Female Leader Conversations Feature Mersi Halilovic, Amanda Tan & Elinor Moshe Founders Workshop& said, “You owe it to yourself to do everything in your power to lead an empowered life in accordance with your big dreams and desires.”
Amanda Tan, Elinor Moshe and Mersi Halilovic are friends who founded Workshop&, a skill building platform dedicated to empowering professional women for a modern career and life. Through online workshops, productivity stationery, Melbourne based networking events and inspiring content through collaborations with leading women, Workshop& delivers inspiration and practical skills to their community. It was through working in the construction industry that the three met, and their connection galvanised when they discovered an unequivocal shared passion of theirs; empowering women.
SIDE HUSTLE
As three friends with full-time jobs, how do you work Workshop&?
Planning is a big key to making it work. We’re very organised and know what each person needs to do by when. We also prefer consistent imperfect action and putting something out there that we consider to be less than perfect rather than doing nothing at all. That way, we get market feedback and refine as we go rather than get stuck in analysis paralysis! A big part of why we have great synergy is that we each play to our strengths, which allows us to work efficiently and passionately. Sacrifice is also a big part of what we do. It’s Sunday’s planning and producing content, weeknights connecting with people for collaborations and promoting our message at events instead of binge-watching Netflix. We know how to hustle, but only because we’re passionate and invested in this.
PURPOSE
What drives Workshop&?
Simple! It’s empowering women. Empowerment, whether through your networks, financial acumen, learning how to have difficult conversations, successful mindset development to name a few, are all important to have in your toolkit.
We’re here to be the go-to on how-to on anything personal and professional development, and to simply help women overcome barriers and blocks to being anything less than incredible, bold – empowered! We also focus on making sure our offerings are inexpensive and accessible, which we found wasn’t catered for in the market, or done well at the lower end of the price range.
CONSTRUCTION CAREERS
How have your careers influenced the development of Workshop&?
It’s what brought us together in the first place! As a result of being in a male-dominated industry, we aligned ourselves with female-orientated associations and worked to build our networks. Having those strong connections was empowering when navigating our careers. We did find that there are commonalities in our experiences regardless of what industry women work in, so we wanted to create a platform that catered to all. We are more than our job titles; we are women with ambitions, ideas, and challenges. Construction is a very practical industry, so our offerings a re practical with tangible outcomes, making it a worthwhile investment.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENTS
What approach have you taken to growing Workshop&?
We ask our community what they need and want to learn to lead an empowered life. Feedback and engagement is very important to us, because we can only ever really add value when we are responding to someone’s needs. We also try and test many different topics and products and to see what sticks. It’s a fluid approach but allows us to constantly keep on refining our offering and be a creative outlet.
Our networking events are really important to us, because we’re able to create intimate events to spur inspiring conversations. Women don’t forget the energy and buzz they feel after coming to our event, and spread the word about us which is invaluable to our growth.
THE FEMALE LEADER CONVERSATIONS EZINE FEATURES 11 PEOPLE FROM FEMECONOMY’S COMMUNITY. ENJOY READING THEIR THOUGHT LEADERSHIP:
