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Women get handed the top job when the company is in trouble. Men get it when things are going well. Lisa Annese knows exactly why women say yes anyway, and the answer is uncomfortable.

Annese is the CEO of Chief Executive Women. Before that she spent a decade running the Diversity Council of Australia. She has spent thirty years building the evidence on who gets to lead in this country and who never gets the call, and she is not interested in polite explanations anymore.

In this conversation with Mundanara Bayles and Prabha Nandagopal, she has some things to say about how the path to CEO was built, who it was built to exclude, and what is really going on behind the sudden corporate silence on diversity. As she puts it, the masks have come off.

This one will make a few boardrooms uncomfortable. Good.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Professor Michelle Ryan, who coined the term "glass cliff" with Alex Haslam, is the inaugural Director of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at ANU. Her research found that women are more likely to be appointed to leadership roles that are risky or precarious.
Global Institute for Women's Leadership (ANU): https://giwl.anu.edu.au
Michelle Ryan profile: https://giwl.anu.edu.au/about/michelle-ryan

Chief Executive Women: https://cew.org.au
CEW Senior Executive Census: https://cew.org.au/censusreport
Diversity Council Australia: https://www.dca.org.au
Workplace Gender Equality Agency: https://www.wgea.gov.au

If this conversation resonated with you, make sure you follow or subscribe to Culture Capital on your favourite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. Share this podcast with colleagues, leaders, and anyone passionate about building stronger workplace cultures.

Co-host Prabha Nandagopal is the founder of Elevate Consulting Partners, providing expert consulting on workplace culture, positive duty compliance, and human rights. Learn more at elevateconsultingpartners.com.au

Prabha also founded SafeSpace@Elevate, Australia's first trauma informed workplace reporting platform. Learn more at safespaceelevate.com.au

This episode of Culture Capital is brought to you by BlackCard, Australia's leading Aboriginal owned cultural capability training organisation. Learn more at theblackcard.com.au

Culture Capital is produced by the BlakCast Network