Kimberly-Clark ANZ managing director Belinda Driscoll
The fallout from divorce had a powerful influence on Belinda Driscoll, the first female and youngest-ever MD of Kimberly-Clark in Australia.
On September 13 this year, it will be three years since Mary Catherine “Mollie” Driscoll passed away in Bendigo at the age of 92.
For her funeral five days later at St Kilian’s Church in heart of the Victorian town born from one of the world’s greatest gold rushes, her son Martin – one of her 15 children – and his family brought to the service a Winx cap to celebrate Mollie’s favourite champion racehorse, plus a set of rosary beads.
His siblings brought supporter scarves for Mollie’s beloved North Melbourne and St Kilda football clubs, her choice Chanel number 4 perfume and a bottle of cold beer.
Today, Martin’s daughter Belinda Driscoll’s most prized possessions are the handmade birthday and Christmas cards her grandmother sent each year, without fail, to each of her 42 grandchildren.
“They just epitomise who she was. She handmade things to make them extra special,” Belinda Driscoll says.
Late last year Driscoll became the first female and youngest-ever appointed Managing Director of Kimberly-Clark ANZ, the Australasian arm of the American multinational personal care corporation that boasts household brands like Huggies, Kleenex, and Scott.
“Care of Wagga Wagga Caravan Park” were the words printed on Belinda Driscoll’s birth certificate when she came into the world in 1980 while her parents were staying in the Riverina capital during a caravan trip around Australia.
Four years later they were divorced, leaving Driscoll in the day-to-day custody of her father. While she saw her mother Joanne every weekend, when Martin started shift work she spent many memorable days each week with her grandmother.
She never knew her grandfather, who unexpectedly passed away when Martin was young.
“My grandma’s eldest daughter actually had a disability and was in a wheelchair. She was an absolutely incredible woman to raise 15 children on her own as well as one with a disability,” Driscoll says.
“So as I reflect on where I am today, females can really do anything. I think she demonstrated that through the power of community, the power of network and the power of wanting to do the right thing for people, you can really achieve anything,” Driscoll says.
Humble beginnings
Before Driscoll took on the top job her auspicious beginnings and the teachings of her parents and grandmother drove her to go abroad.
She spent 17 years at Johnson & Johnson, serving in several international and local leadership roles across Asia, Europe, the United States of America and Australia.
In her last role at J&J she led sales and marketing for the largest business unit within the J&J Medical division.
She believes her parent’s divorce – she remains close to both of them – shaped her in two ways.
“One is I am fiercely independent, having lived in Singapore, in the UK and now back in Australia. I think that allowed me the flexibility and the drive to kind of do that,” she says.
“I think the other thing is there was something just about the role reversals from a gender perspective that I think has shaped me. My dad is a nurse. Up until recently, my mum was a private investigator. So they both did roles that I think traditionally were probably the opposite. Nursing was a female considered role. Private investigation was probably something typically males did. So I never had those typical role models of gender, which I think is incredible.”
Driscoll was headhunted to KC in September 2020 by its then Australasian boss and her long time friend and mentor Doug Cunningham, who first hired her as a graduate at J&J before himself moving to KC.
Last year he was promoted to be President of the firm’s Europe, Middle East and Africa businesses, paving the way for Driscoll’s elevation to CEO from her role as senior marketing director.
Green mandate
Over the past nine months she has brought to her role a passion for sustainability and the disruptive role of female leadership in the Australian personal care and parenting sector.
She drives an electric Mini, the same car she owned during her seven year stint working in the UK.
“I think one of the big reasons why I joined Kimberly Clark was because of our sustainability ambitions,” she says.
“What holds the Australian business apart is the fact that we’re driving the sustainability agenda. In a lot of other multinational organisations, typically this is a global ambition. But we’ve really driven the sustainability agenda locally,” she says.
“I think that’s important from a business perspective for two reasons. Every single person in our workforce wants us to be better and then our consumers also expect us to be better as well.”
Sustainable products launched by KC in Australia since Driscoll joined include 100 per cent bamboo toilet paper and paper towels, Huggies 100 per cent biodegradable baby wipes, U by Kotex Thinx reusable period underwear, and the first reusable Huggies swimmer pants for children.
Driscoll is now also guiding a number of landmark pilot sustainable products scheduled for release later this year.
KC’s flagship Australian paper mill at Millicent in South Australia employs about 400 people and produces Kleenex, Viva and Kimberly-Clark professional products.
