THE FEMALE ECONOMY

Leadership in the Northern Rivers has a powerful through-line: women — building organisations, creating opportunity, advocating for reform and strengthening the social fabric of our communities.

written By Donna Rishton-Potter

This could be described as a female economy: a system shaped by shared knowledge, collaboration over competition and a commitment to collective progress. Grounded at a grassroots level, its influence reaches far beyond it. In a world that often feels fractured and uncertain, these women offer something steady and pragmatic. Showing us that meaningful change begins close to home, in relationships and small, deliberate actions that ripple outward.

This year’s International Women’s Day theme, Give To Gain, speaks directly to this model. When time, resources and influence are invested in others, opportunity expands.

In that spirit, LOCALE profiles four women whose work embodies this ethos – Cate McQuillen, an Emmy Award-winning storyteller and eco-educationalist; Ella Noah Bancroft, a Bundjalung woman restoring connection to self, community and Country through The Returning Indigenous Corporation; Amy Colli, a food and women’s advocate building belonging through nourishment; and Odette Barry, a public relations specialist amplifying voices that might otherwise go unheard.

Different fields, shared conviction: the real measure of impact is how many others are brought forward.

Cate McQuillen

Changing the Story,

Changing the World

There are people who talk about the future they want for children, and then there are people who build it. Cate McQuillen is firmly in the second camp.

An Emmy Award-winning creative producer, eco-educationalist and founder of the beloved dirtgirlworld series, Cate has spent more than three decades guided by a clear conviction: “Stories shape what we believe is normal, possible and desirable. Change the story — change the world.”

She grew up in Melbourne’s outer east in what she describes as an almost mythic childhood — trees to climb, long afternoons outdoors and adults who trusted children with real responsibility. “Those experiences wired me for curiosity,” she reflects. “Childhood isn’t a waiting room for real life. It is real life.” That early freedom to explore, invent and fail seeded both sensitivity and grit.

For Cate, storytelling, performance and education were never separate. “I was fascinated by what actually shifts someone — what helps an idea land in the body, not just the head.” Over time she recognised narrative as a powerful tool for change. “If you want to spark care, you don’t start with data. You start with connection.”

That philosophy became dirtgirlworld: a joyful, mud-loving, nature-obsessed girl at the centre of her own story. “We wanted to create the character we couldn’t see — a wild-hearted girl whose superpower was care. Not princess care. Real, messy, hands-in-the-soil care.”

The series reached global audiences, but for Cate the screen was never the end point. Through the Get Grubby Program — now in thousands of schools — sustainability moves from entertainment into lived practice. Her work centres on agency, not fear. “Children don’t need more anxiety; they need belonging, competence and agency. They need to know they are part of nature, not separate from it.”

Her rallying cry — Courage over Hope — reflects what she calls “deliberate optimism”: seeing the world clearly and choosing to build anyway. “The challenges we’re facing don’t respond to wishing. They respond to courage.”

For Cate, regeneration is ultimately about restoring relationships — between people, place and future. Young people, she insists, have “extraordinary capacity. What they want most is to contribute.”

Visibility, she says, is simply a tool. “Success isn’t measured by accolades but by whether the work is genuinely useful and life-enhancing.”

In Cate McQuillen’s hands, storytelling is not entertainment. It is infrastructure for a future shaped by courage, connection and care.

Ella Noah Bancroft

Restoring Connection,

Leading with Care

Ella Noah Bancroft is a proud Bundjalung woman, writer, artist, mentor, and founder and CEO of The Returning Indigenous Corporation. Born on Gadigal Country in Sydney and raised from the age of five on her great-grandmother’s Bundjalung Country in Northern NSW, Ella’s early life was shaped by land, water, family, and story. “Country wasn’t something you visited; it was something that raised you, taught you, held you accountable,” she reflects. Growing up within a strong matriarchal lineage, she learned that leadership flows from service, humility, and truth-telling.

Ella’s work centres on bringing people back into right relationship — with self, community, and Country. Through The Returning, she has created decolonised, community-led spaces of wellbeing, offering programs in nature therapy, cultural education, family support, and employment opportunities for Indigenous women, Elders, and youth. “I realised there were very few spaces that understood care not as self-improvement, but as restoration,” she says. “The urgency became clear when I saw how many women were holding everything together while quietly unravelling — exhausted from being strong, from carrying others, from navigating systems that demand resilience but don’t resource rest.”

