Podcast transcript: EY Change Happens Podcast – Licia Heath

Intro: Hi I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to Season 3 of Change Happens. Conversations within influential leaders on leading change and the lessons learned along the way.

Jenelle: Today’s podcast is with Licia Heath. Licia is the CEO of a non-partisan, not-for-profit organisation called Women for Election. It’s an organisation that is all about equipping women to campaign for election increasing the number of women in public office at local, state and federal levels.

Now Licia’s story is interesting on a range of levels. You see Licia took on this role as CEO after she left her 19 year highly successful career in finance and asset management industry in London and Australia and after she helped establish and become a shareholder of a $5 billion asset under management Australian based business called Ironbark Asset Management. She also took on that role after she ran for public office herself. Now she wasn’t successful in securing the seat but as Licia will tell you that didn’t mean she wasn’t successful, nor did it mean that she didn’t love the experience of it. In fact one of the messages that really stood out to me when I spoke to Licia was how we need to broaden our views of success. Licia has launched a campaign called ‘Power Like You’ve Never Seen’ and I have to say those are words I’m all about paying attention to. Licia talks about the need to rebrand the way we think about power.

She also talks about there being 3 reasons for why people go into politics. The 3 P’s, they’re:

• Political
• Passionate, or 
• Pissed off

Now whatever the motivation Licia is certainly someone who makes no secret of being on a mission to make change happen. I hope you enjoy the conversation. 

Hi Licia, thanks so much for joining me today.

Licia: Hi Jenelle, thank you for having me.

Jenelle: Look I recognise it is a particularly busy period of time for you. How are you going?

Licia: Oh look great. My stamina is good. Its peak election! I call it peak election. South Australian state election on Saturday. Federal election coming up any moment so it’s exciting.

Jenelle: It is all happening. Now you have had a fascinating career to date. I understand you studied hydrologic engineering, you had an almost 20 year career in finance and asset management, you ran for public office in 2018, now you are leading a purpose led not-for-profit Women for Election. Now I recognise in that one sentence I’ve put every kind of spoiler alert out there on your background but I wonder if you not withstanding that can take a step back maybe paint the picture for me a little bit more. Just put a bit more colour on that background that you’ve had and maybe those earlier years in your career.

Licia: Oh look I’ve had a very fortunate career. Some of it has been very strategic and some of it has been more accidental. I love the sciences. Never ended up working in the sciences. Fell into finance in some ways after travelling overseas on a working holiday visa and found myself destitute in London with a terrible Aussie dollar to Sterling transfer and needed a job post haste and that’s how I fell into finance.
 
Licia: Yes, 19 years in that industry which was wonderful. Taught me a lot. Got fantastic networks as a consequence but found myself increasingly agitated sitting at my desk at the end of my financial services career wondering how I could be better using my skillset more ultra-realistically and there was a pretty fast paced couple of years to where I am now.

Jenelle: Well let’s just stay there for a minute. What were the things that were agitating you?

Licia: It was mostly that I was extremely frustrated about two things. Firstly, we seem to be in a total policy malaise in Australia. Policies of any worth are not being implemented and I don’t think that has largely changed. Secondly, just the inconsistency about how our Australian politicians were behaving or holding themselves and how nothing was enforced in their workforce knowing full well the differences that you and I and probably everyone else listening to this podcast had to live up and expectations of conduct and that total lack of alignment of interest was killing me.

Jenelle: Me too and there are lots of us that have felt that frustration over the years in different periods of time, maybe not even on the political front. That sort of mounting frustration. We’ll often have dinner time conversations about that but what tips you over, from being that kind of frustrated person to going you know what ‘I’m going to do something’. ‘I’m going to run for it myself’. It feels like a massive leap from being agitated and frustrated to going ‘I’m going to throw my hat in the ring’.

What was it for you that became your tipping point?

Licia: Well there was an incident that keeps coming back to mind for me. We were getting constant economic updates. We’ve gone through the GFC now investment managers and economists that are giving us insights into how Australia was faring, how the globe was faring. I had an earworm that had started about ‘well these numbers’ – how GDP is going, where inflation is sitting. Increasingly that was translating to more homeless that I was seeing. I was walking from the train station to my office or more accurately those numbers were never referring to changes I was seeing on the ground. That was certainly.. once that had ticked off in my head, that was something I couldn’t look away from.

