When I reflect on the last ten years of delivering the Inclusive Leadership Mentoring Program in health and medical research, what strikes me most is how consistently the program surfaces the same truth: the barriers holding talented women back from senior leadership are rarely about capability but almost always about access.
Access to senior perspectives, informal networks and to the kinds of candid, strategic conversations that shape career trajectories and build the confidence to move into more visible, more demanding roles.
That insight, which Franklin Women held with remarkable clarity from the program’s inception, is what made this initiative different from the beginning. And it is what has driven its consistently strong outcomes across the 10 cohorts since the program began.
An independent evaluation published in BMJ Open found that 48% of mentees attributed a professional promotion to their participation in the program. 92% reported establishing or revising a career plan. 88% reported increased resilience. And 100% of participants across evaluations said they considered the program a worthwhile investment for their organisations. These are outcomes that happen when a program is genuinely well-designed, rigorously pairing participants, and deeply committed to individual and cultural change simultaneously.
That dual focus, supporting the growth of individual participants while shifting the leadership cultures that shape their experience, has always been central to the design. The program does not simply develop mentees; it also develops mentors. 83% of mentors in the BMJ Open evaluation reported improved knowledge and skills on how to be more inclusive. 75% reported a positive impact on how they manage their teams. These are leaders returning to their organisations with a richer, more grounded understanding of what is actually happening for women at critical career stages, and with a clearer sense of what they can do about it.
That is the mechanism through which individual development becomes cultural change.
The significance of this transition
When Franklin Women announced its closure at the end of 2025, it prompted genuine reflection across the sector. Franklin Women built something that mattered. Dr Melina Georgousakis and her team brought vision, rigour and an unwavering commitment to gender equity in health and medical research to every aspect of this program’s design. Their decision to ensure the program would continue, and to entrust its stewardship to the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, reflected both the depth of their commitment and the confidence they placed in the sector’s ability to carry this work forward.
AAHMS is exceptionally placed to lead the program’s next chapter. As Australia’s Learned Academy for Health and Medical Sciences, they bring national reach, institutional credibility, and a structural commitment to gender equity evidenced most recently through the publication of Australia’s first Decadal Plan for Women in HMS. That plan calls explicitly for proven, evidence-based programs to be resourced and scaled nationally. The WISE Round 5 funding is a direct response to that call.
For Serendis, continuing as the program’s delivery partner is both a privilege and a responsibility we take seriously. We have been part of this program since its inception. We have developed and refined its methodology over ten years, adapted it in response to participant feedback, and seen first-hand the quality of change it produces when delivered with rigour and care. That institutional knowledge matters enormously as the program moves into a new phase of growth.
What national expansion means in practice
The WISE Round 5 grant funds a five-year national expansion, growing the program from its established NSW base to reach participants across Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia. The expansion is both geographic and structural.
Travel grants will remove financial and logistical barriers for participants in rural and regional areas, including those in the ACT, Northern Territory and Tasmania where no active program currently exists. A virtual Inclusive Leadership Workshop series will extend the program’s evidence-based frameworks to individuals of any gender, anywhere in the country, who are not part of a participating cohort. And a national Alumni Network will create a growing, self-sustaining community of practice, connecting former participants across cohorts, organisations and states, and creating a structured pathway for past mentees to return as mentors and sustain inclusive leadership across the sector.
Each of these elements addresses a specific gap. Together, they represent a meaningful step towards a national infrastructure for inclusive leadership development in health and medical research.
Why this work matters beyond STEM
At Serendis, we work across many sectors including financial services, property and infrastructure, energy, government, retail and more. The organisations we partner with are different in many ways. But the patterns we see are remarkably consistent.
High-potential women stalling at mid-career transition points. Senior leaders who care about inclusion but lack the practical frameworks to translate that commitment into the day-to-day of how they lead. Cultures where development is discussed in performance reviews but not built into the rhythm of how leaders operate.
These are not STEM-specific problems; they are leadership problems. And they require leadership solutions: structured, evidence-based, rigorously delivered programs that shift both individual capability and the systems that shape it.
The Inclusive Leadership Mentoring Program is one of the clearest examples we have of what that looks like in practice. The fact that its impact evaluation was published in a peer-reviewed journal, BMJ Open, and that it has now attracted government investment for national expansion, reflects what becomes possible when a program is built on genuine rigour and sustained over time.
For our team at Serendis, this program is an expression of what we believe about leadership: that it is built through relationships, reflection and accountability, that it requires leaders at all levels to engage authentically with the experience of those they lead, and that the organisations willing to invest in that kind of development are the ones that achieve and sustain outperformance.
We are proud to be part of this next chapter. And we are deeply grateful to Franklin Women for building the foundation that made it possible.
