Collectively, women and men can help create a gender equal world that enables everyone to have equal rights, accessibility and opportunity. For #IWD2020 we are profiling two women who inspire our Cue team.

Erin Boutros Co-Founder of #EmptyEsky
 
In the wake of the bushfire crisis, Cue girl Erin Boutros along with her friends Eleanor Baillieu and Elise Mason wanted to think of an idea to help recover local tourism and support businesses in the affected communities. So they found a way by creating a social movement for foodies and adventurers alike - @emptyesky. The idea was simple, encourage people to plan a road trip to towns affected by the fires, many of which depend on the usual influx of summer tourists and “bring an empty esky” to fill up with local delights. Affectionately called taking the ‘Empty Esky pledge’!
 
Literally overnight the campaign went viral! @emptyesky has an impressive 54.9K followers with people using the #emptyesky to share their travels and finds – racking up an impressive 11,000 plus tags to date. 
 
We are proud to share that Erin has been part of our Cue family in Victoria for over three years whilst completing a Bachelor of Management majoring in Psychology at Deakin University. We asked Erin to share her proudest moment as a woman to date and it struck us the sheer impact this campaign has had for countless small businesses.

“My proudest moment as a woman was being able to support a woman called Susan from Bright. She was facing bankruptcy as a result of her business being closed due to the recent bushfires. She owned a chicken shop and lost all her stock when the power went out. Susan usually makes majority of her income over the busy summer holiday season, however there were no tourists in Bright this year which meant she was in a very difficult financial situation. As a result, she decided to bottle her BBQ sauce and start generating sales online. She had sold 2 bottles when she reached out to my organisation ‘Empty Esky’. I created a campaign for Alpine Sauce Co and within 12 hours 500 bottles of sauce had been sold and this influx of orders saved Susan and her young family from having to declare bankruptcy. To date, Susan has now sold over 3,500 bottles of sauce! I’m very passionate about women working together to help each other rise and I considered it a privilege to be a part of Susan’s story.”

 

Dr Samantha Oakes Ph.D. Cancer Researcher

Intent on finding better ways to treat the most aggressive forms of cancer, the inspirational Dr Samantha Oakes Ph.D. is the head of the Cancer Cell Survival Group at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research.

The focus of her lab is to understand the molecular and mechanistic signals involved in breast cancer tumour cell survival.

But Dr Oaks is far more than a leading female cancer researcher - she is a Mum and surfer, squeezing every drop out of life! Recently we asked her to share her proudest moment as a woman to date and we couldn’t love her answer any more!

“The proudest moment of my life is when my kids looked up to me and said, mummy we are proud of you, you are a scientist and you try to help stop people from dying.”