Case Studies

How To Become A Standout C-Suite Executive

The last few years have been incredibly tough for everyone, especially women. Given that research tells us that in times of pressure and stress women tend to drop back into prioritising everyone else’s needs above their own, this can lead to you letting go of your big, bold, courageous dreams.

And I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to.

Bring on your big hairy audacious goals. In fact, even more research tells us that everyone is better off with women in positions of power equal with men.

Throughout the pandemic, many of my clients were kicking amazing goals personally and professionally. I could not be more delighted for them all. They are earning more, landing promotions or new roles entirely, performing well in those roles and receiving appropriate recognition, winning Awards and much much more.

Don’t let the mantra of low confidence and agency get in the way of your big, important dreams. In fact, having women in positions of power could not be more important as we emerge from the pandemic induced turmoil. After all, women do it differently, and that’s the point! Diversity works when women can lead like leading women, not like men.

Read about these amazing women who have kicked fabulous goals over the past year or so.

Eradicated the Imposter Syndrome Feeling

BACKGROUND

Jalpa is a proven lateral thinker with over 13 years of in-depth experience in technology and an expert in cyber security. She provides practical, insightful and agile cyber security solutions to help plan, detect and mitigate the challenges of cyber threats.

Jalpa is passionate about helping others by paying it forward and generously shares her knowledge, time and energy with colleagues, peers and volunteering organisations. She is focused on helping people from diverse backgrounds get ahead in their careers with professional development and mentoring.

Jalpa came to me to build her brand, visibility and confidence and to get help to be promoted into leadership.

CHALLENGE

Jalpa realised she had been doing a similar role in cyber security for the past six years. However, her drive to have more influence, significance and lead a team became stronger than ever during COVID.

After undergoing a heartbreaking loss, Jalpa realised that time was limited for everyone. Jalpa knew that the opportunity to be promoted would never come if she didn’t work with someone who could help her get to the next career level. She recognised that she needed to take action to unlock her full potential.

In addition, Jalpa needed help to break free from imposter syndrome and gain more visibility, confidence and tangible outcomes from these improvements.

SOLUTION

Jalpa undertook a six-month visibility, branding and career program with me to work on her long-term career strategy. I provided Jalpa with a very methodical approach to gaining visibility, increasing branding, and best representing herself… whether for interviews, on LinkedIn or presentations.

I helped Jalpa discover her short and long term goals, desires and intent. I helped create a roadmap for Jalpa’s career path. Best of all, I helped Jalpa increase her confidence and break the imposter syndrome feeling by sharing her experiences with others on LinkedIn.

RESULT

Working with me has helped Jalpa build a solid foundation to take her to the next level. This includes an increase in her visibility, confidence and courage. Jalpa is willing to speak up in meetings and is seen as a leader by her manager, peers, and even the head of security.

She freely shares her aspirations and goals of becoming a manager with those around her and willingly mentors five mentees in the global Women in Cybersecurity organisation mentoring program – paying it back all over again.

She has become an inspiration for her peers as she gains more exposure, speaks out and steps up as a leader.

Amanda really resonated with me and what I wanted to achieve. I felt like she understood me, knew the right questions to ask and actively listened. When I shared with Amanda that I had this imposter syndrome feeling, she gave me tools, guidance and practical methods to break it.

She has empowered me to succeed by unlocking my potential and bringing the best out of me.

Jalpa Bhavsar, Cyber Security Operations Specialist, KPMG

Mary-Beth Hosking, CEO, Vic ICT for Women

Dream Role Within Two Years

CEO Role inThree Years

BACKGROUND

Mary-Beth Hosking is a pragmatic and seasoned IT leader with over 17 years of experience leading multi-disciplinary teams. She understands the impact of poorly led change, which is why she is motivated to drive transformation by building people up.

She combines her experience with technology, retail, transport, logistics, finances and consulting to solve complex problems and implement innovation.

Mary-Beth came to Amanda to help her be recognised for her work and acknowledged that she has the right experience and skills to become a CIO.

CHALLENGE

As an energetic, incredibly driven, hyper-efficient and ambitious woman, Mary-Beth felt that she didn’t fit the standard mould in any organisation and wasn’t being taken seriously. She was hitting career roadblocks and felt people’s perceptions were holding her back.

She needed guidance from an executive coach that could help pitch herself in the best way possible.

SOLUTION

Mary-Beth engaged Amanda to work on her short and long term career strategy because her passion, drive, and vitality resonated.

Amanda helped Mary-Beth with her leadership brand. In particular, she helped shift perceptions so that people would take Mary-Beth and her ideas more seriously. This allowed Mary-Beth to build her brand in the organisation and within the industry.

This was done by polishing up her resume, focusing on LinkedIn and changing how she presented herself at meetings and interacted with others.

Amanda challenged the way Mary-Beth thought about herself. She taught her the concept of gravitas, how to hold herself in meetings and virtual spaces. Amanda helped Mary-Beth improve her branding (internally, externally, and digitally) and coached her in public speaking.

