Boards
The State of Board Diversity in 2024
From gender to age to experience - Carol Schwartz AO's approach to board diversity pushes past traditional paradigms for optimised business outcomes.
Paths to the Board: Entrepreneur
Carol Schwartz AO on bringing an entrepreneurial mindset to governance, board leadership, and advocacy—helping company secretaries & directors drive impact
Richard Conway
Mar 2, 2025
I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Carol Schwartz AO, whose career is a fascinating blend of entrepreneurship, governance, and advocacy, making her one of the most influential board leaders in Australia today. From her early days as a business owner to her role as Chair of Equity Trustees and a board member of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Carol has consistently brought an entrepreneurial mindset to leadership, governance, and social impact.
Carol’s career demonstrates that governance isn’t just about compliance and oversight—it’s about leadership, innovation, and the courage to take action. Throughout our conversation, she shared thoughts on how boards can adopt entrepreneurial thinking, why women’s leadership matters, and how governance professionals can navigate complexity while driving meaningful change.
A Career Defined by Action
Carol started her professional journey in law but quickly realised it wasn’t the right fit for her. Instead of following the conventional path, she took a bold leap into entrepreneurship, opening an aerobics and dance studio. This early experience running her own business shaped her leadership philosophy—one that embraces action, risk-taking, and adaptability.
After selling the business, she pursued an MBA and joined her family’s business in the male-dominated property industry. Rather than accept the status quo, she actively sought to bring more women into leadership positions, recognising that greater diversity would lead to better decision-making.
Her entrepreneurial mindset remained a defining trait as she moved into governance, sitting on high-profile boards and chairing organisations across the corporate, government, and non-profit sectors. As she put it:
“If something needs to be done, I’ll do it. I’m not afraid to start from scratch, fail, iterate, or pivot.”
Championing Women in Leadership
As the first female president of the Property Council of Victoria, Carol experienced first hand the gender disparities in leadership. She recalls feeling frustrated that, despite her efforts, it took another 17 years for the next female president to be appointed.
Instead of accepting slow progress, Carol took action. She founded Pathways to Politics for Women, a programme that supports women pursuing political leadership, and Women for Media, which helps increase the visibility of female voices in journalism and public discourse.
Her work underscores an important governance principle: leaders should not just occupy positions of power—they should create opportunities for others to follow.
Taking an Entrepreneurial Approach to Boards
Carol believes that boards should not merely focus on risk aversion and compliance—they should be willing to embrace new ideas, challenge outdated thinking, and drive innovation. She argues that governance and entrepreneurship are not mutually exclusive; rather, the best boards find a way to balance stability with forward-thinking leadership.
In our conversation, she emphasised that many governance professionals come from traditional legal or financial backgrounds, which can lead to overly cautious decision-making. However, she believes that the best board members bring diverse perspectives, encourage creative problem-solving, and aren’t afraid to ask tough questions.
Her guiding principle? Approach every governance role with the mindset of an entrepreneur.
“At my core, I am an entrepreneur—whether in business, advocacy, or governance, I approach every role with that mindset.”
Lessons for Governance Professionals
Carol’s career offers valuable takeaways for company secretaries, directors and other governance professionals looking to make a meaningful impact:
- Embrace a Problem-Solving Mindset – Great governance isn’t just about mitigating risk; it’s about identifying opportunities. Boards should think like entrepreneurs, encouraging innovation and adaptability rather than rigidly following tradition.
- Diversity is Non-Negotiable – Carol’s work in women’s leadership highlights a broader governance principle: diverse boards make better decisions. If your board lacks diversity, take action to ensure it represents a variety of backgrounds, industries, and perspectives.
- Be Willing to Challenge the Status Quo – Many boards fall into the trap of “this is how we’ve always done it.” Carol encourages governance professionals to question outdated processes, challenge groupthink, and push for strategic evolution.
