She has learned to Self organize. The decisions she makes come from her experiences and her genetics. Asks is it learned behavior and really is that any different from any areas?

Her parents worked hard to ensure that she and her 3 siblings would wake up and enjoy why they were doing. They wanted them to be educated and have a good life.

Father was interviewed as to what his wish for his kids would be doing when they were older. He told of his wish for them to be elite sportsmen and women. The interviewer angrily erupted asking,”Who are you to say that?? Who do you think you are not to expect them to go down the coal mine like you?” his reply? “Who am I not to dream?” how wonderful is that???

By 15, Fiona realised she had to work to her strengths and be realistic with your dreams and she was not going to be a sportswoman.

Her mother investigated the options for her daughters’ education at she had missed and from the limited options available she went and got herself employed as the PE teacher at the local Quaker school- despite not being really qualified.

Her mother was a driven woman, not for herself but for her children to achieve.

After a weekend in London with her brothers she decided go go to uni in London ( well it was the late 70s!). At Med School day one they went into the anatomy room – dissecting the forearm was an awakening for Fiona. She was hooked on anatomy.

She was inky 1 of 12 women! There wasn’t event a ladies room in the main building it was in the basement.

When she announced that she wanted te be a surgeon – the reaction was negative. So she kept it to herself and devised a plan, she recognized that rightly or wrongly she had to put herself in the position that they couldn’t not choose her. Imagine the tenacity of a girl from Glasgow at a London Med School in the Kate 70s?? LOVE IT!!

She chose research. She connected with the plastic surgeons @ the extreme makeover end. In order to do the cutting edge surgery required extensive research- which she did on the cadavers….

She would be in surgery watching leadership in action. She saw that the surgeon could influence someone’s life because of the team behind him.

She realized hat at some point she would be that person and that men could get away with treating people worse than women could. She recognized that some of these men were not getting the most out of the people around them.

Despite a professor recommending that she not progress, and thankfully she was interviewed by his enemy!! He told her that anyone who upset the professor that much deserves the job – and she got it!!

She ended up in East Grinstead where they specialized in Burns Surgery.

Fast forward to 1991, living in Perth, working as a surgeon, married and starting her family which now includes 6 children!! Not an easy path!

Another milestone she learned about ‘growing skin’ in the USA. Fiona rang and begged the doctors to grown skin for a seriously burned patient. The agreed because they said she was so desperate. Sadly the patient died despite the skin taking. This nearly crushed her but she drove on. She then applied and got the position of Director of the Burns Unit.

Proud moment was when her 6 year old son created a skin incubator for his school project !!

She was so driven but after feedback from a hospital counsellor who told her that she was obviously driven and passionate but she was not making the time to inform and educate the people around her and they didn’t understand her.

She realized that she had to step up as the leader of a team and is ultimately grateful for the ‘interventon’. She created an environment where everyone knew everyone else’s role and it was a seamless unit that acted like one.

Her underlying fundamental belief that everyone is unique and special and nave something to give. If you don’t share it, it means nothing, it is worthless.
A leader recognises the skills in their team and let’s them do it!!

As 2005 Australian of the Year, she was asked what she has learned, her reply, “take reponsibilty for the choices you make in every aspect of your life once done, facilitate these strengths in others”.

After her time in Bali, where Fiona worked tirelessly to help victims of the horrific bomb, a colleague said that they would never see the sacrifice and the amazing strength of the rescuers and helpers again in their lifetime. Fiona recognized that this was a sad indictment on humanity and decided to CONNECT WITH GOOD NEWS STORIES AND SHARE THEM. She tells us there is power in the good – let’s all adopt this thinking hey??

After an amazing one hour, I am in awe and have the ultimate respect for this amazing human being.

..

Dr Suzy Green is talking to us about positive psychology. It’s a strengths-based psychology, the scientific study of optimal functioning. It will give us a vocabulary to talk about strengths! Have you heard about it?

Signature Strengths are your top 5 strengths.
Most women say it is theirs are modesty and humility – which are some of the characteristics that hold women back! Interesting isn’t it?

It is important to leverage your strengths – sounds simple but studies show that most people don’t actually know what their strengths are and are therefore not leveraging them. Pay attention to what you are doing well and less on what you don’t do well.

Lion Nathan are a walking talking example of applied positive psychology in action. Although this is a new ‘science’ in Australia, it is intrinsic in their culture.

Links to help you find your strengths www.viacharacter.org and www.authentichappiness.org

Alicia Purtell is from Lion Nathan and shares an insight into their Leadership Program – which develops the whole person and does not just include business.

