It was 1983 when Helen Lynch, a commercial lending manager for Westpac in Brisbane, met a young barrister who had applied for a loan to finance her legal studies.
The woman had left school at 15 and worked her way up from receptionist to law student to solicitor to barrister. Lynch, who’d also left school at 15, was forging a career in banking after becoming Australia’s first female bank branch manager in Westpac, Rockhampton.