Footy's first female still making her mark

FEW sports can exercise the emotions quite like football, whatever the code. And Sam Mostyn knows that more than most.

Sam Mostyn

FEW sports can exercise the emotions quite like football, whatever the code. And in the case of Australian football, Sam Mostyn knows that more than most.

As the first female to be appointed to the AFL Commission, in 2005, Mostyn was viewed by some as an unwelcome intruder in a man's world. And it was personal.

"When I was appointed I got a significant amount of hate mail. Quite a lot of it was anonymous. Some of it was identified. It was about upsetting old norms about who has a right to be involved in the game," she tells The Weekend Australian.

"Some said 'This game doesn't need women, it doesn't need you, this is the domain of men'. The implication in some was that I was being watched. Some used the term 'feminist'. They were quite pointed."

For decades it was the same in the nation's public company boardrooms, albeit the hate messages never made it into print and the language was far more polite. But behind closed doors the message was the same.

Now the 45-year-old Mostyn is part of a new breed of female company directors who have broken the mould.

Her appointments to the Virgin Blue and Transurban boards last year were two of the 59 new directorships in ASX top 200 companies taken by women in 2010, compared with only 10 in 2009.

To Mostyn, it is just a start. She wants to see a much broader discussion about diversity.

"I think we need to move towards a more considered view of the role and strength of diversity, and certainly beyond gender as the sole example of diversity. There is great risk inherent in 'group think' decision-making in any context," she says.

"If we want to understand, prepare for and adapt to new risks and opportunities, our leadership and governance teams must reflect the full available talent and draw from the widest possible experience base.

"This will, of course, include women, but must extend to people with different cultural experiences and unique perspectives from across society."

But it is on the issue of gender that Mostyn is viewed as something of a trail blazer in the corporate and sporting world.

Her career is unusual in that she has managed to seamlessly traverse the sporting, political, corporate and not for profit worlds.

Mostyn cringes somewhat at the suggestion that she is a labelled a "good networker", even if that is the adjective many people volunteer when asked about her.

Those who know her well say watching her work the room at a function is an impressive sight.

Mostyn prefers to use the modern buzz word "connector" but agrees she has been a huge beneficiary of the people she has met across sectors.

"I think of myself as a bit of a connector and a builder of confidence across those people," she says.

At the age of 21, after graduating with a law degree from the Australian National University, Mostyn left a job in the Magistrates Court to become an associate with Justice Michael Kirby.

After realising her destiny was not in the law, she worked as a senior policy adviser to successive federal communications ministers Bob Collins and Michael Lee, before joining the office of then prime minister Paul Keating as a senior communications policy adviser.

It is clear that Keating -- the man who called his female staff "love" -- made an impression on her. The emotion is clear as she recalls his achievements.

"I learnt a lot from Paul Keating. The moment I remember most is when I asked him his definition of leadership and he said it was the combination of courage and imagination. I do often look at leadership through that lens," she says.

"It reminds me that great leaders are bigger and broader than just the task at hand. He was also someone who believed in a lasting reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians and he meant it -- it wasn't some politically correct line."

So did she ever see anything of Keating's legendary temper?

"None, never. And his staff were never victims of a bad temper. He was one of the most generous and engaging bosses to have. Anyone who worked for Paul would confirm that. He held us to a very high standard and you knew you had to deliver good work. He was a very intelligent man and could see through any fluff."

Mostyn then switched to the corporate world and was a senior executive at Optus Communications before moving to London with its parent company Cable & Wireless and then returning to Australia to work with Insurance Australia Group.

At IAG she oversaw the development of a corporate, social and environmental sustainability plan for the company at a time when its profits were under pressure.

In 2009, she was also a member of the Crawford Review of the Funding of Sport which was heavily criticised for its findings that money should be stripped from sport at the Olympic level and redistributed at the grassroots level.

In the not-for-profit sector she is president of the Australian Museum Trust, a board member of Australian Volunteers International and the Sydney Theatre Company, and a community representative on the board of the Australia Council for the Arts.

Her broad cross-section of interests made her an ideal candidate to join the non-executive director circuit last year, even if some have raised eyebrows at the number of times she has changed jobs in her career.

"Sam is highly qualified, very intelligent and an impressive person who will add value to anything she gets involved with. She is a great connector and she works across a lot of different sectors," says Stockland director and Mostyn supporter Carol Schwartz.

Yet in some ways Mostyn's experience still highlights some of the prejudices inherent in the system. As one high-profile female director puts it: "A lot of this is still about who you know and what people know about you. At the AFL, people saw Sam in a different role and from a different perspective."

