Brooke Hill was the kid inside with a typewriter while everyone else played in the street. She built a career telling other people's stories, from magazines to London to brand leadership, until a redundancy a few weeks after her first child was born took the plan away completely. What started as one freelance copywriting job became Wonderthink, an award-winning content agency, and a way of leading built around the imagination she'd let slip away. Her second book, Spark Wonder at Work, makes the case for bringing awe, curiosity and optimism back into how teams think and work.

Highlights:

• The typewriter kid. Brooke started work at 14, wrote a poem to land work experience at Cleo, and walked floor to floor at ACP Magazines handing editors her CV in person. An internship at Harper's Bazaar led to her first proper job, at the Australian Women's Weekly, straight out of university.
• The redundancy that changed everything. A few weeks after her daughter was born, Brooke was made redundant from a senior marketing role. She says it happens more often than people think, and that it forced a question she'd never had space to ask: what did she actually want her work and her life to look like?
• The confession most leaders won't say out loud. Brooke admits she isn't sure she was ever a great leader in her earlier corporate roles. She'd been handed teams and titles without ever working out what leadership meant to her. When the business outgrew her, that doubt, along with the burnout culture she'd seen in agencies, made her resist becoming one.
• The reframe that changed her mind. One question unlocked it: what if it didn't have to look like that? She committed to learning to lead properly, from delegating to building a team that's high performing without burning out. It started with her first hire, Beth, who's still with the agency today.
• Wonder and curiosity as leadership tools, backed by research. Spark Wonder at Work grew out of interviews with leaders across industries and the science behind awe, curiosity and optimism. Brooke shares data showing employees feel their organisation helps them be creative just 14% of the time, down from 25% during COVID.

Brooke's parting words of wisdom: keep coming back to the what if. Take time to look back at the through lines in your own career, because that's where your unique value as a leader sits. Then use that question to carry it forward.

Connect with Brooke Hill: LinkedIn | Instagram | Website

This episode is brought to you by: Cell Wellness Co | Naturally Glutenfree

Connect with Kirsty Ghahramani (Gee): LinkedIn | Instagram | Website