Consciously progressing and committing to gender equity is more important than ever. At Zest, we exist to amplify organizational performance and workplace cultures by fostering the interplay between people, systems, and technology. Time and again, we see that performance and culture are enabled by diverse thinking and diverse leadership.

I joined CEOs for Gender Equity because we need to continue building workplaces that enable women to lead and shape our organizations, policies, and the future. We must provide parity in pay, opportunities, and influence across all diversity groups. I have personally experienced the value of supportive and equitable workplaces and benefited from the positive impact on my career and independence. I have also faced sexual harassment and misogyny in the workplace. While we have made progress, we have not yet solved the gender equity problem. There is still much work to do, and I want to help lead the change.

Gender equity isn’t just a moral imperative—it’s good for business. We know the gender pay gap in Australia is 21.8%; women hold only 19.4% of CEO roles, and just 18% of Board Chairs are women. Increased diversity around the executive table provides a variety of thoughts and insights, leading to increased innovation. We observe significant talent loss at increasing levels of seniority in organizations, yet 60% of university graduates are female. Many exceptionally intelligent and accomplished women have paused or diverted their impressive career trajectories because the standard model of work doesn’t accommodate the increased demands on women, who complete 58% of unpaid household labor. In an incredibly challenging talent market, we are underutilizing valuable women because our workplaces have not evolved to keep pace. It's time for that to change.

Zest is 100% female-owned, founded, and led. We started Zest with a purpose: not only to become a trusted, proven partner in shaping the future of work but to role model it in our own business model. At Zest, we believe in pay equity and transparency, profit sharing, and flexibility. We currently have an 87.5% female workforce, many of whom have children and other responsibilities outside of work. Most of our team works part-time hours that suit their personal lives and have the freedom and flexibility to work when it suits them—provided client contact hours are covered. Need to start after 9:30 am each day? No problem. Want to take Friday off to attend the assembly? Just front-load your week. We believe in treating the team as the responsible professionals they are. We are in a powerful position to demonstrate that equity and flexibility are not scary. They don’t ruin businesses. Based on our experiences, we work closely with our clients to challenge long-held beliefs and experiment with ways to make the workplace and career progression more accessible to women.

I want to see a world with an equal number of female leaders to men, with no gender pay gap, with women leading in politics and shaping global policy. Leading with humanity and building bridges, not walls. And that all starts with creating opportunities by leveling the field and fostering women's growth. Let's do this.