On the 28th of February 2020, we got the opportunity to attend the ‘Business in Heels’ conference with Mr Gromilic. We have a shared interest in commerce as we both study units 3&4 Business Management and 1&2 Accounting at St Josephs.

We were driven to Deakin’s Waurn Ponds campus to attend a conference that was centralised around the importance of supporting women creating their own businesses. There is a lack of women representation in the entrepreneurial world, and ‘Business in Heels’ focused on the amazing things we can achieve when we believe in ourselves. We were greeted with many wonderful and inspiring women as we took a walk through the stalls set up for a range of successful businesses.

The guest speaker for the day was George McEnroe, the founder of Shebah. Shebah is a women-only rideshare service that was created after George felt as though there was no safe option for young women to get home late at night. This idea developed into something much bigger, and with a lot of hard work, they were able to develop it into the business it is today. She spoke about the discrimination she faced as a woman trying to break into the business world after being a comedian and a teacher. George gave amazing advice to the business owners attending the day, encouraging them to “go for it” and to “put everything into their business”, as that’s what it takes to succeed. She explained how the backlash received regarding the ‘gender discrimination’ created amazing publicity for her business and played a huge role in its success.

Overall, our morning at the ‘Business in Heels’ conference was a really great day and was a positive learning experience. It was interesting being able to recognise the links between what we were learning in class and what the different women were saying about their businesses. We were exposed to a whole new world of entrepreneurs which I believed would inspire us in the future to do the same.

Liana Vagnoni 11LOAHB and Claudia Anglin 11CLJF