Gill McLaren
team women australia BOARD MEMBER, WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP advisor, facilitator and speaker
Gill McLaren is on a mission to help women design and live their best life. Gill decided to leave a successful international corporate and a C-suite career because she felt she wasn’t making enough difference to the world. She came to that realization through her journey of coaching and running workshops with other women.
These learnings and philosophies translated into life design, a practical approach that really helped others create their own best life. It started with her team, then her colleagues and then her friends. The reaction was so positive to best life planning that she decided to set up a business and write a book to focus on it.
Respected as a successful and authentic leader in her business career, Gill rose to being one of less that 10 Women out of over 100 in country general management roles globally at Coca-Cola. Gill also was a member of the Global Women's Leadership Council and Chair of the Pacific Women's Leadership council, with a focus on the goal of achieving gender parity in senior leadership positions.
Gill’s reputation as a change maker in business led her to be appointed to the Coca-Cola Global Women’s Leadership Council. The Council was set up as an advisory board to the CEO and operating committee. It was made up of 19 Senior women from all over the world. Together their focus areas were on Building the Business Case for Change and Developing holistic action plans that focused on how to Recruit, Retain, Develop and Advance the progress of Women into senior leadership positions.
The outputs included Women In Leadership training, new approaches to talent development and new flexible work policies.
Gill represented the Pacific Group and chaired the Asia wide council. The work she led in this area was a key contributor to Coca-Cola winning the Global Catalyst award for Women in Leadership in 2013.
Gill also prepared a White Paper to engage the senior leadership at Coca-Cola on the Cultural Shift needed to drive senior female representation from a positively improved but stagnating position of 30% to Coca-Cola’s 2020 Vision goal of 50%.
A personal highlight for Gill was her and two fellow council members presenting and discussing the case study at a multi-industry meeting at the Catalyst awards in New York.
Gill’s a big thinker and problem solver who engages others with honesty, pragmatism, passion and humour. Her book Think. Plan. Live. brings together learnings from her successful corporate career of 30 years, with working in multicultural environments with a best life plan.