This week, our team at Missing Perspectives is proud to level up our business-reporting as part of a new partnership with leading Australian venture capital firm, Blackbird.
We’ve partnered with Blackbird to speak with high agency female founders across ANZ about what they’re building, how they’re building it, and their unique approaches to commerce and creativity. Through this, we want to drive awareness about careers in tech and startups – and see more companies founded by women.
The partnership will also see up-and-coming business and tech reporters come on board to write features and profiles. The recent report from the Women’s Leadership Institute of Australia found that the business news beat has some of the lowest female representation (second to sport) – with men dominating the by-lines. We want to change that.
The partnership will be led by our very own Natasha Gillezeau, who was previously a tech reporter at the Australian Financial Review. Here’s a little interview with Natasha so you can learn more about her career, and objectives with this exciting new partnership.
How was your experience working at the Australian Financial Review and learning about both the media and tech worlds?
I loved it. Newsroom culture is a lot of fun, and the AFR is a place that genuinely cares about publishing high quality, independent journalism for its readers so as a reporter it’s a really incredible place to work. There are all the intelligent, hard working, and professional colleagues on the inside, and then there are all the interesting, ambitious, bold people that you get to meet and report on on the outside.
I do think that there is a level of moral shock that comes from transitioning from being an idealistic university student to getting a bit more exposure to the real world. But that’s why it’s generally considered a bad idea to stay at university forever – you kinda have to step out and grow up.
In terms of the media and tech worlds, over time through working as a reporter I gained a sense of the bigger picture because I had access to high quality colleagues, information, experts, and institutional knowledge. It’s one thing to know what a journalist is. It’s another thing to sit down and read the annual financial reports of every media company from Channel Nine to NewsCorp during earnings season and start to be like, oh, okay, that’s where this particular role fits into this broader media whole. And so on.
I won’t pretend that the AFR, media or tech worlds were at the bleeding edge of all aspects of women’s empowerment. Perhaps more relevantly, we know that when it comes to business reporting in particular, women are underrepresented as go-to sources, reporters, and owners. There is also a recent report out about Nine’s culture, and although the focus is more on the broadcast division than publishing where I worked, it does give outsiders some sense of the behaviours at Nine and the effects those have sadly had on some of the people who work there. New levels of awareness and consciousness are always possible so I’m hopeful.
Why do you think a project like this partnership is needed?
In a nutshell, this is a content partnership between Blackbird and Missing Perspectives to evolve our “female founders/high agency women” series where we publish profiles and stories that shine a light on what women are building, how they are building it, and their unique approaches to commerce and creativity.
We are fortunate in the sense that this partnership is not necessarily the *typical* one that Blackbird would enter into, but Melia Rayner (Blackbird’s head of communications) and Kate Glazebrook (Blackbird’s head of impact) – intuitively grasped the systems level change we are working towards here. We’re grateful for their trust, support, and energy.
In terms of why this partnership is needed, on a more immediate practical level as a startup, we need to call in the kind of creative and commercial partners that we want to work with to help us build Missing Perspectives, and the Blackbird team were a great fit in terms of their high standards and deep understanding of Australian startup culture.
In terms of why it’s needed on a systems level, we need to build capacity in both the up-and-coming generation of business reporters and the entrepreneurs they’ll write about, generate new, interesting stories in the Australian business press about what women are creating (hint: they busy 💅), and embed a high agency mindset into women’s media more broadly to provide sources of genuine hope, not just pain and trauma.
We literally cannot keep up with how many incredible women and potential stories there are to be told, but we also want to make sure we’re developing our team and our writers so that we all have the skills and discernment to tell them to a high standard while having the space to make mistakes.
A high agency mindset is key in helping our audience fulfill their potential. As a reader, I find it quite painful to read stories in women’s and mainstream media about their suffering, be it as a result of domestic abuse or discrimination. I don’t necessarily think that more storytelling that focuses on this is what’s needed from Missing Perspectives as a platform, at least at this moment in time. That’s where the high agency concept shines through.
We know that both in a more literal sense owning assets like a business or property, women are better protected, but also in the metaphorical sense, in having a high agency mindset, they are more likely to generate options and pathways of hope if they find themselves in a bad relationship or situation. It’s something we can all develop within ourselves.
And what are you most looking forward to?
I’m most looking forward to seeing the fresh ideas and approaches that writers like Hannah Cohen, Aditi Kutty, Chidinma Iwu and Rowan Willis-hall will bring to their own reporting and storytelling via their unique contributions.
We’re already seeing that play out. When Rowan goes into The Beautiful Bunch in Brunswick East to meet with Jane Marx, the founder of an online florist that trains and employees women from refugee backgrounds, she has enormous power in how she chooses to tell that story. By focusing on “the welcoming energy and laughter filtering across the air” as she first enters the studio, she brings a gentle, loving approach to a story that turned out to be a fascinating one of e-commerce in the time of COVID-19, entrepreneurship, and upskilling women building new lives for themselves in Australia.
It’s very (very!) early days in terms of seeing how this can be both creatively nourishing and commercially sustainable for Missing Perspectives and our writers/creators, and also indirectly support Blackbird in achieving the firm’s aims of reaching new audiences and having more women founders get curious about what the firm might have to offer. But this content partnership will provide us with a chance to learn and grow. Lots to look forward to here personally, for Missing Perspectives, Blackbird, our audience, and the people who work and collaborate with us.