The theory goes that the community Mostyn met through football was able to assess her in a different light -- a light in which other women don't get the chance to be seen. So she became, as one person puts it, "board ready".

"Boards still want to be comfortable with the people they are inviting on their boards -- they want to know about more than just their CVs," another director says.

"Women are often judged only by their CVs -- they struggle to compete against people who are known more personally."

Carol Schwartz puts it another way. "You need to have people within an organisation who are going to advocate for you and your abilities. Men within organisations tend to be much better at getting sponsors than women are," she says.

On the path to taking the Transurban board seat, Mostyn had the support of chief executive Chris Lynch, who is also an AFL commissioner.

Talent Intelligence, a headhunter firm involved in the process, was also involved in her appointment to Virgin.

At Transurban, Mostyn was keenly aware of external and internal perceptions about her association with Lynch, so she insisted on strict protocols being put in place at board and committee meetings to deal with obvious conflicts of interest over issues such as executive remuneration.

But it was never just about gender. "At Transurban and Virgin Blue, the chairmen were keen to broaden the skill set of their boards, not simply through gender," Mostyn says.

"They were also interested in the fact that my career has crossed over industries and sectors, and included sitting on boards and advisory panels in the government and not for profit sectors."

Indeed, Transurban chairman Lindsay Maxsted says Mostyn was not sought out simply for her gender on a board which had been without a female board member for more than 18 months.

"Our major criterion was to add diversity, but in the broader sense. Sam brought much more than just gender diversity to Transurban," he says.

"We were weak in HR skills, sustainability, we were too Melbourne-focused and needed to work on our political connections. Sam has helped us with all those. She has been to two board meetings already and we haven't been let down."

Virgin Blue chief John Borghetti says Mostyn's work at IAG and in particular her reputation as a leader in sustainability and climate change advocacy was a prime factor in chairman Neil Chatfield and the board's pursuit.

"She is a true professional and comes with valuable experience in environmental matters and governance, which provides a great addition to the board," he says.

Mostyn also brings to her roles a sense of empathy, a product of growing up in a family touched by disability.

Her youngest sister Sally -- or "Sal" as she calls her -- was born with a syndrome similar to Down's syndrome. It changed the way Mostyn and her sisters viewed life.

It meant that from an early age they were exposed to the lives of people who had intellectual and physical disabilities, and their families and carers.

After his career in the army, Mostyn's father ran the ACT Society for the Physically Handicapped for a decade, and the girls were encouraged from a fairly young age to volunteer.

"I am sure it is one of the reasons I find it so hard to say no to requests to be involved in activities and organisations where I can make even a small difference," she says.

But there was another important lesson.

"Whenever I get out of hand myself, I think 'you have not a worry in the world'. There is so much still to be done and things that need good assistance and good intent and that is what drives me," she says.

Another profound moment in her life was when her now 11-year-old daughter Lotte almost died during birth. At the time, Mostyn was working in London as group director of human resources at Cable & Wireless.

While the event did not shape her attitudes or career, it brought a sense of perspective. "Any parent/mother who has had a moment where you thought you could lose a child -- mine was very much in the instant of the moment -- you do think about mortality and about the much bigger questions in life," Mostyn says.

Although she grew up in Melbourne, where she followed her father's team, St Kilda, on the black-and-white television of the early 1970s, she joined the AFL Commission in 2005 as a Sydneysider.

She remembers her first commission meeting well.

"I was extremely conscious that this was the first time a woman had sat in this meeting. I had met the full commission as part of the induction process before I formally started. But I was conscious that this was the start of a new set of experiences, not just for me but for the men of the commission," she says.

The first commission, presidents and CEOs meeting was the most daunting.

"It is one thing to be one of nine -- and I had been like that in most of the executive roles I had had, so being the only woman in a room full of men wasn't the issue.

"But walking into a room when you are one of 30 or 40 men, particularly men as presidents and CEOs of the then 16 AFL clubs, that was different," she says.

"There was an awkwardness about it. Not just because of the sheer weight of numbers but because I didn't know those men. I had got to know the commissioners personally and I felt well supported.

"I was conscious that I had to behave in a way that gave the men comfort that I was there to contribute and wasn't there just as an adornment, and I hoped they would see me as more than just a woman. Bringing other skills."

There were some uncomfortable moments in the early days -- times when it was seemingly forgotten she was in the room.

Sometimes the language reflected the fact that no woman had been in that room before.

"It wasn't a deliberate act," Mostyn says.

"It revealed that the concept of these gentlemen meeting was how it has always been. There were some stumbles and unfortunate language and mistakes made. But I never felt it was personal."