For Ella, disconnection sits at the root of much harm — personal, systemic, and intergenerational. “Reconnection restores agency. When women reconnect to self, they begin to trust their intuition again. When they reconnect to community, care becomes collective rather than isolating. And when they reconnect to Country, there’s a deep reorientation — a remembering that we are not separate from the living world, and that our wellbeing is tied to its health.”

Her vision of leadership is entirely relational. “It’s not about me being in front. I don’t have employees who work under me, I have women alongside me, working together to make change for our communities now and those to come. Real power doesn’t dominate. It holds. It’s something you circulate for the benefit of others.”

“I’ve learned that visibility can be useful, but only if it’s in service of something larger than the self. Now success looks like leaving no one behind.” Ella’s deepest hope is that her work dissolves into culture: “into how people welcome one another, how care circulates, and how future generations inherit communities that are more connected, more honest, and more capable of sustaining life together.”

Amy Colli

Nourishing Bodies,

Strengthening Community

If you live in the Northern Rivers and care about food, chances are you’ve been welcomed into a space Amy Colli helped bring to life. A connector by nature and a host at heart, Amy is a quiet but influential force within the region’s food and tourism community, bringing people together around shared tables, shared values and a deep love of place.

Born and raised in the region, Amy grew up in a household where food was wholesome, home-made and thoughtfully prepared. With a curiosity about different cuisines and cultures, she developed an early appreciation for food not just as nourishment, but as a language of care, connection and identity. That understanding deepened over more than 25 years working across hospitality, education, food processing, wine liaison and regional industry development, giving her a rare whole-of-system perspective — from paddock to plate, from small producers to tourism strategy. Along the way, she began asking why conversations around provenance — where food comes from and who is behind it — were not more central.

Completing a Masters of Gastronomic Tourism through Le Cordon Bleu and Southern Cross University affirmed what she had long known instinctively: regional food is both economic driver and cultural glue. As Industry Engagement Manager for Tweed Tourism, and through initiatives such as Savour the Tweed, Amy champions farmers, chefs and food businesses as an interconnected ecosystem rather than isolated operators.

For her, collaboration is not a buzzword but the backbone of regional prosperity, and women in particular are powerful custodians of local economies. “Women have such a solid instinct for supporting local,” she says. “Food is a great vehicle for bringing people together — and women are extraordinary at it.”

That philosophy extends into Amy’s greatest passion: her philanthropic work as Coordinator of the Women’s Giving Circle for the Northern Rivers Community Foundation, where women pool resources to support grassroots projects for women and girls. At its heart, she says, it is about creating a tangible sense of belonging. “I hate to think other women don’t have a sense of belonging in this community. If you’ve lived here for two days, you’re a local. Everyone deserves a seat at the table.”

A passionate advocate for inclusion and belonging, Amy reminds us that leadership can be warm, generous and grounded; and that food, when shared with intention, remains one of the most powerful tools we have for building resilient, compassionate communities that truly hold and support one another.

Odette Barry

Amplifying the Voices That Matter

Odette Barry will tell you she fell into PR accidentally. She was working in corporate communications, a little obsessed with social media, and realised one day that being good at "having a chin wag" was actually a transferable skill. What followed was anything but accidental.

After moving from Melbourne to Byron Bay a decade ago — initially for a season, then permanently — Odette founded Odette & Co, a boutique PR agency that has quietly become one of the most purpose-driven communications businesses in the country. Working with changemakers, social enterprises and small businesses tackling domestic violence, homelessness, sexual violence, youth unemployment, and miscarriage loss, she has honed a clear conviction: "When we choose to use [our] skills for issues that really need them, we get to steer something quite powerful into something really good."

That focus didn't arrive fully formed. Odette describes the business as years of experimentation — morphing from agency work into mentoring when she noticed something telling. Her friends, all local business owners doing extraordinary things, had great stories but no budget for PR. So she built a course to teach them. "I knew they could pitch their own stories if they knew how." Seven days of free content later, 650 people signed up. Hack Your Own PR was born, and to date she has taught more than 5,000 founders to navigate the media landscape themselves.

For Odette, the Northern Rivers itself shaped the business she became. "I came here with a sore heart," she says. "I was gifted healing by the nature, the community, the open heartedness of this place. Now I feel it's my moral duty to give back." She describes her role as being a bridge — taking the values of this region out into wider networks, helping people think differently about what power is for.

It's a responsibility she doesn't take lightly. "It keeps you awake at night," she admits. "The weight of knowing you can contribute to creating real change for people — that gets in your head."

In the best possible way, it shows.