- Leadership is About More Than Titles – Holding a governance position is a responsibility, not just a credential. Carol stresses the importance of lifting others up, particularly those from underrepresented groups. Advocacy and mentorship should be part of every leader’s role.
- Take Calculated Risks – Entrepreneurs thrive by taking risks and learning from failure. While governance requires due diligence, Carol argues that boards should not be paralysed by risk aversion. Instead, they should focus on well-informed, strategic decision-making that moves the organisation forward.
- Action is More Important Than Intentions – Governance professionals often talk about “the need for change”, but talking isn’t enough. Carol’s approach is about doing—whether that means founding new initiatives, challenging outdated norms, or creating space for new voices at the table.
Why This Conversation Matters
Carol Schwartz AO has redefined what governance can look like, proving that an entrepreneurial approach can drive meaningful change in boardrooms, businesses, and beyond. Her career challenges governance professionals to go beyond compliance and oversight—to lead with vision, act with courage, and create opportunities for the next generation of leaders. For anyone looking to bring fresh thinking into boardrooms, navigate complex leadership challenges, or champion diversity in governance, this conversation is essential listening.
Richard Conway is the founder of boardcycle, the board meeting platform designed for Company Secretaries. Create, manage and automate your board agendas, shell minutes and more with boardcycle Agendas.
[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Minutes by boardcycle, where in each episode we pack the insights from one of Australia's boardroom leaders into just a few minutes.
[00:00:08] In today's episode, Richard Conway talks to Carol Schwartz, Director of the Trawalla Group, Member of the Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia, and Chair of Equity Trustees, the Climate Council, and the Women's Leadership Institute Australia. They discuss how Carol built her career spanning business, advocacy, policymaking, and philanthropy.
[00:00:31] Richard Conway: Welcome to Minutes by boardcycle. I'm your host, Richard Conway. And today my guest on the podcast is Carol Schwartz. Carol's a member of the board of the Reserve Bank of Australia, a director of the Trawalla Group, and chairs a number of organisations including Equity Trustees, the Climate Council, Our Community, and the Women's Leadership Institute Australia.
[00:00:56] Richard Conway: Carol's career bridges across business, advocacy, [00:01:00] policymaking, and philanthropy, and she's kindly agreed to talk to us about a little bit about all of those things today. So Carol, thank you very much for joining me.
[00:01:09] Carol Schwartz: Thank you for inviting me, Richard.
[00:01:11] Richard Conway: To begin with, Carol, I'd love it if you could just give us a bit of an overview of your career to this point and how you've built the amazing portfolio of roles that you currently occupy.
[00:01:22] Carol Schwartz: Well, you know, my very early career started as a lawyer. And I very, very quickly found out that I did not want to be a lawyer. It was probably not suited to me. So therefore, in my very early twenties, I actually stopped being a lawyer and I opened an aerobics and dance studio, which I really loved.
[00:01:44] Carol Schwartz: Then after having that business for about three or four years, I had my first child and that is a really difficult business to run if you've got small children. Because you've got to be there at six in the morning, and you've got to be there at nine o'clock at [00:02:00] night. So that wasn't going to work for me.
[00:02:02] Carol Schwartz: So I sold that business and I went back to university to do an MBA. On completion of my MBA, I joined our family business. I had always had an interest in property, Richard. In fact, during a couple of my pregnancies, I had teamed up with a friend of mine who was an interior designer, and we did some small property developments together, some townhouses.
[00:02:29] Carol Schwartz: And my family's business, my father and mother owned shopping centres as well as a retail chain. And my father rang me and said, we'd really like you to join our family business on the property side. So I did that.
[00:02:45] Carol Schwartz: And I guess that that was sort of the start of me firstly realising that women in their mid-thirties had sort of disappeared from around me. Which of course [00:03:00] was due to the pressure of raising families and looking after families and running businesses or being part of businesses.
[00:03:08] Carol Schwartz: So being part of the property industry, which was incredibly male dominated in those days - I'm talking about the early nineties - I was lucky enough to have some really interesting male mentors who were incredibly supportive of me. And so I joined the board of the property council in Victoria first.
