By Future Female Leaders
Something remarkable is happening. Across Western Australia, young women are putting their hands up for leadership, loudly, clearly, and in numbers that stop us in our tracks.
Every year, the expressions of interest for our Signature Program far outpace the places we have available. Girls from the suburbs and regions all over WA, from all kinds of schools and all kinds of backgrounds, are telling us the same thing: I want this. I want to learn how to lead.
They are not waiting to be convinced that leadership matters. They already know. What they need is for the adults around them, schools, communities, organisations, and local councils, to meet them where they are.
That is the signal the Purposeful Leaders Program was built on.
A New Way to Reach Every Young Woman
We created Future Female Leaders because we believe deeply that every young woman in WA deserves access to the skills, confidence, and real-world connections she needs to lead. Not someday. Now, while her identity is forming and her sense of what’s possible is still being shaped.
Our Signature Program has proven what’s possible. But demand has consistently outgrown our capacity, and if we are serious about igniting the leadership potential of 10,000 young women in WA by 2030, we need a new pathway.
The Purposeful Leaders Program is that pathway. It brings structured, meaningful leadership education directly into schools, reaching our next generation of female talent earlier, more broadly, and in the places they already are.
This is not a watered-down version of what we do. It is leadership development that is practical, intentional, and designed to give girls the frameworks to understand their own potential, to see that leadership is not a personality type reserved for certain kinds of people. It is a skill. And it can be learned.
The Stakes Are Real
Australia’s gender pay gap sits at 21.1%. Only 9% of ASX300 CEOs are women. And, right here in WA, we carry the highest employer gender pay gap of any state in the country.
These numbers are not inevitable. They are the result of a system that for too long has failed to invest in women early enough, or broadly enough. The leaders we need in our boardrooms, our parliament, our industries, and our communities twenty years from now are in classrooms today. What we do for them, and with them, in this window matters enormously.
These young women are telling us they want in. The question is whether WA will show up for them.
Access Is Everything
A program that only reaches some girls is not the program we want to run.
The Purposeful Leaders Program is built for girls from all socio-economic backgrounds, and one of the most powerful levers for making that real sits with local government. Councils have a unique ability to identify and invest in the young women in their communities who most need this kind of opportunity: girls from low-income households, from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, from communities where leadership pathways can feel distant or out of reach.
The City of Joondalup, City of Stirling, and City of Canning are already showing what this looks like in practice, backing local girls through scholarship support, and sending a clear message to their communities that ambition deserves investment. We are grateful for their leadership, and we are calling on more councils across WA to join them.
The Program Is for Every School. Including Yours.
The Purposeful Leaders Program is built to work across different school communities, different year groups, and different contexts. We want it everywhere.
We are proud that St Hilda’s Anglican School for Girls is the first school in WA to offer it. Their commitment to structured, explicit leadership development alongside academic learning reflects exactly the kind of investment every school can, and should, be making in their future female leaders.
As shared by St Hilda’s Anglican School for Girls Principal Fiona Johnston, “If WA is serious about gender equity, innovation and long-term economic growth, we must move beyond hoping leadership will simply emerge. We must explicitly teach it.”
This is where corporates, businesses, and community organisations have a role to play too. Sponsorship can fund places at schools where budget is the barrier. Partnerships can bring real-world context to the program’s content. Advocacy can open doors that would otherwise stay closed.
The infrastructure is here. The demand is proven. What we need now is the community around these young women to rise to meet them.
The Girls Have Already Decided
They are not waiting to be persuaded. They are not wondering if leadership is for them. They are knocking on the door, in their hundreds, telling us they are ready.
Our job, and yours, is to make sure that door is open for every single one of them.