May 4, 2020
Barbara Cail AO
Founder
I launched Portfolio magazine in 1985 to promote and celebrate women’s intelligence, their executive and leadership capabilities. By contrast, the leading women’s magazines at that time had a predominance of women’s personal issues.
The Editor of Portfolio featured some great standouts but alas, there was virtually no business culture that automatically promoted women into leadership roles. I phoned the 16 ‘standouts’ and proposed we form a group to strengthen and promote the value of women in leadership roles. It was positively agreed and CEW was created.
35 years later 600 ‘stand out’ women with the CEW Brand of Leadership are still continuing this commitment to strengthen women’s leadership and doing it with spectacular results.
35 years ago, men owned the majority of corporate and professional power and many were amused by a group of women with similar aspirations. Now, I smile with deep satisfaction when I read and learn about women owning and using power responsibly.
Over the period of 35 years, hundreds of CEW women have seriously and generously contributed to the organisation. This has resulted in an illustration of great leadership capabilities and automatically becoming ideal examples and important role models for all women aspirants. In their having gained power, they have helped to reduce the male domination of it.
Now, with COVID-19, a huge business and social hiccup has to be navigated by the CEW Brand of leadership skills. It is essential that these skills must deepen and strengthen to ensure that the power gained over the past 35 years is not diluted.
