Warrior Woman Foundation

Menu
Menu

Dr Sarah Richardson – FAICD FGIA FAMI

Chair of the Board

Dr Sarah Richardson FAICD FGIA FAMI

Sarah’s a seasoned board chair/director and social-innovation researcher. She’s also QUT Industry Fellow, Journal of Nonprofit Innovation Editorial Board Member, and Harvard Social Enterprise Scholarship recipient. Connecting insights from her international multi-sector innovation-focused leadership experience with her cross-disciplinary journal publishing and global conference participation, she helps organizations and their stakeholders innovate to benefit society. Sarah has a PhD in nonprofit innovation and completed Driving Nonprofit Performance and Innovation (Harvard), Company Directors Course (Australian Institute of Company Directors), and an MBA (hons) (University of Chicago).

She’s served on multiple nonprofit, startup, and government boards across education, health, sport, infrastructure and agrifoods of entities pursuing innovation-led growth and impact. In her executive career, she led digital transformation and marketing for five years at Wesley Mission and the Ethics Centre in Australia and held consumer goods’ general management, strategy, marketing, and sales leadership roles in Australia, France (with Scandinavia and North America oversight), and the United States.

Currently, she’s enjoying combining her social justice passion, youth engagement background, and strategic advocacy and fundraising skills to highlight the criticality of vulnerable young women in Australia and extend Warrior Woman Foundation’s awareness and societal contribution.

We provide a safe and welcoming space for young women to share, learn, heal and grow. Each young woman is connected with a mentor as well as a network of diverse community-minded women who provide ongoing support and share their life experiences, resources and opportunities:

  • Connection to a safe, stable, and socially inclusive network of female role models to turn to for advice and ongoing support for the duration of the six-month program.
  • Connection to a non-judgmental group of young women who are facing similar challenges.
  • Connection to Kindred Warrior Peers, young women who have experienced challenges in life and have gone on to achieve life success.
  • Weekly one-to-one mentoring sessions with a safe mentor.

We teach young women the life skills they need to succeed in everyday life. Our “teach a young woman to fish” approach gives them support and guidance at every step, knowing that true empowerment comes from them learning to do things for themselves. In particular, we focus on financial literacy and job readiness:

  • Life-skills workshops to build self-reliance.
  • A six-week Financial Literacy program (in partnership with MoneyGirl).
  • A four-week Job Readiness program.
  • Assistance in gaining and retaining meaningful employment.
  • Access to a range of vocational skills scholarships (e.g., Code Like a Girl) and internships.

Many young women experience trauma which negatively impacts their confidence, self-esteem and self-worth. We support and nurture the trauma healing process in safe psycho-educational workshops facilitated by experts. In these sessions, young women learn to engage with self-compassion, and to soften and contain threat-based emotions, such as fear and anxiety, anger, shame and self-criticism.