Success comes from Positive Relationships. #WMWC How to measure it? Engagement = Positive Relationships. I am really impressed by Lion Nathan as an organization – they have great tools and true understanding of their customer.

Organizational culture is really important at LN. One of their measurements for staff performance is Behavior x Results: they must the results but not the behaviours then they don’t achieve their overall objectives. This totally makes sense doesn’t it? How many companies do the same?

So excited, Winthroop Professor Fiona Wood is about to speak to us, more on her talk here. http://socialmediawomen.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/542/

Helen Conway, 5 lessons:

1. Understand deeply who you are and what is important to you
2. Be Resilient and hold the course
3. To invite feedback and challenge from people around you. Feedback must be meaningful and you need to be challenged
4. Broaden your perspective
5. Need to seize opportunities when they present themselves

Isn’t this interesting, if a job requires 10 characteristics, men will put their hand up if they have 3 – 5 and women with 8 are hesitant!!

….

Follow hash tag #WMWC on Twitter

Great presentation from Margy Osmond, Chief Exec of Austraian National Retailers Association – check out Facebook for feeds: Social Media Women Facebook

Anna Booth shares the 5 leadership characteristics innately possessed by women:

1. Being able to understand the breadth of the business and see the whole picture
2. We have to be in the future
3. Learning
4. Empathy
5. Taking action

Robyn Merchant, Senior Exec at Oracle Corporation gave us insight into the characteristics if a leader in her business. OWL – Oracle Women’s Network, is driven by Women Who Lead From Beyond. Their motto is: Connect + Include + Inspire, cool hey???

She also told us that we are in a VUCA world:

V : volatile
U : uncertain
C : complex
A : ambiguous

That being the case, we need to act accordingly.

Cindy Reid, Client Partner, Korn/Ferry International shares insight in her presentation, Managing Your Own Career:

Why women aren’t making it ti the top #WMWC:
1. They don’t have the same experience as male counterparts
2. Cultural fit
3. Low visibility – ‘getting the job done’ vs building visible profile

What they are seeing:

From clients
1. Seeking intelligence on female exec talent
2. Demanding women on shortlists

From female execs:
1. Interest in gender initiatives both at executive and board level
2. Lack of proactive career planning
3. Naivety in dealing with search firms
4. Lack if confidence and self promotion at interviews

Andrea Culligan, MD / CEO Unimail, so generously shared with us her journey – amazingly inspirational!!

Here are Andrea’s keys for the success in Leadership:

1. Status means nothing
2. Self awareness sexy
3. Set high expectations
4. Educate yourself and self evaluate
5. Challenge creates everything, don’t forget to test
6. Sometimes being a leader is not the top job; being the first to follow someone on a big journey could be the best way to enable the dream best

I totally agree with this statement from Andrea: “don’t leave until you leave”. The eg is of a woman announcing her pregnancy, and stops innovating & developing herself – utilize every minute.

There was a great discussion from the chair, Claire Braund who said that in Australia we are risk averse. In America they come from a place of ‘you haven’t succeeded until you have failed’.

We can all take something from this statement – successful people know this and are not wounded by this, they learn from it and move on!!

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My journey in social media is either illuminating because it affirms my geek girl status emerged fairly early or is entirely innocuous because my audience is of like mind! I am suspecting the latter here!

Social Media as we know it today is the evolution of a number of different channels over quite a length of time.  My first hotmail account was set up around 1996. This opened up a world beyond chatrooms and gave ‘relationships’ somewhere to go.  This was also around the time I became fairly active in the elderly aunt of chat rooms, Internet Relay Chat (IRC).  I mention IRC because I am noting some similarities with Twitter now and hope that some of the joy I had in IRC is replicated e.g. a friend from New Jersey and I are still in contact today.  As fickle as online relationships can be, I have found there is a natural human desire to believe in the people that cross your path. 

My first role out of university was in a software development group in a government agency in New Zealand. ‘Geekdom’ was easy to manage in those days but online engagement changed again when I started legal studies, followed by legal roles. Blogging finally came not long after I registered my first ever domain in 2005.  It was late by most standards and entirely as a result of a friend from high school returning from the UK presenting me with options of a domain registry that I could afford.  It was a stop/start affair as I was more motivated by finding ways to stay connected with loved ones (Mark Zuckerberg was still experimenting on Harvard students with Facebook and it was really only taking off in that part of the world).  Soon accounts on Bebo, MySpace, Imeem, and Facebook followed.