Secondly, there was a particular event. We were out having a wonderful event on a yacht, on the harbour. We were socialising with clients. It was a client event. There was a big group I was standing with at the time. We were talking about productivity review and specifically a tax review that had been floated politically and what that would look like in terms of stamp duty changes or capital gains changes. The group I was standing in did say “Have you seen the plans for stamp duty changes in terms of investment properties?” We really have to make sure that doesn’t get up. It was a real pinprick moment for me because I knew how wealthy these individuals were and I knew how many properties they had and that was just such an opportunity hoarding statement that for me was such an important review that needed to happen and needed to be implemented changes to the status quo. Once I started that notion of ‘Jenelle I might be part of the problem – not part of the solution’ than one thing led to another.

Jenelle: Have you always had that level of social conscious about you? Is that something that is a continued thread in your life? Or did you feel something – you called it the ‘pinprick’ moment but the moment where it just kind of hit you at once? Or has it been a common thread if you think back on your life?

Licia: I think it has been a common thread that I very conveniently pushed down deep for a couple of decades. It was there – then it was quite inconvenient for a period..

Jenelle: An inconvenient social conscious?

Licia: Yep if I’m being completely candid.

Jenelle: Why was it inconvenient for you?

Licia: Because I was..

Jenelle: You had to confront a few things?

Licia: Yeh I was on the train Jenelle. I was doing all the right things. I was so clever. I had such a successful career. Had nothing to do with my privilege or anything like that. It was always bubbling - push it down. Bubbling – push it down. Bubbling – push it down and then it just bubbled and I couldn’t push it down anymore.

Jenelle: Wow. You’ve given into your social conscious. This is bubbling up. I’ve got to do something about it. I’m going to run for an election here. What happened? Tell me what happened from that moment.

Licia: I chose to take a sabbatical. I knew I wanted to something else as a career but I didn’t know what that was. I spoke to my husband. He said “Yes you should take a few months”. I don’t think he knew it was going to be a year and neither did I to be frank but figure it out. I was trying to figure it out the next step while I was working and it became apparent I couldn’t do that. So I took some time and I set about trying to work out – look what was agitating me was the state of Australian politics. I wanted to work out how to improve that. I set myself that task as my job for the following months. I set up my home office. I had a whiteboard. I started meeting with all and sundry in the political field.

Jenelle: So I love that unofficially appointed yourself the solver of the political environment for Australia and then you’d pick up the phone and call people and say “hello”? What does it look like to try to solve this and whiteboard this? How did you get those meetings? How did you position why you were doing something in this space?

Licia: Look I started attending a lot of things that I’d never attended before I was attending. Public service conferences. I part took in the mentor walks of Bobbi Mahlab and starting increasing my networks about meeting with ex-politicians, ex-staffers, current politicians. I attended a lot of the thinktank events. I would say 95% of people said “Yes”. They were very giving of their time and it just helped form my view about “Ok we understand the policy that needs to be implemented in Australia”. We do have that knowledge. We do have the research. Extraordinarily complex and astute research instead but what we have is an implementation problem. We have an execution problem in Australian politics. So why is that? Eventually I got to the spot where I said “Well it’s because of the individuals that we have in our parliaments”.

I came across Women for Election during that sabbatical year and I was an attendee at their first ever conference in that year. It obviously lit something in me because I was on the Board a few months later and helping them for their strategy as a not-for-profit.

Jenelle: At the risk of putting another spoiler alert out there. You didn’t win the seat that you went for. It was the highest profile by-election with that. Malcolm Turnbull was coming out of the Wentworth seat. Kerryn Phelps was the one who successfully secured the seat. What was the campaign experience like for you. What was it like for you to not win the seat? Tell me about the experience and what you took away from it.

Licia: Yeh look the experience of throwing my hat in the ring was one of the most positive experiences of my life. It genuinely was. That was the exact opposite of what everybody told me it would be. That stuck with me. I think because I’d partaken in those Women for Election events before that, there was a couple of things that kept resonating through my head through that training and one was:

‘You’ll never feel ready’. ‘You’ll never feel ready to step forward but step forward anyway’.