AFL chairman Mike Fitzpatrick, who took over from long-serving chairman Ron Evans after Mostyn joined the commission, says she has been a great contributor. "She has given us important legal skills and added a northern states perspective," he says.

"Aside from meetings, she has been a terrific representative for the AFL, particularly around Sydney, and she has been a champion of us getting more resources up there. She is alert to women's issues but her contribution goes beyond that."

But it was still something of a lonely 3 1/2 years before Mostyn's big break came in 2009 when Family Court judge Linda Dessau joined her on the commission.

"It was one of the best moments for me. Linda's arrival removed the gender issue," she says.

"We don't always agree but I was very grateful for her presence because with two of us there, the issue of gender certainly does not play out the way it might have if I remained the only woman on the commission."

She says they are both of the view that they are not there solely to represent women.

"We are there as commissioners of the game. And we are both mindful of the fact we can play an important role for women on the promises we have made to be an inclusive and respectful industry for women. And so my perspective is that I want the men on the commission as concerned, on any issue that might be seen as a women's issue, as any woman on the commission. We should have a joint sense of inequity or inappropriateness about the behaviour, whoever it is affecting."

That sense was sorely tested by the saga that made headlines over the summer, involving an alleged inappropriate relationship between high-profile player agent Ricky Nixon and a young woman.

It prompted the AFL's longest-serving female club board member, Beverly Knight, Richmond's Peggy Haines and the Western Bulldogs' Gaye Hamilton to all go public in claiming chief executive Andrew Demetriou had been too slow to respond to Nixon's admission of "inappropriate dealings" with the girl.

They also criticised Mostyn and Dessau for not publicly stating their outrage.

The whole saga raised questions whether the "old boys club" in the AFL was still as strong as ever, although that was vehemently denied by Demetriou.

The saga was eventually resolved last week when Nixon was banned from acting as an AFL players' agent for two years.

Diplomatically, Fitzpatrick says Mostyn "provided her perspective" on the issue in meetings.

"You can assume there were a lot of conversations going on between the commission and the executive on that issue. I think the executive handled it with a lot of sensitivity and Sam had good input into that. Andrew handled that situation extremely well," he says. Others in the football world vehemently disagree.

Mostyn herself declines to comment on the specifics of the Nixon case or why she declined to speak out publicly.

Although those that know her suggest that she and Dessau were probably concerned that any comment on their part would reinforce a cliche that they were appointed to the commission to be its voice on "women's issues". As a matter of governance, all public comment from the AFL on the issue was also being made by the chief executive.

Mostyn does, however, make a general comment on the matter of behaviour.

"On the question of standards generally, everyone in the game should be concerned when any behaviour offends our values so fundamentally that it can bring the game into disrepute," she says.

"We apply that standard to our players all the time. As a commission we regard ourselves as bound by those values and standards, and I think everyone involved in the industry should think about these issues through that lens, not just the gender lens."

She says it comes back to communication.

"If you really believe in who you are as an organisation and an industry, you need to go back to the community and explain from time to time where you think you can do better. I think you have to take a strong stand against those things that are outside a set of principles and disciplines that you want to hold the industry to.

"I think it is important to go back to the community and say 'we can always do better'. We have to be honest."

As one of the more high-profile women in non-executive roles on boards, Mostyn's advice to others keen to follow in her footsteps is to broaden their experience.

"I think in this country we have had too much of a partitioning of skills. You are either from the government sector, not for profit, the arts and creative industries or corporate. I think that has limited people's thinking about the skills you can acquire if you just follow your interests and seek experiences across these sectors."

And they must be prepared to take risks.

"I always encourage women who get offered promotions, even if the woman doesn't feel quite ready for it, take it. Don't step back and think there is more to be done to take that position. If someone has seen something in a woman and an opportunity for her to stretch and grow, then take it."

But reality is never far away.

Mostyn might move in high-flying circles, but at the end of the day, she is still a mum.

At our interview at her home in Sydney, her daughter is watching the clock tick as she waits for mum to drive her to an important engagement at school.

"It's a quarter to five, mum!" she calls from the kitchen. Five minutes later it comes again, this time louder: "Its ten-to-five now!"

It is all part of the Mostyn routine. Not that she is complaining.

What she hopes now is that her career thus far inspires others to believe that the obstacles of the past can be overcome.

"I don't like the term 'role model', but I do believe that when you are breaking new ground, it is important to perform well and actively work to open up pathways for others to have similar opportunities," she says.

"Some of the things I have done have given a sense of achievement for women that they can go into new areas. This isn't something to be frightened of."