WOB Mentoring Dinner

MC: Jean Kitson, performer and all round funny lady

The WOB Mentoring Dinner is a highlight of the Diversity on Boards Conferences. Themed "Harvesting Talent" the focus of the 2009 dinner was on fostering and leveraging female leadership talent in all spheres of Australian corporate and community life.

More than 30 directors, including 18 company chairs, attended the dinner as table mentors to the 250 women who attended. Mentors shared their experience and knowledge with eight aspirant directors at their tables, working through a hypothetical situation in an informal and cosy atmosphere.

Click here for the biographies of the mentor directors

Helen Lynch AM, NED, and one of the foremost women in corporate Australia in the past 20 years, set the tone with some remarks on the progress of women in directorships and how Australia's companies have managed their female talent.

Click here to read her remarks.

The dinner was the major fundraiser for the Diversity on Boards charity, The St Judes School in northern Tanzania. Guests were invited to purchase a bottle of Lindemans new release Early Harvest wine for $10 with all proceeds going to the school. The wine complemented the new release gardening book, Harvest, being launched by horticulturalist Meredith Kirton, in the same week as the Conference. Copies of the book were available for sale during the Conference, with all profits going to St Judes. 

About Jean Kitson

Jean Kitson is an Australian comedy legend. She's done The Big Gig, been half of Kitson Fahey, she's been Flat Chat and had a best seller with Tongue Lashing! Jean earned national fame through ABC TV's The Big Gig as a comic chameleon, changing into characters as differing as Veronica Glenhuntley, lovelorn newreader; Candida, new-age aerobics instructor and Rose McCloud, the ascerbic air hostess. She has been a regular guest on Goodnews Week and a presenter of the ABC's Media Dimensions program.

Jean is also well known for her lively comedy debates in The Great Debate Series. In 1990 Jean starred in the David Williamson play Siren and in 1991 and 1992 she starred with Glynn Nicholas and Philip Scott in The Big Giggle, a stage version of the TV show. In 1995 she wrote and performed her own one-woman play Escape. She has also performed in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne. On radio Jean has been a writer and performer with Sydney's 2Day FM and a breakfast presenter with Mix 106.5. Jean has amused audiences in print with regular columns in New Weekly magazine and the Sunday Telegraph Magazine. She currently writes a regular column for the (Sydney) magazine which is a monthly supplement with the Sydney Morning Herald.