[00:03:33] Carol Schwartz: Then I became the first female president for the property council in Victoria. And I think actually nationally, there had been no other female presidents, I don't think, anywhere else. Actually, there might have been one in Tasmania. That was really the beginning of my broad career in a commercial sense, because I had actually been on the Comedy Festival board, [00:04:00] for the Department of Tourism, which was an amazing experience, very funny.
[00:04:04] Carol Schwartz: But yeah, so I guess that sort of introduced me into the world of commercial boards. And the fact there were no other women around me gave me the opportunity to bring other women who were doing interesting things, but under acknowledged in the property industry onto the board with me.
[00:04:23] Carol Schwartz: That sort of went from strength to strength. And then I became the national president of the property council, which again, was a whole other ball game because it was much bigger, much more diverse, no other women. I have to share with you, Richard, that I saw it as a personal failure of mine, that there was not another female national president of the property council for 17 years.
[00:04:48] Carol Schwartz: And I found that frustrating and I found it very upsetting. During my time at the property council, I guess, you know, I had a particular profile and I was then approached to [00:05:00] sit on various government boards, do some government inquiries. And so my skill base really increased.
[00:05:10] Carol Schwartz: Although in a business context, I have to say, I come from a very entrepreneurial family. I am entrepreneurial myself at my heart. So I did find adapting to boards and the rules around conduct, all the way one has to conduct compliance and risk. And it was interesting learnings for me. Because when one is an entrepreneur, particularly a self-funded entrepreneur, you know, one is able to take risks that would probably scare somebody, you know, make someone else's hair fall out because it's so scary.
[00:05:48] Carol Schwartz: But growing up in an entrepreneurial family, I always saw those sorts of challenges as being very exciting, not scary at all. So I think that the property council [00:06:00] and my profile, that was raised through the property council, actually gave me access to a whole lot of other things in a whole lot of different ways.
[00:06:07] Carol Schwartz: Because I was a very good chair. Because I am a good conductor and I am able to bring the best out of people who sit around a table with me. And I think that that was noticed. And I think that that's why I was invited onto other boards, because I had a real contribution to make.
[00:06:25] Richard Conway: And Carol, one thing that I've found I think is quite unique, looking at your roles in preparation for this podcast is that you have very strong roles in all of these different areas.
[00:06:39] Richard Conway: So strong role in the business and commercial and entrepreneurial area, like you just described. You're also leading in sort of the advocacy areas on social and societal issues and women's leadership, similarly in policymaking at the RBA and philanthropy. And so I guess what I wanted to ask you is, do you see [00:07:00] yourself primarily as one thing or another?
[00:07:03] Richard Conway: Are you a business person first and a philanthropist second, or are they all part of the same thing from your perspective?
[00:07:11] Carol Schwartz: Ah, that's such an interesting question. Nobody's ever asked me that. I think that, you know, one can be multidimensional. And I see myself really being multidimensional. I am a really good multitasker, most of the time.
[00:07:25] Carol Schwartz: I'm also really well organised and I have really good support systems. Today, for example, I go from this sort of podcast, to a totally different meeting next, to a totally different meeting next. So I'm constantly switching hats and I've been used to that for a very long time now.
[00:07:44] Carol Schwartz: And most of the time I'm very energised by that, very energised. It's different people, different interactions, different subject matter. I find that very exciting, motivating and energising. So I don't like to describe [00:08:00] myself as one thing, although having said that and thinking about it, I do think at my core, I'm extremely entrepreneurial. And I think that entrepreneurship is something that I bring to all my roles.
[00:08:15] Carol Schwartz: So I think of myself as a very entrepreneurial philanthropist. I think of myself as a very entrepreneurial advocate. I think about, you know, for example, the work that I've done in women's leadership, you know. I have actually started organisations that I felt did not exist. So our Pathways to Politics for Women programs, absolutely stunning.