RESULT

Working with Amanda helped Mary-Beth cut through the noise to find her true self, which led to the opportunity of getting the role she wanted.

Amanda gave Mary-Beth the tools she needed to make a significant change. Mary-Beth’s hard work resulted in being headhunted for her perfect CIO role… to create a vision and move the company forward, focusing on people leadership. Then after just one more year, she landed a CEO role.

Mary-Beth positioned herself as a leading authority and increased her brand, presence, and voice in the marketplace. In fact, she even wrote and launched two books while working with Amanda, “In One Piece: A step-by-step guide to surviving change” and When Now Means Now: A handbook for career change, advancement and progression”.

Amanda taught me to trust in myself, to highlight my attributes and not be someone's workhorse. If I had not engaged Amanda when I did, I would not have won the CIO opportunity and never even been considered for the CEO role. Amanda helped me achieve in three years what I couldn’t achieve eight years prior.

Mary-Beth Hosking, CEO for Vic ICT for Women

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Barb Woodruff Swanson

Re-Built Confidence Led To The Ideal Role

BACKGROUND

Barb Woodruff Swanson is a decisive leader with over 15 years of experience scaling multi-national, B2B,
SaaS sales organisations. She builds world-class sales teams, drives revenue and business growth, and leads dramatic revenue uplifts resulting in hockey stick growth.

She is committed to developing, coaching and mentoring teams to achieve organisational and personal objectives focusing on inclusion, diversity and a sense of purpose.

Barb came to Amanda for some tactical coaching in creating her digital brand, as well as guidance in navigating the difficult return-to-work process the mom of three has endured.

CHALLENGE

In February 2020, Barb reentered the professional workforce by accepting the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) role for a deep-tech start-up. She was specifically brought on to prepare and lead the company through scale-up.

Unfortunately, the business was premature in scale-up ambition, and Covid lockdown hit four weeks into the role. In addition, she quickly discovered that the business did not yet have a viable commercial product and culturally lacked the support, feedback, and collaboration she was accustomed to.

The role represented the relaunch of her career, and she wanted to make it work. She stuck in trying to get the business to where they thought they were. In the process, it was clear culturally that this was not a fit, and professionally, she was filled with self-doubt attempting to create scale without a viable commercial product.

Ultimately, it was time to go, and she sought guidance from an executive coach that could help her shake the self-doubt from that experience, recalibrate, and define “what good looks like.”

SOLUTION

Barb engaged Amanda because of her focus on female executives and deep understanding of the challenges that female executives experience, especially as they make career transitions.

Amanda worked with Barb to build her confidence, get her recharged and eliminate the feeling of self-doubt.

Amanda provided the tactical tools Barb needed to build a roadmap of the process to obtain the right role and helped her build her personal brand. Amanda encouraged Barb to create the right opportunities rather than wait for something to come along. Having a roadmap of the process, she confidently approached the journey with clarity of what good looked like.

After all, 80% of senior level roles are not advertised, and because Barb’s expertise is in a specialist niche, the roles she wanted are extremely scarce.

RESULT

Barb accelerated building her brand, became even more strategic and successfully promoted herself to obtain a C-level leadership role in a technology scale-up.

Working with Amanda helped Barb discover what role really suited her. In fact, she felt empowered to turn down three different executive opportunities before accepting her current CRO opportunity with Fergus.

Barb credits the coaching she received from Amanda as well as the support and comradery she experienced being a part of Amanda’s very active community of executive females going through very similar journeys.

On top of the tactics, support, and confidence Amanda gave me, another incredible asset was Amanda’s community of executive women. There were so many light bulb moments in the group of really successful women experiencing the same scenarios that I had been experiencing. It helped remove a lot of my own self-inflicted self-doubt as I recognized my experiences were not isolated.

Barb Woodruff Swanson, CRO Fergus

Lost your professional mojo? Join the Waitlist to find out how Amanda can help

Ursula Lepporoli

Professional and Personal Transformation

BACKGROUND

Ursula Lepporoli is a proven leader who has over 15 years of extensive experience as a strategic global mobility tax expert. She provides tax services to expatriates and high net worth individuals while leading teams to deliver client-centric solutions.

She is passionate about creating environments through technology, process and culture where people thrive.

Ursula came to Amanda to help get promoted, become the best version of herself, and increase her brand.

CHALLENGE

The pandemic and the resulting border closures limited the pipeline of classic expatriate work Ursula historically completed in terms of strategic global mobility tax compliance and advice, as very limited business travellers arrived in Australia.

The pandemic allowed Ursula to invest in herself and make sure she was ready to go once the borders opened back up. She was also able to diversify the types of work she engaged in during the pandemic.

SOLUTION

Ursula undertook a branding and career program with Amanda to work on her short and long term career strategy. This included identifying where things had gone wrong in the past, understanding how to change that, and building business networks.

