MEDIA RELEASE
FRIDAY June 8, 2018
GIRLS CAN’T BE WHAT THEY CAN’T SEE
girledworld APAC summit set to close the gender gap, teach girls how to think and build a new generation of innovators and STEM entrepreneurs to take Australia forward
Melbourne, Australia – A powerful line-up of entrepreneurs, global business leaders and STEM Experts (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and hundreds of secondary school girls from across Australia will come together for this year’s girledworld WOW (World of Work) Summit at RMIT University Melbourne, on Saturday June 16 and Sunday June 17.
Following the incredible success of the 2017 girledworld Leadership Summit at the University of Melbourne’s Wade Institute of Entrepreneurship, this year’s WOW Summit is set to empower, equip and educate the next generation of girls with the skillsets, mindsets and techsets they’ll need to lead, succeed and thrive in ever-changing, technology-dominated 21st century workplaces.
The masterminds behind the event, Madeleine Grummet (journalist, entrepreneur and mother of four daughters) and fellow Master of Entrepreneurship alumni Edwina Kolomanski (scholar of Entrepreneurship and Law), have set out to solve the gender gap and STEM pipeline problem by connecting girls with the leaders of today and tomorrow. They founded girledworld to smash the glass ceiling, tackle the workforce gender participation gap, teach girls how to lead and get more girls into startup, entrepreneurship and STEM careers.
Supported by the City of Melbourne, Victorian State Government, MYOB and Unisuper, the event will kick off with an inspiring keynote from Holly Ransom, Founder and CEO of millennial consultancy Emergent, and Director of Port Adelaide Football Club. Once dubbed by Sir Richard Branson as the one person he believes will be among the “innovators and icons of tomorrow”, Holly takes the Summit stage with powerful female leaders from some of the world’s biggest startups and companies including: Aubrey Blanche (Global Head of Diversity & Inclusion Atlassian), Dr. Catherine Ball (SheFlies World of Drones), Rita Arrigo (Microsoft), Sushi Das (ABC Fact Check), Ally Watson (Code Like A Girl), Judy Anderson (incoming Startup Vic CEO), indigenous entrepreneur Mikaela Jade (Indigital Storytelling), Laura Youngson (TEDx / IdaSports), Jeanette Cheah (The Hacker Exchange), and Silicon Valley virtual speakers from Airbnb, Atlassian and Twitter.
Madeleine Grummet, girledworld Co-Founder and CEO, believes the time is now to take action, and that we need a new normal where we see as many women as men driving innovation and founding startups to create the jobs of the future in Australia.
“The future of work is already here, and for Australia to compete internationally, we need to show young women they need to be out there building the businesses, taking their places in the boardrooms and breaking the glass ceilings that still exist today.”
“The recent Gonski 2.0 report shows it’s clear our education system is struggling to keep up in The Knowledge Age. We need to teach girls how to think, and how to navigate their lives and future careers where they are likely to have up to 17 jobs across 5 different industries (Foundation For Young Australians).
“We need to bring the outside world in, and give girls access to real-world, industry-aligned learning and technology so they can build the enterprise skills they need to become our country’s job creators, industry leaders and market game-changers”.
Across two jam-packed days of interactive learning, Design Thinking problem solving, technology immersion and leadership cultivation, WOW will upskill and ignite the thinking of hundreds of girls across three core streams: World Shaping (Mindsets), Future Facing (Techsets) and Work Ready (Skillsets).
Attendees will explore exponential technologies, automation, digital disruption and the erosion of traditional ‘safe’ jobs, and speakers will deliver interactive workshops on Design Thinking, teamwork, public speaking, augmented reality, virtual reality, UX, cyberbreach, agile, coding, drone tech and data science. The Summit is aligned to the Australian Curriculum General Capabilities, Design and Digital Technologies learning areas.
For further information or to purchase tickets visit http://www.girledworld.com/
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For more information or to arrange an interview with the co-founders or girledworld WOW Summit guest speakers, please contact:
Mkt. Communications
Zoë Tostevin and Courtney Webb
p. 03 9533 2699
e. zoe@mktcommunications.com.au / courtney@mktcommunications.com.au
ABOUT THE CO-FOUNDERS
Co-founder and CEO of girledworld, Madeleine Grummet, is a Design Thinking expert, innovation consultant at Telstra, Founder of brand agency Do Re Me Creative and Board Director with a background in media and journalism (News Corp, Herald-Sun, Nine Network, ACP). Mother of four daughters, Madeleine also holds a BA (Hons) Monash University, IDEO Design Thinking Certification, Inventium Innovation Certification, and recently completed a Master of Entrepreneurship (First Class Honours) at the University of Melbourne's Wade Institute upskilling in business model development, Lean Startup, agile and Design Thinking.
Co-founder and COO of girledworld, Edwina Kolomanski, is currently completing a Juris Doctor of Law on scholarship with Monash University on top of a day job driving innovation at Telstra. Since finishing a Bachelor of Media and Communications at the University of Melbourne and study at New York’s Columbia University (Barnard College), Edwina's career has seen her work across a variety of industries including State Government media, PR and Communications as well as commercial and marketing partnership divisions of the AFL industry and Tennis Australia. Edwina also completed her Master of Entrepreneurship at the University of Melbourne in 2016 (First Class Honours) and is a member of the NewCo Melbourne Advisory Council.
The birth of a game-changing startup #girledworld: Madeleine and Edwina met in 2016 while undertaking a Master of Entrepreneurship at the University of Melbourne. girledworld was born when the Founders realised they had landed on a very big problem to solve: the STEMder gap. girledworld aims to build the next Gen of entrepreneurs, innovators and STEM leaders with a global edtech platform, interactive events and life-changing career mentoring for girls.