By Lexie Jeuniewic, Crime Stoppers Victoria Media Liaison Coordinator
It’s not every day you get to interview your boss about their life story so far. But to celebrate International Women’s Day 2022, I had the honour of doing exactly that with Crime Stoppers Victoria CEO, Stella Smith.
Rushing from another busy morning of meetings, Stella greets me with a knowing smile of encouragement. I’m not sure if I showed it, but I was slightly nervous to ask her my first question: “If you could turn back time, what piece of career advice would you tell your seventeen-year-old self?”
Without hesitation, Stella answered.
“Don’t be afraid of the word, ‘No,” she replied, before continuing, “I think we all go around terrified of rejection”.
“The reality is, they’re just two little letters. They can’t be the two little letters that make you give up.”
It’s quite ironic then, that as a 17-year-old, Stella was hell-bent on ditching high school.
“I didn’t like school, not at all. I didn’t like going, so there came a point where I stopped going. That got me into a world of trouble at home,” she tells me.
Given an ultimatum by her father to either get back to the books or leave home, Stella decided the first option was probably the best choice.
“Leaving home was not sold to me well,” she explained with a dry laugh, typical of her effervescent sense of humour.
“So I went back to school. One of the things school did was to get us to choose a job off the board, write a resume, and go through that (job application) process.
“Women have really had to battle to find their way to the top of organisations.”
Stella soon landed her first job as a junior secretary, and around eight years later, decided to enroll in a graduate diploma at Swinburne University in Victoria.
But that plan was soon put on the backburner, when she found out she was pregnant with her daughter.
“Throughout my career, it’s been a case of ‘let’s put the children quietly to just one side, we won’t talk about them’.
“Women with children were often seen as the weakest link in the chain, and not able to contribute to meaningful work.”
Turning to her “incredibly talented and intelligent” older sister, a lawyer, for advice, Stella decided to forge ahead against the patriarchy.
By 2012, she was raising two school-aged children, studying a master’s degree in marketing part-time, and breaking new ground in the role of Melbourne Victory’s General Manager of Community and Government Relations.
Prior to this, Victory had never employed a woman in a senior managerial position.
“The focus wasn’t on women. We’d had a women’s team for years, but few knew. So a lot of time was spent on my part, trying to build that up.”
After trailblazing at the male-dominated Victory for seven years, Stella decided to take on the role of CEO of Crime Stoppers Victoria and a Director of Crime Stoppers Australia.
While her career journey, so far, has been incredibly rewarding, Stella said it hasn’t been without many challenges.
“I’ve had fantastic mentors who were male.
“But there are some men that really need to take a good hard look at themselves and say ‘what am I doing wrong here’, and stop thinking women can be treated differently.”
Reflection of a more positive kind was front of mind for Stella this International Women’s Day (IWD).
“IWD, for me, has always been about recognising the contribution women have made to help us get to where we are today – all the way from the suffragettes, until now,” she said, adding that this year’s theme of ‘Break the Bias’ is timely, given the challenges women continue to face in the workplace in 2022.
The latest data from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) has revealed that currently less than 1 in 5 CEOs in Australia are women.
“It doesn’t surprise me at all,” Stella said of the statistic. “Women have really had to battle to find their way to the top of organisations.”
Asked what improvements she believes need to be made to the workplace to improve gender equality, Stella tells me she wants to see changes to how non-disclosure agreements can be used by companies to protect perpetrators, and silence victims.
“I think it’s a big challenge for companies because they’ll always want to protect their reputation. But the person who’s struggling with the issue is silenced. Anything that silences a victim is a problem.”
“Succession shouldn’t be something we’re afraid of”.
Stella added that, in the coming years, more companies should strive to find gender balance in the workplace by embracing diversity.
“It’s been shown that organisations that have women on their boards, tend to function better.
“We can overcome challenges if we make space for women, and make space to let them develop to senior roles.
“Succession shouldn’t be something we’re afraid of, so there need to be opportunities for women to step up and be part of the bigger picture.”
My final question to Stella so eloquently answered, I thanked her for her time, and returned to my desk.
While a stack of emails ‘warmly’ greeted me after coaxing my laptop back to life, I couldn’t help but feel inspired to tackle the rest of my work day — and the future — with fearlessness.
Female leaders such as Stella have done so much to empower other women in the workplace, but there is still a mountain of change that needs to be made.
Alongside many other young women in the workforce — many of whom I’m lucky enough to share an office with — I know I can’t wait to follow Stella’s lead, and play a part in helping break the bias.