KC is now working with a consortium led by Adelaide clean technology company Phosenergy assessing the potential of a Green Hydrogen Hub in the Limestone Coast region surrounding the mill.
KC Australia has publicly set a goal of reducing its carbon emissions in this decade, targeting carbon neutrality by 2030.
Driscoll says Green Hydrogen could be a significant enabler to achieve this goal.
“If Phosenergy is able to set up a green hydrogen facility there, it will power up to about 10 per cent of our energy needs to begin with. The goal is to set this up by 2025. Green hydrogen is a tremendous opportunity to not only help us reach our carbon neutral 2030 target, it also supports the clean energy transition in regional Australia,” she says.
Covid impact
The Covid pandemic and unprecedented demand for toilet paper and other KC products has helped the Australasian business perform strongly over the past two years.
The Millicent mill, one of the three largest suppliers of toilet paper in the country, makes 1.2 million toilet rolls daily for Australian consumers.
“Our retail sales value has increased by 13 per cent in the last couple of years driven by some of the best market share results we’ve seen in close to a decade,” Driscoll says.
KC’s share of the local nappy market is now 59 per cent, its highest level in seven years.
She acknowledges the well-publicised supply chain challenges during the Covid pandemic, especially for toilet paper products.
“It has been tough. But we do have a pretty sophisticated supply chain and we’re doing everything we can to address the challenges that we’re seeing in the market,” she says.
“I think across the board now there’s a number of different supply challenges which have been very well televised in the media around pallets, trucks and shipping as a result of Covid as well. But I would say we’re definitely committed to continuing to deliver the 1.2 million toilet rolls that we’re producing every day.”
She says the goal going forward is to run the Millicent facility as efficiently as possible and to get more female representation in the production line.
In 2019, there were no new females hires in production roles simply because women weren’t applying.
But since the firm changed its recruitment strategies, including removing the prerequisite that applicants need to hold a forklift licence to qualify for an interview for a production role, around half the new hires over the past two years have been female.
Rising to the top
Driscoll says she never realised she was the first female candidate in line to run KC’s Australian operations when she went through the application and interview process last year.
“I feel incredibly proud and I think it’s a real testament to all the work the organisation has been doing around diversity and inclusion,” she says.
Over the past three years there has been a 44 per cent increase in female representation within the leadership team from 1 of 9 female leaders in 2019 to 5 of 9 now, including a new Director of HR who was promoted while seven months pregnant.
Driscoll stresses she is now committed to developing further opportunities across the firm for men and women.
She and Mark, her partner of the past 18 years – they had a work romance when they met at J&J and have been together ever since – have no current plans to have children.
“I feel very blessed that we have such a big family. My mum is also one of eight. So I feel that I have enough people in my life that I don’t necessarily need to have a family of my own,” she says.
Her father, who worked as a psychiatric nurse for many years and is one of the eldest of his 15 siblings, still lives in Bendigo.
His daughter laments she doesn’t get back to see him often enough. She credits him with teaching her the power of compassion, a product of his work in mental health and helping her grandmother bring up the family in Bendigo.
Driscoll says her mother taught her the power of independence and “choosing your own path.”
“She was a private investigator for a number of years and she has recently, since her husband passed away, reinvented herself as a school teacher aid. I think her ability to reinvent herself and keep moving forward has been absolutely inspirational. Her resilience has been incredible,” she says.
Family ties
Driscoll will never forget the last conversation she had with her grandma in the weeks before she died, across the seas from a hotel room in London to Mollie’s Bendigo hospital bed.
“She told me how much she loved me and how proud she was. It was a very beautiful conversation and one I hold very dear to me,” she says.
One of the great regrets of her life is that she wasn’t by her grandma’s side when she passed away, despite making a mercy dash to Melbourne from the UK.
“I was on a business trip and my dad called and said,’ Listen, I think it’s time. You might want to come back.’ Unfortunately, she passed away while I was in the air. So that was incredibly disappointing. But my family and my dad were there with her,” she says.
The family is still coming to terms with its loss.
“It was devastating. I think the impact is probably something we’re feeling more now as a family in that every year we used to come together for Christmas. 100-plus people celebrating every year. Incredible. She was the tie that brought our family together. I think without that anchor, we’re probably not spending as much time together as an extended family. So we’re having to work really hard to keep that connection alive,” she says.
“But I think just for me having an incredible role model as part of my life was really important. Her memory lives on.”
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