Megan Dalla-Camina’s heart pummelled as she raised her hand among a sea of around 300 dinner guests. At 34 years old and as a successful marketing executive, Dalla-Camina was an attendee at a women’s leadership conference, where a male presenter, from what she describes as “one of the big business magazines”, was presenting the latest “Power 100 list”. But something was wrong. Something was missing.
“Have you ever had one of those moments when you can feel yourself standing up and you’re like, ‘No, no, sit down!’” recalls Dalla-Camina, smiling. “I stood up and said, ‘What’s the definition of power used to compile this list?’ And he’s fumbling and stumbling to come up with an answer. Then I said, ‘And where are the women?’”
It was — and arguably still is — a fair question. In 2024, of Australia’s top 200 ASX-listed companies, only 19 were led by female CEOs, that’s less than 10 per cent. Of those, 11 were only appointed to their roles in the four years prior. Back in the early 2010s, when Dalla-Camina posed her original question, the rate was three per cent.
That question would alter the trajectory of her life. “I didn’t know it at the time, but that would become such a ‘change your life’ moment,” recalls Dalla-Camina, who suddenly realised there was a huge problem with women having the access and means to fulfi l leadership roles in business.
After almost two decades in the corporate world — navigating challenges such as gender stereotyping, micro-aggressions and imposter syndrome — Dalla-Camina knew something needed to change. She wanted to help women not just succeed but thrive in leadership. Today, at 55 years old, Dalla-Camina is the founder of Women Rising, a coaching platform that has empowered more than 10,000 women in 68 countries to lead with confidence and flourish at work.
“My mission has always been around helping women rise and giving them the tools that I never had to better manage their life, their career and their leadership journey in a holistic way,” says Dalla-Camina.
She is also the author of four books on women’s wisdom and transformation, a PhD researcher on women’s spirituality and an expert in women’s leadership. Dalla-Camina was also recognised as B&T’s Woman of the Year and Mentor of the Year in 2023 and was the winner of the Telstra Best of Business Award 2024 for Accelerating Women.
Hollywood dreams
Dalla-Camina’s early life was driven by creativity and a desire to challenge conventions. Born in Adelaide, she moved to Sydney as a toddler and from a young age fell in love with performing, writing and books. “As soon as I could hold a pencil, I would write poetry, I would sing … I was very active in my local theatre company, in my dance academy and that’s what I thought I would be doing for my entire life,” says Dalla-Camina. “I thought I would be an actress, that I would move to LA to do the whole Hollywood thing.”
Although she was a bookworm, something changed for Dalla-Camina in her teens. She started to do something that would defi ne her later career choices — ask questions and challenge the status quo. “My mum always said I was an angel until I hit 15, and then just went completely off track,” says Dalla-Camina. “I think that rebellious actress came out in me from 15 onward, and through my early 20s as well.” She started skipping school and couldn’t understand why traditional study was important if she wanted to be on the stage and screen.
“I started to challenge why things were the way they were,” says Dalla-Camina. “I just wanted to live that creative artist life, rather than following the ‘norms’ and the way that things ‘had’ to be done, particularly around school … I just wanted to be a creative, a musician, an actress and do things that I thought were far more interesting than schoolwork.”
But in her early 20s, while she was waitressing around her studies at drama school, health issues followed by an accident would knock Dalla-Camina from the path she was on.
Corporate burnout
In her early 20s, Dalla-Camina developed chronic fatigue syndrome. Soon after, she also injured her back in a car accident and needed treatment for almost a year. At a crossroads and seeking career stability, she put her acting dreams aside and joined the corporate world, soon serving as marketing director at global businesses including GE, IBM and PwC.
Shortly after joining the corporate world, Dalla-Camina became a single parent and was juggling work and parenthood, while also studying for a master’s degree in business. Eventually, she experienced burnout and the return of her fatigue symptoms.
“Back then, we weren’t talking so much about how hard it was to be a working mother, how hard it was to follow your purpose and do work that you were really passionate about,” says Dalla-Camina. “We weren’t having open conversations about wellbeing and burnout and how debilitating it was. None of that was happening when I was going through my burnout. It was very much ‘put on your mask, smile, tell everybody that you’re fine’, or you’re going to risk losing your job and reputation.”
Dalla-Camina isn’t alone in experiencing burnout, it’s a problem for many working women. A 2024 survey of 1000 UK employees, commissioned by Employment Hero, revealed that nearly two-thirds of women reported experiencing burnout in the workplace, compared to just over half of men.
“That was really a massive wake-up moment for me, says Dalla-Camina. “I thought, ‘Is this how I want to live the rest of my life, in this corporate grind of never really feeling fully well, always battling some kind of underlying stress-related or health-related illness?’”
Leaving behind a director title and higher pay cheque, Dalla-Camina stepped back into a four-day-per-week role as head of strategy for a division at IBM. She completed her second master’s degree, this time in wellness and positive psychology, and wrote a book on women’s development, solidifying her goal to eventually start her own business to help empower women to fi nd their purpose.
While at IBM, Dalla-Camina embraced opportunities to challenge gender-based conventions in the workplace. Just one of these projects was the Champions of Change Coalition. Started in 2010 by Elizabeth Broderick AO, the Sex Discrimination Commissioner at the time, this was a globally recognised initiative of CEO-level leaders committed to achieving inclusive gender equality across the workplace.
“I became the first implementation leader in that initiative, which has become one of the most renowned global initiatives for gender equality since 2010,” says Dalla-Camina. “I was involved in the first three years where we were gathering the top CEOs in the country to look at ‘How do we get to gender equality?’ ‘How do we get more women into leadership roles?’ And really engaging the men in power in that initiative. Because prior to that it had been very much women talking to women about women, diversity councils full of women and women’s conferences full of women, but the men at the top of organisations weren’t driving it.”
Women rising
After three years of planning, Dalla-Camina left her secure corporate role and started her own business of career coaching for women and speaking at conferences about women’s leadership, confi dence and career planning. This led to her founding and launching the Women Rising program in 2021.
In just four years, Women Rising has supported thousand