Licia: The other one was:

‘Timing is everything’.

So my ability to create some change in that seat because of the disruption that had just happened was so much higher than if I had just chosen to run in a standard general election where the incumbent was the Prime Minister. The experience was so positive and you are exactly correct I did not win but I did change the conversation during that
by-election and the ultimate winner adopted my policies and that is a win. That is still a measure of success. That’s something we discuss with the women who do our courses all the time.

There is lots of measures of success when you run for office. It’s not just about getting elected.

Jenelle: That’s such a powerful set of takeaways and I love the definition of success or the multiple definitions of success and if you were able to influence the outcomes, the policies, the positions and that’s what you throw your hat in the ring for anyway, that is most definitely a win.

What did you learn about yourself during that time?

Licia: I understood my courage that I had more courage than I had necessarily permitted myself to think before. Stamina – again as well. Now as a by-election that’s six weeks. Anybody can do six weeks. Anybody. But you’re under intense scrutiny and I flourished in that. I didn’t shrink in that. The other thing that I understood was so many women stopped me during that campaign and they just said “Keep going”. “I’m watching”. “You seem just like me.” “Can I buy you a coffee at the end of the all of this?” “Cause I’d like to do the same thing one day and I have no idea how to get started”. That’s where the notion of going back to Women for Election and saying “Look we’re playing down here”. “We could be playing up here”. “Let me be the inaugural CEO and let me take it there.” Because the demand was there for what we were doing.

Jenelle: I was just going to ask you then how did you go from being someone who was running for the seat to then moving on to become of the CEO of Women for Election. I guess was that it? Reflecting on the feedback that you’d been receiving along the way. Is that how you then moved into that role?

Licia: Look it was certainly reflecting on it. Literally it was scores of women and if you believe the different tropes that we get fed at different times well women aren’t really interested in politics dah dah dah.. It wasn’t true in that campaign and it has not been true since as the increase in our numbers of the number of women that come and get trained by us as shown as well. I think that’s an important takeaway as is the campaign that we released a month ago.

Jenelle: The campaign is ‘Power Like We’ve Never Seen’ and I love those words. I think they are really interesting words. It’s all about calling on women to rethink how they define power.

Licia: Yep.

Jenelle: Talk to me about that. How do you think we currently perceive power and how do you think we should be perceiving power?

Licia: Yes we have undertaken to rebrand power! Let’s face it. It needed a rebrand. Now I challenge everybody listening to this podcast go and Google ‘Power’ and see what images come up. The images that come up are ‘men saluting in front of an army’ or ‘banging a fist on a board room table’ or launching phallic shaped rockets up into space’. This is the imagery of power.

Licia: What was becoming more and more apparent to me was the power that women exhibit, literally every day. Every day. Working for their communities. Keeping our communities going. It has always been humming in the distance. It’s always been there.

So recognising that power and how transferrable that power is to public office and how needed it is in public office as well.

So I’m talking about the power of women that are running their local business chambers, or running the drought relief or bushfire relief, or mental health resources out in their rural communities, or the local P&C, or checking in on neighbours and working out what’s not working in a local community and then working out what needs to be done to improve it. That is the job of a politician.

Jenelle: What do you think is going to happen if we have this rebrand on power? We have more women in political office. What do you expect to see as a result?

Licia: I hope that what we would have is less women choosing to automatically deselect public office which is happening now. So women that do extraordinary work for their communities who say “Oh but I couldn’t do that job”, or “I don’t have the skills to do that job over there.” I want more and more women across Australia, regional, rural, metro of all diverse lived experience to proactively identify themselves as future political leaders because they care for the community and they want better for the community. That is what I want. That’s about rebranding power.

Jenelle: Do you imagine a tipping point? So the point at which you’re like Yeh this is now, we’re good here now. We’ve hit enough of a mass. It looks like this. It feels like this. We know that we’re there when we’ve hit this point. What’s that point?

