Balancing the Scales: HOPE’s IWD Panel Event

International Women’s Day (IWD) was celebrated on Sunday 8 March, recognising the strength and resilience of women and girls around the world, whilst also sparking conversation about how we can all ‘balance the scales’ — a nod to this year’s theme.

The HOPE Program and Stakeholder Engagement Team at CatholicCare Sydney proudly held our annual IWD Breakfast Panel Event, generously hosted by the Commonwealth Bank at their Darling Harbour office.

This year, we were joined by guests across different sectors and featured a distinguished lineup of panellists, including:

Simone Constant, Commissioner at ASIC and Board Director of CatholicCare Sydney
Katrina Barry, Group CEO and Managing Director of Webject Group
Natalie Micarone, Director and Co-Founder of Bendelta
Angela MacMillan, Group Customer Advocate at Commonwealth Bank.

Our MC for the morning was Jessica Monague, Head of Commercial Content — News, Sport and Prestige at News Corp Australia, who guided the conversations of the panel and keep audiences engaged well.

Our panellists generously shared their experiences and thoughts of what it truly means to ‘balance the scales’, particularly across various industries of business, finance, strategy and social impact, which have been historically dominated by gender imbalances.

Angela MacMillan, representative of the Commonwealth Bank, spoke to the power of courage by one of their customers, who’d experienced financial abuse from her ex-partner. That woman’s resilience and strength in speaking up and reporting her experience has now helped millions of people, not just in Australia but globally, with CommBank creating the blueprint of their app flagging harmful language used in bank transactions.

Stories about resilience, strength, and determination underpinned the mood of our breakfast event, reflecting on the empowerment of all women and the ability to push through barriers to achieve goals that they want.

At CatholicCare Sydney strengths-based goals are vital to helping us balance the scales, recognising the skills, determination and resilience of women and children.

A huge thank you to the Commonwealth Bank for generously hosting our event and for their ongoing support of HOPE. A special thank you to all our panellists and MC, Jessica Montague, for supporting us, and to all our guests who attended and celebrated IWD with us.

To learn more about the work of the HOPE Program, please visit hopeprogram.org.au