Illawarra Women in Business celebrates 20 years of empowering connections
Celebrating 20 years is a significant milestone for Illawarra Women in Business (IWIB), a networking group founded in 2006 to connect and support women across the region. The 20th anniversary of IWIB will be recognised as part of the 2026 IWIB Awards Day celebration being held today at the Fraternity Club.
IWIB provides the Illawarra with dynamic business networking events, where men are always welcome to attend, though they are usually the minority. It attracts a diverse range of businesses throughout the Illawarra, from home-based sole traders to corporates.
Humble beginnings
IWIB began with three women who met regularly for lunch to network and build their own business relationships - Suzanne Kent, a mortgage broker, Dianne Chalk a financial planner and Glenda Papac, who was the practice manager at her late husband's law firm.
"I thought it would be fabulous to build on our little get-togethers of three women, and at one of our catch ups I suggested we should grow this," Suzanne Kent, the founder of Illawarra Women in Business said.
Suzanne set about establishing IWIB, and it began. In 2007, Suzanne headed off to London for a working holiday, and Delyse Del Turco and Glenda Papac took over the running of IWIB. They then decided it was time to grow the group and started taking on sponsors. The first sponsor to come on board was in 2008. Dianne Chalk, the owner of Chalk Financial Planning, signed on as a platinum sponsor and is still an IWIB sponsor today.
Growth and evolution
Glenda and Delyse did not take long to establish IWIB as a dynamic networking group with their exceptional business ethics giving credibility and value to the organisation. IWIB held annual conference days, IWIB Coffee Club, IWIB Power Networking (just like speed dating but at IWIB they meant business) as well as their six weekly networking lunch events.
The big change was in 2009 when they held their first IWIB Awards Day with only two categories. They celebrated women in business who were making a difference. The two categories were IWIB Business Woman of the Year with Katrina Rowlands from Mortgage Success being the first winner of the award and IWIB Young Business Woman of the Year with Angela Saville taking out that award.
Delyse Del Turco left IWIB in 2014 to concentrate on her own busy accounting firm (Better Business Accounting). With Glenda taking over IWIB there were more changes in store.
Innovation and community
In 2014, Glenda changed the format of one lunch event a year and started hosting high-profile speaker lunch events each year. She also introduced IWIB Business over Bubbles, an after-hours networking event which she jokes is "just like IWIB Coffee Club except we swapped the coffee for bubbles."
Glenda has always believed in keeping IWIB relevant, changing and evolving to keep ahead of the times. You can find out more about the upcoming Illawarra Women in Business events, the annual awards and how you can get involved, at iwib.com.au.