Licia: Well look I can quote our mission. Our mission is about gender parity in all levels of government across Australia. But more than that it’s about a constant, ongoing pipeline of women who are wanting to be in public office and that those skills are tangibly having better outcomes throughout all of our communities across the country. Because those diverse lived experiences has such a better capability to understand what policies need to be put in place in Australia. Now, again, this could be at a local government policy level or state or federal. It doesn’t always have to be at the Canberra level. It does not. It depends what interests you as an individual as to what level of government you might seek to run for office. But that diverse set of lived experience puts us in such a better place in terms of understanding the policies that we need and then implementing those policies for the betterment of all.

Jenelle: Look I’m going to put myself out there as an example. I just know that there are many of us when we think about whether we might take on something like this. You do get a visual in your head. Your mind kind of races to a particular.. for me maybe the idea of facing a wall of leather seats in Parliament House in a combative situation. Maybe facing a bit of abuse from a blurry bunch of suits facing my way. I’m sure that’s not the only way that this would be play out, there is many other ways. But that sort of is the thing that conjures up in my mind and it might be in others as well.

What do you say to people who default to a particular frame. That might be it. There might be others. It might be a juggling thing. A load thing. How do you help people think differently about a role in politics?

Licia: Yeh well I feel like we are just so well informed, all of us, aren’t we about the negatives of going into politics. So informed. Overly informed.

Jenelle: I’m very informed.

Licia: Yes and I’m desperately looking forward to the next special or series that focuses on the other half of life in public office. What you can achieve. All that wonderful thing that women are doing out in their communities every day right now pro bono, volunteering, how they could be in public office and get more done and get paid for it as well. Focusing on all of that positive that can be achieved if somebody gets elected I think is a big part of how we combat all of that side and equally we get wonderful testimonials from women who come and speak with our alumni about their experiences. Yes, there were hard days. There were definitely hard days. There were hard weeks. But I would go back in a heartbeat.

Jenelle: You talk about this diverse lived experiences and you want to see people bring to the table. No doubt you have heard some incredible stories. Your own story is a great story too but there is many stories you would have heard of people who were doing their thing in the local community decide to run. They have seen some benefits from that.

What’s the story? I often say that stories are the key to unlocking, shifting mindsets and making change happen. Is there a story that stands out in your mind? This is exactly what I’m talking about. Why we need to do this.

Licia: Oh that is very hard to pick one story. We just helped a very large crop of women run in the NSW local government elections and so many of those women were doing exactly what I said. Doing amazing things for their communities already for whatever reason they weren’t feeling represented. We say there are 3 reasons why women run. They’re either, pissed off, they’re passionate, or they’re political. So there is those 3 P’s that drive them. Maybe it’s a combination of all 3 in some situations. They didn’t feel represented and they had got to a point where they’ve said “Right I understand now that it’s not going to get better unless I get involved”. “I’m ready to get involved now.” That’s part of this rebranding power. You’re already 9/10 of the job let us help with you with the 1/10 cause there is still a bunch of stuff that you need to know. That you’ll be better off if you know. But it’s that inherent leadership skills that is so important and that so many women already have. They don’t need new skills. That’s not what our parliaments need.

Jenelle: When you were launching the ‘Power Like You’ve Never Seen’ campaign I know that was underpinned by some research in this space. What stood out to you from the research that you did to inform the campaign?

Licia: There was a couple of things that stood out. That was how many men were interested in seeing more women in Australian parliaments.

Jenelle: Why do you think that is? That there is so many.

Licia: Cause I suspect many men in Australia have equal agitation as to the status quo and a flow on question was that how many Australians had a woman in their life that they would like to see in public office? Now maybe that’s intuitive again for the listeners of this podcast. You’ll instantly go to that woman, that woman – I’d love to see them in public office.

We’re funny creatures in Australia though culturally the way we talk about politics and that’s something that I always like to challenge everyone about. I challenged myself about it. A woman might say at a barbeque “you know what I’m thinking of running”. “I’m thinking about giving it a crack at the next election” whatever election level that is and that we don’t say as a community, like I know many of us has said “Are you crazy?” “What are you thinking it’s toxic”. “Don’t get involved.” If we change that discourse to say “You should go for it”. “I would love to see someone like you in an elected position”. “Tell me how I can help.”

We’re funny creatures politically/culturally in that respect. I’d like to think that we’re helping change that discourse.

