Geelong CEO making international power moves

HOLLYWOOD heavyweight Sarah Harden gave a shout out to her old home of Geelong and love of the Cats when she was in Melbourne last month to deliver a keynote address for the Chief Executive Women (CEW) leadership summit.

The chief executive officer of billion-dollar production company Hello Sunshine, that she started with actor Reese Witherspoon, Ms Harden is internationally known for telling stories in film, TV, print and podcasts from a female perspective, yet her message to the summit was that equality for women has long way to go.

“Despite all the gains through #metoo and #timesup, through progress in our boardrooms, in our media and in our elections, through increased representation of women in certain parts of society when you see what’s happening in in the US, and the data being shared today about where things stand with Australian women and our progress toward true equality, it’s hard not to see some of it and feel profound betrayal,” Ms Harden said at the summit.

“Power over our bodies – a frightening reality in the US right now – power in the boardroom. Power over legislation, power in our workplaces, power to overcome bias, to combat pay inequity, to eradicate sexual assault.

“The cold hard reality is that things aren’t changing very quickly for women,” Ms Harden later said on radio.

“I run a company called Hello Sunshine, by definition it’s a pretty optimistic title and I’m an optimistic person, but I think if we’re going to make progress we really need to look at the reality of what’s facing women and come together, talk about what is working and what we can do individually and collectively make progress toward equality which doesn’t only serve our women, but is an economic imperative and serves our men as well,” she said.

In her summit speech earlier in the day, speaking alongside senior AFLW members, Ms Harden spoke of her passion for football as young girl.

“Picture me as an eight-year old girl in Geelong with a truly terrible haircut…wearing my favourite navy duffel coat with Cats legend Michael Turner’s number on the back of it.

“I spent my whole childhood wishing I could play for the Cats but of course at that time that wasn’t an option, because when l looked around I didn’t see any girls playing footy.”

Ms Harden said it was not until she was in Year 9 at a school where cross-country running was compulsory, that she changed how she saw her place in the world and learnt the power of positive affirmation.

“On one run there was a steep rocky hill and at the top there was a guy sitting on a chair monitoring the course, and I literally crawled up that hill in the world’s slowest shuffle-jog, and as I crested the hill trying not to throw up he made eye contact with me and said ‘You have the heart of an athlete’ and went back to looking at his clipboard.
“That comment shifted something in how I saw myself; I was 14.”

The story was a set up for why she later got into playing team sports, including ice hockey while on a scholarship at Harvard Business School, and research uncovered by a Hello Sunshine producer as they prepared to pitch a documentary about a women’s sports team.

“The data showed the undeniable correlation between being a CEO and playing competitive sports through high school…in fact 80 per cent of female Fortune 500 executives played competitive sport through high school.

“And I remembered thinking about that guy on the hill telling me ‘You have the heart of an athlete’; such a small action.

“Sharing the stage with the team talking about AFLW and the transformation of Aussie Rules… I am inspired to think about what this generation of girls and women will do because of what’s happened.

“How many CEO’s and change-makers and leaders are being formed playing Auskick on their local ovals all across Australia right now or are already playing AFLW, given the opportunity and encouragement to play, seeing what they could be become?”