[00:08:38] Carol Schwartz: And I couldn't have done it without the collaborations and partnerships that I've been able to forge, but it didn't exist 10 years ago. Nothing existed in terms of progressing women along the way. Nothing that was politically neutral because, of course, you had Emily's List, which did support women on the labour side of politics.
[00:08:59] Carol Schwartz: [00:09:00] But nothing that was non partisan existed to help women along a career track towards political leadership. When I think about our Women for Media reports, you know, ten years ago, twelve years ago, no one was calling the media to task on the fact that they had no women quoted in articles. There were no op eds written by women.
[00:09:27] Carol Schwartz: There were no photos of women when they did, when they did photographs of, you know, business leaders. It was as though women did not exist in corporate Australia. Well, you wouldn't find that now. It's totally unacceptable. So, I guess if I was to give myself one label, it would be entrepreneur, but I take that into everything I do.
[00:09:50] Richard Conway: Yeah, absolutely. And one thing that I've noticed about your work is that there's a real bias towards action and taking practical [00:10:00] steps that can move things forward. Is that what you mean by bringing an entrepreneurial perspective to things or a part of it, at least.
[00:10:07] Carol Schwartz: Absolutely. If I see that something needs to be done, I'm happy to start it from scratch. And I'm happy to fail and I'm happy to iterate, and I'm happy to pivot. All those things that an entrepreneur brings into a business context, I bring into everything that I do.
[00:10:25] Carol Schwartz: And I think probably when I think about it, it does take courage. But I think that over the years I've been doing it for such a long time now. I just see it as a natural part of what I do. It's a natural extension of what I do. I don't see it as being courageous anymore. I see it as just, this needs to be done.
[00:10:46] Carol Schwartz: I'm going to do it. And I move forward.
[00:10:48] Richard Conway: And Carol, you talked a little bit before about the need to switch hats between your different roles. And I wanted to ask you a bit about, do you see having involvement [00:11:00] in those different sort of pillars, as having a kind of symbiosis or underlying synthesis that helps you do all of them better?
[00:11:09] Richard Conway: Or do you really feel it's sort of, you're going into a particular role and you're taking off one hat and putting another hat on for that role?
[00:11:17] Carol Schwartz: Yeah, that's also an interesting question. I think you do change hats. However, I think there are common underlying themes that exist in everything you do.
[00:11:28] Carol Schwartz: And you also, learn from every different situation and that creates the synergy because, you might be on the board of a not for profit, for example, where you learn one thing that you bring to your commercial board, which is also something that you can bring to the private equity businesses that you're involved with, which can then be brought to the founder businesses that you're involved with.
[00:11:53] Carol Schwartz: So, yeah, I think that, keeping an open mind, as to what learnings you can [00:12:00] bring to your different sort of situations and context is very, very important. But, yeah, you definitely do change hats.
[00:12:09] Richard Conway: And a last question I wanted to ask you, Carol, might be a bit of a tricky one, which is that, in some of your roles, particularly in sort of the advocacy and policymaking areas, some of the things that you and your colleagues are making decisions about or pushing forward, can really have quite broad and long term impacts on large numbers of people.
[00:12:32] Richard Conway: And so I guess I imagine that there's a weight of responsibility that comes with that. And I was wondering how you deal with that weight of responsibility, how you contextualise those kinds of decisions that can have ramifications that are hard to predict. Potentially for very long periods beyond your tenure in those positions.
[00:12:54] Carol Schwartz: With great anxiety, with great attention and concentration and [00:13:00] with great seriousness, you know, there are roles that one plays in one's life where, as you say, the consequences can be enormous. One has to have a real serious commitment, and conviction, around the sorts of decisions one's making, when I'm involved on boards, which do have those sorts of consequences because of their decisions. I have to say, my colleagues are all incredibly committed to producing the best outcomes possible, and it is with great seriousness, with great commitment and with great attention to detail.