Jenelle: I think that’s so powerful. It’s exactly right. I mean I would absolutely agree that would be the common reaction. “Oh seriously are you sure you want to do that?” “Why would you?” That kind of narrative is very much what would be the default. It sort of would give me pause if someone said “Oh my God you should totally be doing that”. “You would be born for this”. “This is exactly what we need to be seeing.” You almost feel like your shoulders would straighten up “Yeah I think I could”.

Licia: It’s not going to get better is it? It’s just not going to get better unless we put a stake in the ground and say “Right let’s improve the status quo”. I’m going to get involved to be part of that change.

Jenelle: Then I guess if you look at it from both sides of the equation. So there is the filling in the pipeline. How do we get enough people wanting to be doing this? But once they’re in the system how do we make sure that isn’t all the horrible things that we probably do fear, how do we then get enough in potence in there to create the change within the system as well which then becomes a reinforcing mechanism to attract more people. We obviously have to look at both parts of that equation right?

Licia: Absolutely yes because it’s hard enough to get elected in the first place what you don’t want then is then high levels of attrition of woman out. There is a few ways in which our organisation is trying to assist with kerbing that attrition and many other organisations and look massive improvements like Kate Jenkins report last year Set the Standard Report. That’s at a federal level but then each state government is responsible for improving the culture and the work environment and many reviews have taken place recently as the last 18 months. That review is happening in Victoria in terms of local government at the moment.

A similar review has happened in NSW and Qld in the last 2 years. How do we improve the culture? What is it that we need to change about our workplace to decrease the barriers to entry but then also to ensure that people want to stay, particularly people that will improve the diversity of this place. So mentoring. Ensuring that you have good support networks when women are in there. We have started last year Parliamentary Friends Group in Canberra which has cross party support to run forums for not just women who are elected in Canberra but their staffers. Even female journalists. To make sure..

Jenelle: Is that literally for friendships? Cause I do think it seems lonely for a number of people in there.

Licia: Yes absolutely and has been shown not necessarily a supportive network there either. So we initiated that last year and post the Federal election we have a number of different events scheduled in Canberra for the coming together again cross party to help provide a support network that hasn’t necessarily been there otherwise.

Jenelle: As you say Women for Election is a non-partisan organisation. You don’t have any kind of affiliation or preference for any political party, but we do have a Federal election due to take place in May. What kind of change are you hoping to see in this period of time?

Licia: Oh look I think. I’ve already seen some of the change I wanted to see which is even the number of women candidates has significantly lifted from past Federal elections and nominations for the election haven’t even formally opened or closed yet. I think that engagement is a big piece that I want to see and again we like to think we’ve played a part in that.

The equal other side of that is now how many women will get elected and that’s up to the public. That is up to the public to understand whose running in their seat and I would really like to think that they would look for a woman’s name on the ballot sheet. Now not to vote against your values for a woman of course but understand who is on that ballot sheet and vote for a woman if that aligns with your values. The only way we will get gender parity in those houses is if the public vote for them.

Licia: We’ve already got gender parity in the Senate so it’s the House of Representatives that particularly has to improve.

Jenelle: So as you know Licia this is a podcast all about change and you very much about making change happen within our political landscape, within the conversations that might be happening in backyards or at the various forums that you’re in and also the change that you were trying to drive yourself when you were running for a seat. What, if you look back on those moments of change on this platform that you are trying to drive. What have been your lessons on how to successfully drive change? When you think about the levers that you’ve pulled. The moments that have made a difference. What would be some of those lessons around change?

Licia: Yeh there is a few. I think particularly focusing our organisation on empowering more than just white women lawyers into parliamentary roles has been a big part of what we’re trying to change. Doing outreach to what I would say is politically underrepresented parts of the community from rural and regional women, to First Nations women, to young women, to women from a diverse range of sectors as well that might not have university degrees but have run an NGO for 30 years and totally understand policy needs in that particular sector.

So learning about how to do that outreach and to do it appropriately and respectively has been a lesson and out of that has come the partnership that we have with I call them our ‘sister organisation – Politics in Colour’, so those are workshops / training events just like ours but run and facilitated by women of colour that do the same training but the additional training as well that refers to the additional barriers to entry that women of colour face when they run. I think those contextualised training workshops are particularly important.

