What does it take for us to turn an idea into a success?
Giving life to our dreams is a very important consideration for Switched ON Living members. What makes us SWITCHED ON is our ability to conceive a life beyond the mediocrity of traditional retirement.
The Switched ON Community draws its inspiration far and wide, and we’re always looking to applaud and showcase successful creators who have the wit, the skills, the courage and the perseverance to realise their dreams.
And so it’s with lots of pleasure that we’d like to introduce Melina Georgousakis. Melina is a public health researcher based at the University of Sydney.
But she’s also the founder of Franklin Women, a grassroots social enterprise that aims to provide practical career support for women working in the health and medical researcher sectors.
In this TEDx Talk from 2019, Melina tells us about the inception of Franklin Women and the three qualities aspiring creators need to succeed.
Five years earlier, on a flight to Sydney to start a new career in public health as a medical researcher, Melina read a book and a magazine that together changed her life.
The book dared readers to follow their passions, both in their lives and in their careers, while the magazine included a feature about career support networks for women.
In that anxious moment of career transition, and as she read through the list of industry sectors which have a women’s career support network, Melina realised there was no support network in her field of medical research.
That was the moment she determined to create one, and Franklin Women was born.
Melina’s first step was to investigate basic employment across her industry. She discovered that women are under-represented in leadership positions, even though women outnumber men at the early stage of medical research.
Six weeks after its launch, Franklin Women held its first event and over 100 women attended. Fast forward to today, and the organisation is a thumping success, offering scholarships, mentor programs, industry partnerships, events and a careers blog.
Melina tells us that the three essential ingredients creators need to start a social enterprise are:
We identify a need that is real and unrealised. In the case of Franklin Women, the employment data supported Melina’s personal experience of many brilliant young female researchers who were still in the sector but felt frustrated by the lack of career opportunities, or who had left altogether.
We need the courage to back ourselves and back our ideas. Melina says there have been innumerable times when she felt either frustrated or intimated, such as her first live television interview or meetings with businesspeople to discuss Franklin Women.
We need to remain authentic, to ourselves and our vision. As the number of Franklin Women programs has increased, and as it has partnered with like-minded volunteer groups and industry organisations, Melina spoke about the risk, and maybe even the temptation, to lose the clarity and precision of its original remit.
Our Switched ON Living motto – Live Big, Live Well, Live Balanced – declares that we’re not just dreamers, we’re doers.
And as doers, there’s so much we can learn and emulate from creators like Melina.