The online  footprint was ever expanding and in 2006 leading up to my wedding I was building web pages (with the most embarrassing rusty HTML coding skills known to mankind) to keep guests posted on plans, accommodation & post photos etc.  I was linking music playlists, photo galleries and message boards.  What Facebook and many other platforms are today would have saved me an awful lot of time back then! Setting things up took forever.  When I look back and read the old posts they still make me laugh so I guess it couldn’t have been too horrendous!

Social media has opened up a world where I can share my passion for music, food, culture, gadgetry, and people with likeminded individuals.  The world has truly opened up for me as an incredible opportunity to meet electric personalities and as a recent resident to Sydney a wonderful way to experience the city and make new friends.  As is with anything you take the good with the bad – there will always be sharks that swim in the same waters but on the whole my experiences have been positive and particularly rewarding.  So long as you exercise the usual caution you would with any relationship when it comes to safety, finances and family, you can navigate these murky waters fairly unscathed. 

Professionally social media has given me back the confidence to undertake a few new challenges that are aligned with my passions.  Although I’m entrenched in the corporate world I have found the association with small business owners in this sphere enlightening and motivating.  To start my day with some great blog posts, humorous tweets and insightful writing puts me in the right frame to be a superwoman in my day job (have a think about that if you’re a sceptical employer). 

Social Media Women was a logical next step for me and representing the female voice in the social media space is an ethos I support.

Rādhikā  Ram Tevita is a solicitor and marketing management specialist originally from New Zealand

Inspired by Catriona and Nancy’s social media stories, I thought I would share mine too.

I started blogging as a new mum in 2006, writing daily posts of my motherhood journey on the Orble-hosted blog www.pcosmum.com in the short timeframe I had while my newborn son slept. As my confidence in blogging grew I was taken on as an Essential Baby blogger in 2007, which led to a paid gig as a Fairfax parenting blogger in 2008. My parenting blog has now migrated to the Parenting Australia website, where I have been blogging since June 2009.

Blogging was my first experience of social media and it was here I learnt how relationships could be formed online. I built up a regular group of followers on each of my parenting blogs who commented and followed my stories, eager to find out what happened next in my story. This encouraged me to launch my own professional blog as part of the Strawberry Communications website. Here I post news about my clients and the business, as well as the odd titbit from me.

I have also guest-blogged on a number of sites, including ANZ’s recent Febusave initiative, when I was invited to be a blogger. I live-blogged at the Media140 for Foodies event recently, blogging in real time and posting during the event.

Extending to other social media, I discovered Twitter two years ago, initially as a way of communicating with other home-based business people. Sometimes it can be lonely running a business around children and you need some adult interaction. That was how Twitter started for me, but I have since realised the value of cementing online relationships through Twitter in a professional capacity and have found work there too. Last year TweePR  named me in the Top 10 of Australia’s most followed PR professionals.

I used Facebook personally for a long time before launching a business page last year and have noticed the different interactions I have with friends and fans on the two pages. I also use LinkedIn as well, but I’m not as fluent there as I am in other social media. I am still learning too and will be launching a new Tumblr blog soon documenting an exciting new publishing project.

I look forward to connecting with you:
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/JohannaBD
Join our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/StrawberryCommunications
Connect at LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/johannabakerdowdell
Johanna Baker-Dowdell www.strawberrycommunications.com.au

Way back in 2006 – which is a long time in social media – my friend Carol Skyring showed me how to set up my very first blog. I vividly remember writing articles so I would have them ready to upload as soon as I set up my blog.

And that was the first lesson in social media. Blogs aren’t like websites. You upload articles over a period of time – not all at once. It’s just like telling a story: you get to know the characters over time, not on the first page.

The reason I set up my blog was to understand how this new communication method worked. If you are in social media you know that you need to do it to get it. If you’re not in it, you don’t get it! As a communication professional I felt it was important for me to see how I could use it to share my client’s messages and stories.

I have been doing PR for nearly 20 years (yes I know I don’t look that old ) so what better way for me to share my experience and knowledge than through blogging.  So I used myself as a guinea pig, and started blogging.

My first blog was http://smallbusinesspr.wordpress.com/which I moved to a self hosted www.PublicRelationsSydney.com.au blog in October 2008. I can tell you, if someone said to me that I would love blogging so much I would pay every month to host my own blog I would have laughed at them. Now I have seven blogs! And the Public Relations Sydney blog was shortlisted as Mumbrella’s Media & Marketing blog of the year in 2009.

