The Aunties, established by the women of the Melbourne Advertising Design Creativity (MADC), are a not-for-profit mentoring program that inspires and champions women of all ages and backgrounds in the creative industry.

AdNews spoke to founding members and Aunties, Sarah McGregor and Phoebe Sloane, about the importance of creating a space for women in advertising, the balance of demands between their full-time advertising roles and volunteer work and why the industry needs to make accessible pathways to encourage women to thrive.

McGregor, ECD at Dentsu, and Sloane, senior copywriter at Clemenger BBDO, have assembled a line-up of passionate Aunties to support representation at a leadership level for women in the creative industry.

“It’s a chance to work with an incredible group of women that we wouldn’t normally get to work with. We’re lucky to have a really big team that can kind of jump in and take on different roles and different jobs. And we do set our own pace, which is really also quite empowering,” said Sloane.

McGregor said: “We also have our own little mini agency which means that we can delegate quite a lot which is really important as we’re all volunteers, we all work full time.

“We share the load so that we can manage that balance, but I think as women balance is always an issue and I think we’re pretty good at managing it because we have to manage it so much in our lives anyway.”

The Aunties’ focus is on creating an inclusive space for all women, connecting and pairing up as many mentees as possible to help support their wellbeing and development in the industry.

McGregor: “When you attend one of our events, it’s so welcoming for everyone – there’s this incredible vibe like nobody’s left in a corner. Everybody’s getting talked to, everybody’s being taken under somebody’s wing.”

Sloane: “We try to always make it really clear, especially for our programs, that women – non binary, agender, gender-nonconforming and marginalised genders – are very much welcome.”

McGregor said that reflecting back on her younger self, she wished she had someone like that to talk to in a safe, positive space.

“I always say to people, your mentor shouldn’t be in your own agency, you can have your own agency mentors of course, but it’s always good to have someone on the outside you can ask any question that you want.

“Even just someone you can say to; ‘is this normal, is this right?’”

Sloane: “When you’re starting out you often don’t know what normal is, and it can leave women vulnerable in many ways. It’s really about sharing experiences and offering a safe space to listen.

“There’s always that kind of objective person in your corner – it isn’t a boss, or a friend or your mum. They’re that kind of trusted confidant and I think that really sets us apart.”

The Aunties have paired up more than 400 women to date through their mentorship program.

“We hope that by doing this at that scale and at different levels across careers that The Aunties can hopefully help those who are climbing to get and stay at the top,” said Sloane.

“We hope that The Aunties can stay and live on as this kind of almost tool for yet retention for women and marginalised genders in our industry. We’re really, really proud of what we do.”

The Aunties are on a mission to not only support women in the industry, but to keep them there so that they can grow into managerial positions.

McGregor: “Because that’s the place now where we see that there’s still a lot more men than women. I think agencies really need to focus on how they’re going to keep women in the jobs because we know there’s a really big drop off when women have children.

“The agencies need to be more proactive in welcoming women back to work with really good maternity leave policies and parental leave policies. One day when we have equity with that, that’s when we’re going to start seeing a lot less problems with people being uneasy about hiring women of a certain age because they’re worried they’ll go off and have children.”