Sarah Liu is the founder and MD of global diversity and inclusion consultancy agency, The Dream Collective. She began her entrepreneurial journey at the age of 24 when she founded The Dream Collective. What began as a mere passion project, quickly became Australia’s most influential network of high-calibre young women. Through this networking platform, The Dream Collective has been responsible for empowering and equipping thousands of professional women into leadership roles through leadership training and mentoring opportunities.

Sarah discusses how execs can break down invisible d&i barriers and how the Dream Collective can assist organisations to foster ambition among up and coming female talent.

The business pivoted a number of times, as they started off mainly as an events group. They would invite senior executives and speakers to come and speak about various topics.

Sarah says of the next step in the business development: 'That was okay, we had good attendance and growth, but it got to a point where I felt that wasn’t having the biggest impact. People were only being inspired once every two or three months, and they needed support every day, we realised having the bottom up approach was not having the greatest impact, so that’s when the business pivoted'.

'We also had to start to look at ways to monetise it and scale it properly. We ended up with a business-to-business model where companies nominate their top talent to go into our program and go through our training course. The conversation around female empowerment is a lot more mature and sophisticated, and people are understanding it’s time to put action behind it'.