Ep 223 – Why NGOs Attract Top Talent, with guest Nicole Yade, CEO WAGEC

Today I had the privilege of interviewing Nicole Yade, CEO of WAGEC (Women and Girls’ Emergency Centres) established to support women and their children, seeking support from domestic violence.

Australia continues to struggle with a national crisis in terms of violence against women with 1 in 4 women having experienced violence from an intimate partner since the age of 15 and nearly 9 in 10 hospitalisations for assault by a partner – were for females (Source: AIHW).

Today, Nicole Yade is sharing insight from her diverse role as CEO at WAGEC and how she needs a multitude of skills to adapt to lots of different stakeholders including individual women and their children; communicating with Ministers; and meeting with people with inter-generational wealth who want to invest their money into an NGO such as WAGEC.

We also talk about the misconception that NGOs struggle to attract the best talent… and the kinds of people who do well in NGOs.

Nicole, on NGOs attracting the best talent:

One of my pet peeves… is hearing the idea that if you were really good at your job you’d be working for government or in a corporate setting. But for me, nothing could be further from the truth. What I see everyday at WAGEC, I see people [in our team] who are really good at their jobs, with incredible heart and soul and professionalism and adding wisdom to some of the most complex problems in our community.”

Links:

• Connect with Nicole and the work of WAGEC at www.wagec.org.au
• Connect with Nicole Yade on Linkedin
• Instagram follow Nicole Yade (@nicoleyadee)
• Connect with Rebecca Allen on Linkedin 
• Get your copy of Rebecca’s free guide, 7 Strategic Shifts to Position You as a High-Impact Leader

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About Nicole:

Nicole Yade is the CEO of the Women’s and Girls’ Emergency Centre. She has over 25 years experience leading, designing, and delivering services for marginalised people in the NGO sector. Much of this work has involved working across cultures with traumatised populations, including extensive work with victim survivors of violence, refugees, and Aboriginal communities. In 2024 Nicole was awarded the Chief Executive Women Not for Profit scholarship which enabled her to attend Harvard University to study leadership development. Nicole holds a MA in Counselling and Psychotherapy and a Bachelor Arts with Honors in Anthropology from The University of Sydney. She is a proud victim survivor advocate and was recently nominated as Advocate of the Year in Marie Claire’s Women of the Year Awards.

About Rebecca:

Rebecca Allen is a warm and dynamic Leadership Coach who helps build high-performing leaders and teams by working on 4-core pillars: how do we want to show up; how do we want to add value; how should we elevate our thinking; and how should we elevate our communication? Rebecca has coached managers through to CXOs at Woolworths, Coles, ANZ, RBA, J.P. Morgan, PwC, ANSTO, Ministry of Defence, Frontier Sensing and abbvie through her Roadmap to Senior Leadership coaching programs. Connect with Rebecca