‘I taught myself to be brave’: How these execs beat imposter syndrome

In 2011, Dayle Stevens was working at National Australia Bank when she was asked to apply for the head of technology role.

She had young children, her husband was a chef who worked odd hours, and she couldn’t be on call 24/7 – all of which she included in her application.

“I talked myself down. I put in the worst job application in the history of job applications because it said ‘Here’s my CV and all the reasons I’m not the right person for the role’,” Stevens recalls.

Today Ms Stevens is Telstra’s head of data and artificial intelligence.

Holly Clements has lead UBS’s local leveraged capital markets business since 2019. Since joining UBS in 2010, she had done a variety of roles when a colleague suggested she have a go at public mergers and acquisitions.

I think it is one of those things when you look back at various points, and you say: ‘Am I ready?’ You’ve just got to take the opportunities that come your way,” Clements says.

Jo Spillane, head of private capital markets at Macquarie Capital, has also learnt to back herself.

“I’ve taught myself to be brave. Once you prove to yourself that you can take on something new and actually do it, you realise that there’s a whole lot more opportunities for you out there than you thought,” she says.

Leading talent

Ms Rajarethnam, Ms Spillane, Ms Stevens and Ms Clements are four of the 25 women featured in the Women to Watch list, which recognises the talent and expertise of leaders in the education, technology, investment banking, sustainability and fashion and lifestyle sectors.

Other women to feature include Emma Johnston, deputy vice chancellor (research) and a marine ecologist at the University of Sydney; Mina Radhakrishnan, co-founder of property technology start-up Different; and Karen Nielsen, managing director of global renewables at ATCO Group, an engineering, logistics and energy holding company.

Hopefully, the careers of Ms Rajarethnam and her cohort won’t include some of the incidents that leading directors were subject to early in their careers.

On becoming a partner at a law firm now known as King & Wood Mallesons, Katrina Rathie read the partnership agreement for the first time. There was a clause limiting female partners to two children each. Ms Rathie, now a director of broadcaster SBS and Bubs Australia, a producer of goat dairy products, went on to serve as managing partner at KWM for seven years.

When Santos and QBE Insurance director Yasmin Allen was a senior investment banker in the 1990s, she asked the chief executive at the time if she could join the executive leadership team. It seemed a reasonable request, given Ms Allen was head of industrial research and served on the quality review committee for corporate transactions.

Allen recalls the conversation: “‘Look’, he said. ‘We’ve chatted and everyone thinks you’re great, and we want you to keep doing what you’re doing. But we don’t think you should join the team because we meet over dinner at night, and we don’t think our wives would like it.’”

Younger female executives expressed surprise when they heard about the comments.

“These types of comments feel antiquated,” says Tegan Nock, chief product officer at LoamBio, a carbon farming set-up.

“Now, we are operating in a time when I see a great deal of strong advocacy for diverse leadership coming from all levels of business, both within my own organisation and across industry,” says Nock. “There is an acknowledgement that gender balance in leadership is linked with better performance and business outcomes.”