Women make their mark in Queen’s Birthday honours

Belinda Hutchison is being honoured for her service to business, education and scientific research and her philanthropy. Picture: James Croucher

While there will be much attention today on Tony Abbott’s award in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, one of the themes evident from this year’s awards is the growing role of women in corporate Australia.

Two of the three highest awards for the Companion in the General Division of the Order of Australia (AC), alongside Abbott, went to women well known in corporate Australia — Belinda Hutchinson and Naomi Milgrom.

A former chair of global insurance group QBE, director of Coles Myer, Telstra and AGL Energy, Hutchison is now better known as chancellor of the University of Sydney, a role she has held since 2013.

Her roles also include being a director of Qantas, chairing the Australian operations of French defence and aerospace company Thales and chairing the ASX-listed Future Generation Global Investment Company.

Melbourne-based Milgrom, one of Australia’s richest women, whose family company owns women clothing retailers Sportsgirl and Sussan, and daughter of Marc Besen and Faye Gandel, is being acknowledged for her philanthropy.

She is a well known businesswoman and private investor, including being a founder investor in Hamish Douglass’s Magellan group when it launched in 2006.

Like many successful people with an interest in community service, Hutchison and Milgrom have many interests.

Hutchison is being honoured for her service to business, education and scientific research and her “philanthropic endeavours to address social disadvantage”.

Milgrom is being honoured for her services to business as well as her philanthropy and support for the arts, architecture, design excellence and cultural exchange.

Ming Long has been appointed a Member in the General Division of the Order of Australia (AM) for her services to the financial and real estate sectors as well as to ­diversity and inclusion.

The chair of AMP Capital Funds Management, AMP Investment Services, a director of QBE Insurance and non-executive director of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, Long is the former group financial officer of Investa and former CEO of Investa Office Fund.

Her other roles have included deputy chair of the Diversity Council of Australia, a member of Chief Executive Women and a convener of the Male Champions of Change group that encourages corporate leaders to promote women into executive ranks.

Much-deserved awards of ­Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia (AO) went to company director Diane Grady and Christine Christian, a former long-time CEO of Dun & Bradstreet in Australia.

American-born Grady, a former partner with McKinsey in Australia, has been a director of Macquarie Group since 2011 and accounting and advisory firm Grant Thornton since 2016.

She had held directorship Lendlease, BlueScope, Woolworths, Goodman, Spotless and Wattyl. Her not-for-profit roles have included being a board member of Tennis Australia, chair of the Hunger Project, chair of Sydney’s Ascham School and a trustee of the Sydney Opera House.

Christian has been chair of the Kirkwood Capital since 2017 and deputy chair of FlexiGroup since 2016. Her past roles also include being a director of ME Bank, Lonsec and the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority.

She is currently a council member of La Trobe University, and her past roles include being a board member of UNICEF Australia, deputy president of the State Library of Victoria, and director of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

One common theme of many of the successful women has been membership of the Chief Executive Women group, or CEW.

Grady was one of the pioneers of the group, being president from 2002 to 2004.

Less than 20 years ago, it was a time when ideas about the promotion of women into the senior ranks of corporate Australia looked like a pipedream of only a few well educated but brave women in business.

A Harvard MBA who came to Australia in 1979, Grady was the first woman outside of the US to become a global partner of McKinsey and the first McKinsey woman partner to have children.

In an interview with The Deal magazine in 2015, Grady recalled her time a president of CEW when she and others such as BT executive Jillian Broadbent (who succeeded her as CEW president) had prepared a “tool kit” that they took to chief executives around the country to help them recruit and retain talented women.

“It was like we were shouting into a void,” she recalled of the sheer frustration at CEW as they doggedly chipped away, taking their helpful “tool kits” to the top ranks of male-dominated corporate Australia.

As a journalist with many years of reporting on business in Australia who interviewed Grady when she was president, I remember feeling sorry for her and Broadbent as they bravely took their case to CEOs. I was convinced that nothing would ever change. But every bit of their work, and those who succeeded them, helped in changing the entrenched mindset that existed at the time.

Hutchison was president of CEW from 2010 to 2013, succeeded by Christian, who held the role from 2013 to 2015. Their efforts have paved the way for a new generation of younger women.

Several years ago I sat in the Great Hall at Sydney University watching Hutchison as Sydney University awarded a degree to my own daughter (a Masters in International Public Health).

It is impossible to quantify what impact it has on the thinking of young women graduates today seeing such senior female role models in corporate Australia and as university chancellor, now holding such senior roles almost as a matter of course, as they, the next generation of potential female leaders enters the workforce.

Yes, a lot more needs to be done for the promotion of women in senior ranks of society, but all of the women honoured today have been pioneers in their own way.