Darren Woolley

team women australia board member, founder & CEO - trinity p3 global marketing management consultants

Darren Woolley is a white, middle class, older and privileged Australian male. But his greatest privilege was being raised by working class parents who demonstrated gender equality.

His mother left school in year 7 due to a polio scare. With the support of her husband, she had a very successful career in Guiding, where she rose to the position of State Commissioner and was awarded Order of Australia Honour for her contribution to young women in society. 

Darren has had the privilege of having raised three daughters to adulthood, to see them all develop into their respective careers. Yet he was shocked to learn that they had experienced sexual assault directly and indirectly during their teenage years and that this was the norm for teenage girls in this country. 

He has the privilege to have created a business designed to allow parents working in advertising and marketing, with the opportunity to work in consultancy in a way that gives them complete control in their working lives from where and when they work. 

He has the privilege to have a second family with his Chinese wife he met in Beijing almost a decade ago. This relationship brought home to him the inherent racism in Australian society in the way his wife was often treated by others generally and particularly those in positions of power and influence. Today they live happily in Sydney with twin boys attending the local preschool. 

While we talk about privilege, Darren believes the purpose of having any type of privilege is to use it to help others have the best life possible. In his role as a leader, a boss, an advocate and a spokesperson, his purpose comes from his mother, who told him our role in life is to leave the world better than the way we found it.

Darren started his working life as a scientist at the Royal Children’s Hospital Neuropathology Laboratory in Melbourne, Australia, undertaking research in myopathies, neuropathies, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and Repetitive Strain Injury. He established a chemical recycling company called Resolve before falling into advertising in the mid eighties.

During his 15 years as a writer and Creative Director, Darren developed brand and business communication strategies for a broad range of global and local brands. He was Creative Director at J Walter Thompson and President of the Melbourne Art Directors’ Club for two consecutive terms.

In 2000, Darren founded TrinityP3, Asia Pacific’s leading strategic marketing management consultancy with an international network of more than 30 industry professionals helping people to achieve commercial purpose through creative process. What that means is he leverages his extensive knowledge of the marketing and advertising industry, to solve advertisers problems and achieve maximum value from their budget.

Now a decade on, TrinityP3 is at the leading edge of decision making in the marketing, media and advertising industry that spent nearly $600 billion in 2015 and their client base includes more than 50 of the world’s top 100 advertisers, with offices in Singapore, Sydney, London, New York and Zurich.