The focus was to broaden Ursula’s brand, so she wasn’t just seen as an expatriate tax expert. Instead, the goal was to ensure Ursula became a sought after leader with experience in business optimisation, including process improvement, technology solutions, diversity and inclusion.

This was done by polishing up her resume, focusing on LinkedIn and undertaking presenting opportunities on podcasts to share her knowledge with a broader audience.

RESULT

Working with Amanda opened Ursula to more opportunities, more leads and more clients. In particular, it led Ursula to expand the reach of her expertise.

Ursula positioned herself as a leading authority and became highly sought after to give her opinion in podcast interviews and expert panels. The result was that Ursula was noticed by decision-makers within the wider business and invited onto a board observer program.

Best of all, Ursula increased her brand, presence, and voice in the marketplace with her focus on business strategy, diversity, inclusion and leadership. This all added to the business case for Ursula’s promotion as a partner with a role in business development and client relationship management.

A good coach whispers in your ear what you know deep down in your soul and in your heart - what you can do, what you should be and that you're worthy. Amanda turbo-boosted my courage and confidence as she pushed and then applauded me in a very challenging time for our industry. I had more opportunities materialise because Amanda helped me focus on being the best me.

Ursula Dyer Lepporoli, Partner KMPG

Need to build your brand? Join the Waitlist to find out how Amanda can help

Vineeta Srivastava

Professional and Personal Transformation

BACKGROUND

Vineeta is a trusted adviser to her customers, and has over 20 years of experience in sales, technology and building teams that serve customers. She is talented, conscientious and knowledgeable and uses her skills to build intelligent enterprises for her stakeholders and customers.

She is also passionate about being an inclusive leader and in addition to her sales and technology leadership is helping to create a positive social impact through her work against Domestic Violence while solving customers’ problems.

She came to me initially to help position herself as a leader and get guidance finding the ideal new role.

CHALLENGE

Vineeta is a dedicated, diligent, high-performing individual who always gets things done.

Unfortunately, she was not considered for the promotions that she wanted, because she was so good at her role, and realised that she needed an external mentor to help her and others in her organisation see a different perspective.

She wanted to be known as a Leader, not just a Sales Executive, which is a significant challenge for a high performer, like herself, working in sales, as the organisation didn’t want to lose her from contributing to the sales process.

In addition, after completing maternity leave in 2014, she needed a coach who would guide her career more productively.

SOLUTION

Vineeta undertook a long-term career and branding coaching program with me, initially working on job-hunting skills and positioning herself as a leader. Once she landed her ideal role, the coaching changed focus to help her be seen as a broad leader, not just a sales executive.

The coaching included working together to help create opportunities to showcase her leadership and increase her visibility.

I helped Vineeta by brainstorming new ideas to increase her visibility, providing career and leadership guidance and undertaking a SWOT analysis to prevent her from falling back into old safe habits in her new broader leadership role.

I helped her to see outside the box and to open her mind to new possibilities.

RESULT

Working with me has helped Vineeta land a fabulous role with SAP and move into a broader leadership role, not just sales. She has increased her leadership visibility and is now aware of more opportunities. She is regularly acknowledged in the business as a high performer as well.

She freely shares her knowledge, connections and experiences with members of the Business Women’s Network in the ANZ region, of which she is the leader.

Amanda opened my mind to new possibilities. She asked pointed questions that drew out key information and guided me without telling me what to do. She gave me the tools, skills and knowledge to make clear and practical decisions. I highly recommend working with Amanda because she helps empower women and is a selfless coach who has a big heart for helping other women.

Vineeta Srivastava, ANZ Director - CX Services and ANZ BWN Lead, SAP

You’ve poured your heart into your Career , and it’s about time you were recognized for it. Let’s work together to create the life you deserve.

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When Women win, we all win.
Join the movement today.

Amanda Blesing

2 x Author; Women’s C-Suite Mentor & Executive Coach; Founder: The She-Suite™ Club

Case Studies

How To Become A Standout C-Suite Executive

Eradicated the Imposter Syndrome Feeling

Dream Role Within Two Years

CEO Role inThree Years

Re-Built Confidence Led To The Ideal Role

Professional and Personal Transformation

Professional and Personal Transformation

You’ve poured your heart into your Career , and it’s about time you were recognized for it. Let’s work together to create the life you deserve.

Terms of Service

Privacy Policy

When Women win, we all win. Join the movement today.

Amanda Blesing

2 x Author; Women’s C-Suite Mentor & Executive Coach; Founder: The She-Suite™ Club

Case Studies

How To Become A Standout C-Suite Executive

Eradicated the Imposter Syndrome Feeling

Dream Role Within Two Years

CEO Role inThree Years

Re-Built Confidence Led To The Ideal Role

Professional and Personal Transformation

Professional and Personal Transformation

You’ve poured your heart into your Career , and it’s about time you were recognized for it. Let’s work together to create the life you deserve.

Terms of Service

Privacy Policy

When Women win, we all win.
Join the movement today.