A few years ago I had heard about Twitter and thought “Why would someone want to know what I had for lunch?” I resisted, then someone tried to explain it, and I thought “OK I need to do it to get it”.

Well – how amazing is Twitter. I started networking and going to tweetups. I was the only PR person in the room and realised I was an “early adopter”. How funny! I was never into technology and thought it was such a geeky thing to do. Now I have accepted my inner geek. In fact, I have embraced it! Don’t let my exterior PR chick persona fool you!

Professionally I was listed as one of the top 100 PR people internationally to follow on Twitter. Personally I met the most incredible, interesting, inspiring and friendly people. I really believe that Twitter creates this energy where you attract similar people to yourself.

It is a powerful medium, but it becomes extraordinarily powerful when you meet the people you have been tweeting with. I think because you have a shared history and an established connection. So when you meet all the formalities are out of the way and real enduring friendships start immediately.

Northside Coffee Mornings really cemented many professional and personal relationships. One of those relationships was with the lovely Nancy Georges. Hanging out with Nancy is like being plugged in to an electricity socket – so much live energy. An idea about creating a group for women to collaborate and share social media experiences was turned into a reality with the help of the Bella Nancy. It could not have been done without her.

So we now we have Social Media Women where we can tell our stories and create new ones.

Hi! I have been wanting to document this story since Catriona Pollard and I started Social Media Women, so it seemed a great time to share it since we are asking you to share your story, here’s mine…

A couple of years ago, I found myself changing my business, Paper Magnolia, and working on a new business, Magnolia Solutions.  I was a stationery wholesaler who was building her brand and working on customers businesses  as any good wholesaler does.  As much as I loved my products and my customers, I was feeling isolated from the world and  not as fulfilled as I once did, I was not using my brain as much as I would have liked. I was also at the mercy of the fickle retail market. 

As Magnolia Solutions grew, I was recommended to get into Twitter.  My initial thought was, “No Way!!! I have a website, I have just gotten into this Facebook thing, I can’t possible do another thing…”.  But as a marketer you have to keep up with what is going on and the tools at your disposal.

WELL! What I discovered was an amazing resource filled with amazing people (and lots of really not amazing people but I wanted to concentrate on the great things!)  The think that impacted me the most was the true spirit of sharing and collaboration.  The access to people that I would never normally have, and no I don’t mean Ashton Kutcher (for the record I don’t follow him).  Initially I was just observing and learning. 

By being a part of a few online communities who were connecting online but not in real life, I ‘met’ Frances Jones http://twitter.com/FrancieJones).  Frances told me all about Tweet Ups and noticed that I had blogged about Gelatomassi as had Tony Hollingsworth (@hollingsworth).   She kindly ‘introduced’ us and I started to watch Tony’s Tweets.  Tony was tweeting about coffee mornings  – now I love coffee (not so much a lover of mornings but hey!) so I investigated further!

Coffee Mornings are on in Surry Hills and in Mosman Northside Coffee Mornings (#nscm).  As #nscm started later than Coffee Mornings they won it for me!!  So I started watching the tweets and connecting with a couple of people.  I was a little nervous turning up and checking it out but that feeling disappeared in minutes!!  So I started going weekly and being part of a real online discussion and group on Twitter it was so great!!  Instead of just re-tweeting I was contributing.  I was also able to be part of discussions that I would not normally be part of.  I even did a posterous post on my wonderful friends.

One of the people I admired in the group was Catriona Pollard, she was a canny savvy business woman with an appreciation of the important things in life.  After a couple of chats I asked her if she would mind me discussing my new business and how I was setting up the services etc as I was new to all this and she had been doing it for 10 years.  I am not normally so forward (until I know people a LOT better) and glad I was this time!

I quickly discovered that Catriona is EXACTLY the same person online as offline, she is genuine, giving, a true sharer of information and is an amazing collaborator.  My experience is that a lot of people aren’t what they seem, so I was very pleasantly surprised!

After a short time we started meeting up and so began a great friendship.  Catriona had been talking about starting a group for women in social media and then we decided to give it a go!  I would not have gone on this great journey with anyone else, absolutely.  Catriona and I have been having a blast and are thoroughly enjoying all that is coming our way!  I am not sure that we eventually would not have met if it was not for Twitter, but we will never know!!

I have met so many great people who I now consider friends from this group and other communities. 

So thank you Social Media for giving me a wonderful new friend!