Leadership program tailored for women of colour

For senior managers, the opportunity to undertake leadership programs can be an important part of career progression, building both skills and networks. But what if those programs were inaccessible, or designed without your needs in mind?

It’s an issue a new Women of Colour Executive Leadership Program (WoC ELP) is trying to address for Victorian women. The seven-month program, backed by the state government, is designed to build the capability and confidence of women-of-colour leaders: advancing careers, creating a pipeline for senior leaders into C-Suite and board positions and improving diversity, equity and inclusion in Australian institutions.

“Research on leadership development programs for people of colour and migrant communities has found that career leadership programs are very accessible to Anglo Celtic Europeans. They are often inaccessible for marginalised demographics, and not contextualised for their needs,” says program director Kat Henaway, a descendant of the Mer and Mua peoples of the Torres Strait Islands and director of the organisation Women’s Business.

Henaway designed the WoC ELP for not-for-profit organisation Women of Colour Australia. Programs like this, she says, are “230 years overdue”.

“We’ve been led by Anglo-Celtic leaders so had their insights and education and leadership. People of Colour will have their own, valid perspectives,” Henaway says.

She also points to the rise of economies like China and India.

‘These perspectives of people of colour are not integrated into our learning in Australia.’

Program director Kat Henaway

“These perspectives of people of colour are not integrated into our learning in Australia, despite them being our neighbours and globally influential,” Henaway says.

Tasneem Chopra OAM, a cross-cultural consultant and diversity, equity and inclusion trainer is one of the experts invited to deliver the WoC ELP. She says cross-cultural representation is “still uncomfortable ground” in Australia.