IWD2023 – Mary Harney talks about the importance of mentoring and optimism

As part of International Women’s Day 2023, IR Department sat down with leaders across a range of industries to discuss their unique perspectives on the theme of “embracing equity”.

Jane Lowe, IR Department:

Mary, you’ve had a breadth of experience in your career across the health sector, and now have a successful Board career. Prior to joining the Boards, executive roles included CEO of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, COO & Director of Office of Cancer Research for the world-leading Peter McCallum Cancer Centre, and as Interim CEO for the $2b Breakthrough Victoria Fund.

Can you share one or two moments from your career that have been pivotal in getting you to where you are today?

Mary Harney:

An early achievement was when I was nominated by my peers to be the National Chief Examiner for Cytopathology. That set me on a path of understanding how important my belief in governance, standards and quality is, and particularly the quality of diagnostic results for patients.

Mid-career, I was heavily involved across a couple of sectors in bringing various stakeholders to the table – a mixture of industry and academic (which is somewhat of a holy grail.) We needed to increase the engineering capability in food processing and manufacturing in regional Victoria. This program was immensely successful with approximately 90% of the dairy industry becoming involved.

This achievement is difficult enough on land but to achieve it across a vast expanse of tiny islands and ocean with minimum transplant capability in between, is impressive. So that was quite formative for me. It brought home where Australia does do things really well and that we should take pride in that.

IR Department: Mary was presented a “Challenge Coin” (pictured) by Harvard after the presentation.

Jane Lowe, IR Department:

As a successful woman in the healthcare industry, can you talk to some of the challenges you have faced during your career and you overcame them?

Mary Harney:

That's an interesting question, isn't it?

As you progress through your career it's about upskilling as an individual. It’s about how you go about that – and how you accept feedback and move yourself forward. There is also the well understood imbalance of gender diversity in management, so that as you progress to management, or go up the corporate ladder yourself, you're on your own, so to speak. That is a challenge.

And I have always been surrounded by men. In the early days of the mid-1980s and 1990s when I was promoted relatively young, I was the only woman at the table for probably the first 20 years of that C-suite level of career.

So, is it a challenge? Is it an opportunity?

I've tried to mentor young people coming up after me. Though I've been very conscious of mentoring not just women, but the men as well, because that's the only way the imbalance is going to change.

Jane Lowe, IR Department:

So, have you had the chance to mentor other women?

Mary Harney:

Yes, I have mentored in most sectors and companies as I've moved through myself.

I've also had women come and seek me out and I really like that because it means it hasn't just been part of a formulaic mentoring program and pre-matching. It means they've identified either a value that I can add forthem, or that there's some integrity piece and alignment of thinking and values where I can help them.

I've also been integrally involved in developing mentoring approaches, particularly in agriculture because in the corporate world there's far more opportunity for someone to be mentored - either just due to availability of senior staff, or because executive programs are available.

But if you're identified as a high calibre, high talent primary producer, you then go back to the land and nothing necessarily comes your way for a long time. So I very consciously (when in the agricultural sector) set up programs to bring primary producers up to current thinking on macroeconomic factors, global trends and to intellectually challenge each other with colleagues.

It is a real buzz for me bringing that next generation through and providing opportunities uniquely, where they're not otherwise freely available.

I used to say to some of the younger people coming through that your first mentor is usually your first boss,subliminally, and often you think of them as a Tormentor! It's only later that you can look back (I certainly feel this about myself) and realise how much I learned from those early managers and bosses when I was just out of Uni, and thought I probably knew more than I actually did.

I think people have to be in a state of proactive menteeship all the time. At any given point I've had two, three, four mentors - some I still refer to that have really taken me through my career. It's essential - I think mentoring is just so important at every stage of your career.

Jane Lowe, IR Department:

What advice do you have for young women who aspire to leadership roles and how can they best prepare themselves for success?

Mary Harney:

I think it's not just young women. It's every woman at every stage - and there's a lot of self-work I think you can do, as I said earlier. People need to be in a constant state of menteeship, look around and observe - even if there's negative behaviour and negative modelling - to ensure that you don't act in that same way as you move up the ladder.

And it's about who you are and what you exude.

I'm a firm believer that optimism is a force multiplier and I think if you are optimistic and have a bedrock of integrity, things do come your way, because people rely on you if they know they can trust you.

I think the starting point with a lot of these discussions about progress for women are actually within women themselves. It's about understanding their empowerment - what makes them powerful - and other people will respond to that.