Association CEO Index 2024 - Flipbook - Page 25
Association CEO Index 2024
25
Business feature
Megan Motto
Governance Institute of Australia
Megan Motto is a delightful contradiction.
Equal parts rule-follower and rule-breaker, left brain
firing as much as the right and always with a sharp
strategic eye on a horizon many of her contemporaries
don’t yet have in focus.
She is the structure-loving CEO of the Governance
Institute of Australia and Director of Standards Australia
who dislikes putting people in boxes and believes life’s
no fun without taking risks.
She is the working-class girl from Sydney’s south-west
who began careers in teaching and professional dancing
before leaping into the corporate world and rocketing to
CEO within six years.
She’s the passionate public policy advocate and member
crusader who doesn’t believe her organisation has a
unique value proposition. More on that later.
Early in life, Megan Motto harboured dreams of being a
journalist but ended up enrolling in a teaching degree.
She became an English teacher, but always had dance in
the back of her mind.
She started ballet at the age of four, on doctor’s advice
to correct pigeon toes, and developed both skill and
passion for the creativity and discipline of the craft. She
had received (and declined) offers to dance
professionally, before making a don’t-die-wondering
decision to take a year off teaching to do just that.
She returned to teaching but began wondering what else
her professional life might offer.
“I started my Masters (in Communication Management),
but it was really hard because people put people in
boxes,” Megan says.
“I was told quite explicitly by a very senior person in the
HR world that teachers like me who were trying to get
out and do something in the corporate world were a dime
a dozen and that I had no transferable skill sets. There's
a lesson in there about putting people in boxes
prematurely.
“Similarly, when I was edging towards the CEO position
(at Consult Australia), I was told that if I was to have any
credibility in Canberra, I had to stop wearing colour and I
should get a black suit to look more like a bureaucrat.
“I said, ‘stuff that’ and went the other way.”
Megan trailblazed that other way, scoring her first
corporate gig at the Association of Consulting Engineers
Australia (ACEA) in 2000, propelling from
communications coordinator to operations manager
within a year, eventually becoming CEO of the rebranded
entity, Consult Australia, in 2006.
She led that industry association for the engineering and
technical services sector until 2018, simultaneously
balancing director commitments at the NSW Business
Chamber, the Committee for Economic Development of
Australia and the Australian Construction Industry Forum
and the role of Treasurer of the Australian Sustainable
Built Environment Council for 13 years.
These days, she serves as Councillor on the Australian
Chamber of Commerce and Industry along with her
Governance Institute and Standards Australia
leadership. Having spent all of her post-teaching life in
association roles, Megan reflects on a sector that she
believes deserves both a shake-up and more respect.
“The narrative that you don’t see many association
managers on serious boards or that association CEOs
don’t have commercial sense is really flawed,” the former
AFR/Westpac 100 Women of Influence recipient says.
“Our leadership skills are not valued in the commercial
world, and I think that’s incredibly shameful, because we
do everything that other commercial people do – just
with less zeros.
“The sector needs an image makeover. Just in the same
way that you should be able to step in and out from
public sector to private sector roles, I think the same is
true for the association sector; but we just don’t talk
about it much. We need to value people moving in and
out of associations.
