I did a campaign post for LinkedIn for International Women’s Day about my Covid experience and the women who inspired me through it.

Women are losing almost twice as many jobs as men during Covid-19. Let’s show our support and help get things back on track. #WeCanDoIt, together.

Like a lot of people, the pandemic has been very difficult. I usually travel a lot for my public speaking commitments. That couldn’t continue. In the early days of the pandemic, the uncertainty around what was being cancelled and when things would be resumed was very stressful. I went from traveling internationally twice a month, to not leaving my apartment at all for 6 weeks and then months and months of lockdown. Right before the pandemic, I started the NEXUS Global Summit Impact Accelerator Fellowship in Washington DC alongside amazing women Emily Best from Seed&Spark, Ivelyse Andino from Radical Health, and Katharina Sophia Volz, PHD from OccamzRazor. From February until September, the spunk, big hearts and dogged determination these women demonstrated inspired me every Monday morning and reminded me that we were all going through the same thing, that there is always a way, and that I wasn’t alone. #strongertogether

Channel 7’s The House of Wellness TV got in touch to find out what I’m up to. We talked robots, Aipoly and more robots.

The Australian Department of Home Affairs decided to celebrate the Australian of the Year awards with this short animated video of past award winners. It was fun to see myself in cartoon! (I’m at 1:24).

I received my USA visa to do speeches in the USA several months ago.  I’m very excited about spreading my messages and telling my stories all over the USA. To kick me off in the USA, I spoke at the Project Management Institute Washing DC (PMI WDC) about “Managing Teams Through Your Computer” with a 45-minute presentation and 15-minutes of Q&A earlier this month. It was exciting to share my experiences with project managers all over DC.  Looking forward to many more events!  :)

Super stoked to have been awarded the Leadership Energy Summit Asia‘s (LESA) Iclif Leadership Energy Award’s (ILEA) Business Leader Award from the Asia School of Business, in collaboration with MIT Sloan Management! 🏆

I gave a 20-minute acceptance speech from my living room. It was great to share the moment with friends, family and over 1,100 people watching from around the world. 📺

The award acknowledges leadership energy - “ inner strength and purpose-driven values of its leaders.“

I received the award for the inner strength brought in founding and bringing to life women in STEM organisation Robogals 🦾👩🏻, artificial intelligence for the blind app Aipoly 👁 and robotics for good company Aubot; and my purpose-driven values in seeing those companies through to having a worldwide impact. 🦿

I couldn’t have gotten here without the thousands of people at Robogals who make our work possible, the clever team at Aipoly and the robot designers and builders at Aubot who painstakingly bring our work to life. Thank you!

Thank you LESA for the award and acknowledgment. Fuelled by your encouragement, my teams and I will keep working hard!