WIRV Awards

The winners of the 2023 WIRV Awards were announced at our annual Winter Cocktail and Awards Night on 10 August 2023.

Female Young Gun – Charlotte Barrow from Deloitte

Charlotte has practised in the insolvency industry for three and a half years and has recently been promoted to Senior Associate in Deloitte’s Turnaround and Restructuring team. Charlotte consistently exhibits a strong work ethic, maintains a positive attitude across her work and demonstrates remarkable resilience in overcoming obstacles to achieve desired outcomes.

Charlotte is an instrumental team member on several of Deloitte’s voluntary administration appointments and has demonstrated leadership through both formal and informal channels in the team.

Charlotte is consistently nominated to be a mentor through Deloitte’s buddy/mentor program for incoming graduates, and has done so for seven new joiners over the past three years, and has been integral in developing and supplementing Deloitte’s mentoring program.

Outstanding Female – Cassandra Risteska from Rodgers Reidy

Cassandra plays a leading role in bringing professional women together and demonstrating their successes and has boosted the networks of junior insolvency practitioners who missed out on opportunities to develop their networking skills during COVID. Cassandra is always willing to share her professional experiences in the insolvency and retail banking industries and her personal life experiences to arm other women (and men) with the tools to progress their careers and promote gender equity in the industry.

Cassandra is also a professional mentor to numerous provisional Chartered Accountant members who are undertaking graduating diploma of Chartered Accounting.

Male Contributor to Change – Aaron Timoney of Deloitte

Aaron was nominated for his work in building and instilling a culture of fairness, equality and trust across his team. Aaron has built a team that has more than 50% women, including female representation at senior levels. He is known for seeking out and supporting a diversity of talent, skills and genders in his team including outside of the traditional turnaround and restructuring skillset.

Aaron has partnered with universities, such as Melbourne Business School, to sponsor an internship program to provide talented students an opportunity to engage in projects within Deloitte. Through this program, Aaron has identified and recruited exceptionally talented staff to join the team following the completion of their studies.

Aaron has recruited, supported and maintained a team with 50% female representation with a spread across all levels up to and including Directors.

Gender Diversity Organisation of the Year – Aitken Partners

Aitken Partners is committed to continuing to foster partnerships and opportunities for employees that increase female participation, target positive mental health, wellbeing and resilience.

Aitken Partners became a signatory to the Charter for Advancement of Women put forward by the Law Institute of Victoria and equivalent bodies around Australia and created the Aitken Partners Women’s Networking Group (“APW Group”). The APW Group (run by female staff) regularly meet to discuss how Aitken Partners can continue to promote and implement strategies to support women and gender equality in the workplace. As part of this initiative, the APW Group launched the APW Business Network which aims to create a network that enables women to build relationships, share experiences and network in a way that focuses on them.

The recent promotions of women to leadership positions constitute 71% of all promotions for the period 1 January 2021 to 1 May 2023.