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Page 1 of 3 The Australian - September 4th, 1998
By Sally Jackson
Sandra Yates, who is the third in The Australian’s monthly profiles of
women making their mark, left school at 15 and went on to tackle New
York. Now she is masterminding Labor's election campaign.
Personal
Sandra Lee Yates Born: July 15,1947
Family: Husband Michael,1 son,1 daughter
Education: Salisbury High School, Brisbane
Recreation: Reading, cooking, piano
Career
1962: Left school and became a secretary
1974-77: Ad sales rep for Network 10 in Brisbane and Sydney
1977-80: Advertising manager at Family Circle
1980-88: At Fairfax in 1984 appointed deputy CEO of Fairfax Magazines
1987-90: In New York, president and CEO of Matilda Publications
1990-93: Publisher of Time magazine Australia
1993-96: Consulting work
1994-95: Chair of Australian Council for Women
1996-: Chair of Saatchi & Saatchi Australia
Other
Chair Sydney YWCA
Chair NSW TAFE Commission Board
President Chief Executive Women
Director Advertising Federation of Australia (NSW)
When Sandra Yates left school she never expected to have a career. The
year was 1962 and back then, she says, "girls just didn't," especially
girls living on a market garden at Sunnybank on the outskirts of
Brisbane.
"I left school at 15 and I hadn't any expectations of having a career
or anything like that," she says. "I thought I'd get a job for a few
years and then I'd get married and that would be that."
She got the job, as a secretary, and the husband, when she was 18, and,
when she was 20, a baby. But that was not that, after all. In fact,
that was just the tentative beginning of what turned out to be, and
continues to be, a remarkably adventurous life.
Today, Yates chairs advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, the NSW
TAFE board, and the Sydney YWCA and her past positions fill a closely
spaced six centimetres in the Who's Who of Australian Business. As
president of Chief Executive Women she is considered a leading light of
the so-called "feminist mafia", a loosely connected group of
high-powered high achievers which, if they were men, would simply be
called an excellent business network.
And, just as importantly, she is also an extremely happily married mother of two.
But back in Brisbane in 1972 it was a very different story. By then
Yates was 25 with two failed relationships behind her and two young
children very much with her.
"I found myself on my own with two kids and really no capacity to earn much of a living," she remembers.
"I was working as a secretary to keep body and soul together but I clearly needed to do something more lucrative.
"By that stage I was firmly convinced that I was pretty hopeless in the
bloke department and I basically gave it away for about eight years.
What finally impelled me to... move was when I was photographed by the
Brisbane police demonstrating in support of the Australian government.
It really did bring home to me how weird Joh BjelkePetersen and
Queensland were."
Yates's achievements seem even more remarkable when you consider that
not only was she 38 before she first travelled overseas, but that she
was 27 before she ever left Queensland.
Nowadays she always says her career in Sydney began by accident.
An acquaintance had recommended her for a job selling advertising space
at Channel 10 in Melbourne, but, as she tells it, "the Melbourne
manager wouldn't have me, on the basis that Melbourne wasn't ready for
a woman rep."
It was such a waste of effort and resource to have to spend half your
time proving your right to exist. Hence Yates ended up at Channel 10 in
Sydney, which, presumably, was ready for her.
"So I was never meant to be here… but sexism intervened," she says,
adding: "It sounds so quaint now. It is a long while ago. An awful lot
has changed."
It is interesting to consider how Yates, with the glass ceiling only
ever an inch off the top of her head, was able to turn the rampant
sexism of those days almost to her advantage by taking risks she might
not otherwise have dared to in order to find ways around the obstacles.
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