Source: Women's Agenda
In honour of Women’s History Month (and a belated nod to International Women’s Day), we’re taking a look at 5 young Australian girlbosses who are making moves in the management and marketing industry. Read on for the ultimate career inspiration…
Jess Hatzis and Bree Johnson:
A fellow Unimelb Commerce girl, Jess Hatzis has gone on to become an incredibly talented “double entrepreneur”, co-founding not one but two separate companies with her friend, Bree Johnson. The pair of friends firstly co-founded marketing agency, Willow & Blake, one year out of university, and 3 years later they became the co-founders of revolutionary skincare brand, frank body. Specialising in coffee scrubs and modern, cheeky marketing (including their NSFW tagline: Get Naked. Get Dirty. Get Rough. Get Clean), Jess and Bree managed to turn their $10,000 into $20 million with frank body.
But how did it all come about? After a trip to Bali where they experienced coffee body scrubs for the first time, the friends decided to approach a coffee shop owner in Melbourne, asking if they could make use of the leftover coffee grounds. After creating their scrub, they flat packed them into bags and sold them online, and as you probably can guess, had great success. With their business degrees and marketing minds, the girls were able to gain attraction with their risqué advertising and coffee scrub Instagram trend, eventually letting their masses of happy customers do the work for them, with Instagram feeds becoming filled with over 100,000 #frankbody posts by 2017.
Today, both their companies are still running successfully, with frank body now boasting a wide skincare range and 780,000 followers, whilst still staying true to their coffee origins and list of natural ingredients. The girls also received the 2017 Veuve Clicquot New Generation Award for their work in co-founding their two companies.
Michelle Battersby:
At 25 years of age, Michelle Battersby was working at a major investment banking job, following her 5 years of study in a Bachelor of Arts and a Master’s of HR Management and Industrial Relations at the University of Sydney. But after one conversation with the global chief executive of female-empowered dating app, Bumble, she made the bold move to quit her current job and dive into a major role at this company that she had never even heard of before.
Michelle had been asked by Whitney Wolfe, founder of Bumble in the US, to lead the launch of Bumble in Australia, and all it took was a “strong gut-feeling” for Michelle to quit her high paying banking job and venture into the challenge building Bumble Australia. She then
moved on to become the Director of Marketing for the Australia and Asia Pacific region, when an amazing marketing opportunity arose at budding health and wellness company, Keep it Cleaner. Whilst she considered her Bumble job as her ‘dream role’, Michelle speaks on the amazing “power and inner strength [that] can be found from walking away from something whilst you still love it”. After feeling like the timing was right, she left her job at Bumble and became the Chief Marketing Officer at Keep it Cleaner (KIC), which now has a ‘KIC Community’ of over 250,000 subscribers and 321,000 Instagram followers.
Michelle has since left Keep it Cleaner to launch her own empowering social media platform, Sunroom, where she is the currently Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer. Her platform aims to “celebrate bold, brilliant and badass creators”, giving them the freedom to “really express themselves” away from mainstream media platforms.
Rey Vakili:
Whilst she is the ultimate style icon, businesswomen and girlboss, Rae Vakili has not had your typical route to the marketing and management world. She ventured from her hometown in Sydney at the age of 18 to pursue her dreams of studying at Yale, where she completed a degree in Arts majoring in Political Science. From there she went on to live out every girls ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ dreams, landing an incredible role as an assistant to Vogue’s Editor-in-Chief, the iconic Anna Wintour. This Aussie girl’s first job out of Uni definitely had its perks, from establishing a network with the highest of profiles from Barack Obama to Kim Kardashian, to gaining unique, once in a lifetime work experience and opportunities, including becoming a contributor to both Vogue Australia and American Vogue, writing pieces on fashion, beauty and business.
After her time at Vogue, Rey moved across to London to join the world’s largest marketing platform, fashion-tech site, LTK, where she began as a digital strategy consultant. She completed her MBA at the prestigious Stanford Graduate School of Business, and has since moved back to Sydney to launch LTK in Australia. Now, as the managing director of LTK Australia, she uses her business and marketing knowledge combined with her fashion experience to help influencers monetize their content and provide users with the top trends in fashion, home, beauty and fitness.
Alexandra Peek:
Alexandra Peek has not always had the easy road. From being made redundant at age 23, and feeling lost, unsure and that the marketing world maybe ‘wasn’t meant for her’, she’s come a long way, now standing as Australian tanning company Bondi Sands’ Chief Marketing Officer. Alexandra completed a double degree in Business and Commerce at Monash University; choosing to major in marketing and PR because she loved learning about the mind and how people think. After working a few jobs in retail and sales rep-ing, she finally landed what she considered the 'marketing grad role of her dreams' and was happy in her career and life. Cut to 10 months later where she was presented with a white envelope and told to pack up her things – Alexandra was left confused and without a job following her sudden redundancy from her dream role, and began to question if perhaps it was a sign to choose another career.
She persisted and found another job at a tanning company, working as a marketing assistant and eventually worked her way up to a brand manager role, but she began to resent her work and the culture in her office, dreaming of a different magical opportunity to arise. ...Hello dream role at Bondi Sands 😍. Just as she had been
wishing for, after a good LinkedIn scroll (we’ve all been there), the perfect marketing opportunity popped up for the fresh, up-and-coming tanning brand, Bondi Sands. Joining a team of only 3 other people, Alexandra landed the job and instantly fell in love with the tight-knit team, motivated culture and hardworking spirit that Bondi Sands offered. From there she has been involved with the major growth of the tanning brand, from 4 to over 45 employees in their head office, and now serves as the Chief Marketing Officer.
Georgia Geminder:
After completing her degree in sociology studies at Monash University, 27 year old Georgia Geminder - daughter of Aussie cardboard giant and billionaire, Fiona Geminder – was working in a marketing role for Remedy Kombucha. She was faced with the daunting task of building the brand’s social media profile from the ground up, and if she could obtain 10,000 followers, she could keep her job. With her job on the line, she worked hard and achieved this feat, and whilst she earned the right to remain in her role, it ultimately left her with the passion and firing spirit to attempt to launch and build her own brand.
She noticed the dated toothpaste market, filled with heritage brands and nasty chemical ingredients that could be found in rat poison and toilet cleaner. She wondered why the rest of the beauty industry had moved on to sustainable, clean, aesthetic beauty whilst the oral care sector had been left behind. After some research, Georgia found that lots of natural toothpaste brands would remove harmful ingredients, but not replace them with anything, leaving their customers “essentially brushing with sand”. After two years of research and product formulation, Georgia launched Gem, a natural, aesthetic oral care brand that actually works. From launching their first toothpaste in 2020, Gem has now built itself up to become a successful personal care brand boasting 5 star reviews, and is stocked at beauty retail giants such as Myer and Mecca.
Whilst all these amazing women have come from marketing and management backgrounds, it's exciting to see all the different opportunities and career paths that can arise from working in this industry. I hope these stories have inspired you to dream big and push the limits of where your career in management and marketing can take you. Here's to celebrating women doing amazing things in business ✨ Happy Women’s History Month!
Written by Nicole Rozario
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