Also working with the parties has been a big lesson for me as well in terms of socialising what we’re doing with the organisational wings of the party. Letting them know who we are. What our intent is and equally who we’re not and why they should work with us to ensure that they’re never left high and dry if somebody suddenly resigns or retires from a seat. That they have a healthy and robust pipeline of women to be able to select from. Those would be the two lessons that come to mind.

Jenelle: From that I’m hearing that you really broaden the net. Lean into the diversity of society. Try to capture people who really are a true reflection of the country that we’re in and also establish areas of mutual gain in working together so when you’re working with the various parties show how this is of relevance to them. How this will lift everybody up. It’s not about anyone particular person or party’s interest, it’s in the interests of all to broaden our pipeline, strengthen our pipeline, have more voices at the table that can represent more.

Licia: Yes absolutely and I think the fact that we are non-partisan in nature is a big part of our success. Different people try to colour us working for the other side and neither of it is true and I think we’ve demonstrated that. We’ve helped women get elected across the political spectrum and that won’t change because we need women across the political spectrum. Women of all diversity across the political spectrum in those chambers otherwise you just end up creating more absolutism and a greater divide where one is further on this side and one of this is further on that side and we’re even further away from a collaborative environment. That is not what we want at all.

Jenelle: So what’s happening with the pace of this change now? Since you’ve been in the role. What kind of uptick have you seen of women in the pipeline? What kind of uptick have you seen of people successfully securing seats that they’ve gone for? Is that pace of change in the velocity of that pipeline moving well? Too slowly? Where are we at?

Licia: I think I would always be impatient that it’s moving too slowly but it’s sessions like this that allow me to pause and reflect a bit more about the successes we have had. In 2019 I think we trained under 200 women and in the last 12 months we’ve trained just over 2,000.

Jenelle: Is that right?

Licia: That is a significant growth and to be honest moving everything online just allowed us to scale at a rate that I had not forecast and that has been fabulous.

Jenelle: Is it because also there are more pissed off people? Of the 3 Ps which P is becoming the biggest driver for this?

Licia: You remember me saying earlier that timing is everything well that applies to this as well. Yes I think we picked our window quite extraordinarily well and women were on the hunt to find something that they could get involved with to make things better. Like we don’t gild the lily in our sessions at all about what it is to run, and what it looks like to run for a party, what it looks like to run as an independent. The money you would consider in each time. The time commitment. The profile raising all of that kind of stuff. So a percentage of women that come out the end of our training are crystal clear that they don’t want to run. I always say that’s still success. That’s an informed decision as distinct from deselecting something you haven’t even really considered but because they have greater insight into the process and how they’re individual skillsets might be applied within that process, those who choose not to run are fully dedicated to helping another woman get elected. So we have seen alumni connected with another alumni saying “Look I’m good at volunteer management” or, “I’ve got digital skills” or, “I know my way through data analysis and so forth I’ll help you get elected”.

Jenelle: Oh the flywheel of change. It’s good.

Licia: There is a role for everyone. Absolutely.

Jenelle: I imagine that so much of the benefit here is about lifting the lid on how it works. Demystifying this great big amorphous process that no one really knows anything about and sort of saying “Well this is what happens, then there is a step here, and a step here, and you going to learn about this, and you are going to be asked to do that”. To what extent is that a major blocker just the unknown of it?

Licia: That is a total major blocker. The whole process is thoroughly opaque. Some people would say that it’s kept deliberately opaque but the more transparent you make it the more likely people, particularly women I would say, are to step into it and you’re right we break it down into essentially a pragmatic to-do-list and there ain’t a woman I know that can’t get her way pretty well through a to-do-list.

Something you said earlier as well about how well informed we are about the negatives of politics and how toxic politics is and so forth. Again, I like to challenge people that just keep in mind that at least in part, that toxic narrative is maintained in part to keep us out. I thoroughly believe that because for every toxic story that I’ve heard I have another 25 that I’ve interviewed for our alumni that have no toxic story. Well we don’t hear about those. I think that’s an important thing to balance out as well.

