Chief Executive Women’s Annual Dinner is one of the most prestigious events in Australia’s corporate calendar. It is attended by CEOs and their management teams from across the country.
The dinner is CEW’s most important fundraising event and these funds are used to directly support the scholarships and programs run by CEW to enable more women leaders in Australia.
The 2019 CEW Annual Dinner was held on Thursday, 19 September in Sydney.
The 2019 guest speaker was Jo Horgan, Founder/Co-CEO of MECCA Brands. Recently named Ernst and Young’s Australian Entrepreneur of the Year, Jo Horgan has completely redefined the Australian beauty landscape, championing retail innovation and delivering the ultimate beauty experience to her customers. Horgan founded Melbourne based Mecca Brands in 1997 with the first Mecca Cosmetica store in Melbourne’s South Yarra. Today, the Mecca Brands footprint encompasses over 95 stores around Australia and New Zealand in the form of four unique retail destinations: Mecca Cosmetica, Mecca Maxima, MECCA and mecca.com.au. MECCA Brands is a privately owned and operated Australian company, has consistently ranked in the Top 5 in BRW’s Best Places To Work study for the past four years (placing second in 2017), and employs over 3,000 people.
Jo Horgan is on the board of the National Gallery of Victoria Foundation and the Edward Wilson Trust, is a member of Chief Executive Women, a Governor of the St George Foundation charitable organisation which donates to charities that support women and children, and is a proud supporter of The Hunger Project: a non-profit organisation devoted to empowering women and children to end poverty.
Horgan was also awarded the Founder’s Award at Women’s Wear Daily’s Beauty Inc Awards in 2018 and in 2014 was named by Women’s Wear Daily’s Beauty Biz as one of the top 50 most influential people in the global beauty business.
