Deborah Clealand, Amanda Dood and Sylvia Leighton

Meet Deborah Clealand, Amanda Dood and Sylvia Leighton, all members of WELA’s Leadership Development Program in 2020, with three different personalities and backgrounds.

Amanda started WELA as the Hume City Council’s Coordinator Environmental Planning and is now the Manager of Sustainable Environment for the City of Whittlesea. Sylvia was a Land for Wildlife Officer at Western Australian Department of Parks and Wildlife and is now working on her own restoration land regeneration farm project. Deborah is a post-doctoral researcher at the Regulatory Institutions Network at the Australian National University and also works for the government. 

Listen to their conversation in this video about how WELA positively affected their personal and professional lives. For Deb, WELA improved her professional career by helping her see “where she could fit and how she could be valuable”. Sylvia and Amanda really enjoyed the online network of “20 amazing women” and the facilitation, inspiration and thought leadership “from the cohort, speakers, trainers and educators”.

Deb describes WELA as  “a really magical and life changing experience” beyond having a network of people but learning from these women who are inspiring in their actions. She really benefited from the program’s mentorship component as well. 

WELA helped reinvigorate Sylvia’s passion for working with the environment. “The program brought a lot of background information and new structures to bring into my workplace and my thoughts,” she said. 

Amanda recommends doing our leadership program because: “It has an amazing way of bringing up content but making it real and making it about relational practice, as well as learning from each other.” 

“Do WELA if you can! It will be one of the best things you ever do,” Amanda said.