Jenelle: That’s really powerful Licia. So if I was to just … I mean I feel like you have been saying it the whole way there is a very clear message to the audience but if there is any advice for our listeners, particularly women, who would be considering becoming more engaged in politics or men who might be thinking about people in their orbit that could be. What would that be? What would be your message?

Licia: My message would be understand the measure of success. As soon as you take off the pressure of its ‘about getting elected’. As soon as you relieve yourself from that, just understand that by getting involved, maybe that’s running yourself, maybe that’s you being up on that dais with those individuals, those campaign forums at the Town Hall, just by you participating in that and forcing those around you to discuss the things they might not want to discuss otherwise, you are having an impact on the outcome. You are improving the health of our democracy as well. Even if you’re not thinking of running in the next 12 months but you think that maybe it’s something you might consider in 10 years’ time – start gathering the information now. That’s really important. I hear way too often the different women that go through our courses saying “Geez I wish I knew this information 2 years ago or 5 years ago”. There was a massive disruption in my seat and I could have taken advantage of it then.

Jenelle: Fantastic. So I’ve got to ask the question Licia – do you see yourself ever running for office again?

Licia: 100% yes. I want to run for office again. My time will come again but I can’t help but feel that helping 2,000 other women to run in the interim is going to have greater benefit in the short term.

Jenelle: Well it may well do but it’s going to be incredibly powerful to have that on your CV when you run up for it next time as well.

The last three. Three fast questions on change to finish the podcast

Jenelle: I’m going to finish with the fast 3. Totally unrelated to the line of questioning that I’ve just put you through! And just off the top of your head don’t overthink this one. What are you reading, watching or, listening to right now?

Licia: I am reading a book by Wendy McCarthy at the moment actually who is one of our ambassadors. I picked up a copy at her book launch which I think was only last week. ‘Don’t Be Too Polite Girls’ is what it’s called.

Jenelle: I’ll definitely be reading that one next.

Licia: Yep fascinating read. Fascinating.

Jenelle: Fantastic. What is your super power? Now that can be something really useful and additive to the world or it can be a useless party trick.

Licia: Oh I’m a pretty handy shower singer. I’m not going to lie! But beyond that look my super power would be I feel like I’m a community builder.

Jenelle: Yep that’s a pretty cool super power. Actually both of them are but I’ll take that one as well. If you were going to put a quote on a billboard, what would it be?

Licia: I always thought they should do something about that! Then I realised that I’m ‘they’.

Jenelle: Oh that’s a perfect way to finish up. Perfect way to finish up. Thank you Licia for your time. I have to say I feel like I’ve had a real shot in the arm. This whole conversation for me has been a shift of narrative. A shift of perspective. From shifting the one looks at success. There is a simplistic way of looking at success where you can look at what were you trying to influence and how did you go about moving the needle on that.

There is a shift of perspective on the role that an individual can play. Am I part of the problem? Or could I be part of the solution?

There is a shift of perspective on the tropes that exist out there and how might we think differently about that.

Jenelle: I think about you’ve said there are 3 motivators for why people would do this. Pissed off, passionate or political. They most certainly can’t be the 4th P which is passive and I think all 3 of those Ps that you’ve said are incredibly powerful. What I feel like is you have brought in some other Ps that are important for us to be thinking about in a different context. The P of Power. Let’s not be afraid of that word. Let’s rebrand. Let’s own that space because we do have an incredible amount of power that needs to come to the table. Let’s rethink how we think about politics. There are some views of how that could be but what’s our opportunity to shift that. Let’s rethink the impact we personally can play in the space. I think it’s incredibly powerful to remember that we already have the skills that we need. So it’s sitting there. It’s not like we have to go up and dig them up and retrain. A lot of this just actually engaging and learning about what needs to take place here and actually leaning into there, being part of this.

I certainly feel really empowered and motivated to rethink my whole narrative and my whole mindset about this and I hope others feel the same. Thank you so much for your time.

Licia: That’s such a lovely summation Jenelle, thank you. I really appreciate talking this through with you I feel enlightened as a consequence as well. Let’s rebrand power together!

Jenelle: Woo hoo! You said it! Power up!

The ‘Change Happens Podcast’ from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.

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