportunity to meet other like-minded individuals that will continue to build on the network.”
A Village
“The cohort are my new village. New people to connect with, with similar experiences and challenges to me. I felt heard listening to the cohorts and them listening to me. I felt honoured to be given the opportunity, especially having access to the mentors.”
Action-orientated
“There is so much ‘talk’ in the industry but little actual action. Which is what makes this program so valuable. Women have power but not the tools to weild it, so these sessions give us the opportunity to make change - our voices can be heard.”
High quality mentors
“Mentoring has been invaluable, especially the access we have to the high calibre of mentors. This program has been crucial to the development professionally and personally that I have experienced in 2026.”
Reserve your place for our next 2026 cohort now
In 2026 we have two cohorts.
One is already underway and the next one runs from June to November.
Places are limited to 15 participants and are available now.