Santa Sabina's first Rhodes Scholar didn't win the Rhodes on her first attempt. Dr Ashleigh Barnes missed the New South Wales place, steadied herself and went again in the national round. Now a constitutional law academic at UNSW, Ashleigh talks with Cynthia about imposter syndrome at Oxford, the school captaincy she missed, and why dignity sits at the heart of her legal work. She opens up about working with two babies under two. You'll hear why every application takes courage, and why having it all doesn't mean all at once.

Key Takeaways:

• Believing everything is possible is worth protecting: Ashleigh left school sure nothing held women back, and while she later learnt otherwise, she's glad she started adulthood with that conviction.
• The trajectory is only visible from the outside: what looks like a straight line was really other people tapping her on the shoulder, missteps, and working it out as she went.
• Imposter syndrome does not disappear with achievement: at Oxford she felt she'd crept in and had to do double, and found most people around her were thinking the same.
• Dignity sits behind the dry words of the law: her research asks judges and practitioners to look past the text of the Constitution to what its structures are trying to protect.
• Every application is an act of courage: putting yourself forward means genuinely believing you could get it, which is exactly why missing out can be crushing.
• Missing out can make you a better candidate: she missed both the school captaincy and the single NSW Rhodes place, then steadied herself and won in the national round.
• You can have it all, just not all at once: motherhood has changed her completely, and she wants to show it openly rather than hide it as earlier women leaders often did.

Notable Quotes:

1. "It looks like a trajectory, but it was actually more of an up and down, a left and right, working it out as I went." — Ashleigh Barnes
2. "If you don't believe in yourself, the assessors will see right through you." — Ashleigh Barnes
3. "It was very much a case of work as if you didn't have any children." — Cynthia Myssy
4. "I think we can have it all but not all at once." — Ashleigh Barnes
5. "Should I try for that? Will I fit in? Will I be okay in this scenario? You show up anyway." — Ashleigh Barnes
6. "Sometimes that period of endurance actually makes you a better candidate." — Ashleigh Barnes
7. "I would tell her just keep going. Just keep going because all these beautiful things are ahead." — Ashleigh Barnes

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Monica Serci has spent her career in family law, sitting with people at the worst moments of their lives. She's a special counsel at Walter and Elliot Family Lawyers, was named a Doyle's Guide Rising Star, and she gives her own time to advocacy work she believes in. In this conversation with Cynthia Myssy, Monica talks about the early warning signs of coercion and control, why the census undercounts what women actually do, and what happens when you treat a non negotiable as negotiable.

Key Takeaways:

• The warning signs are built to be dismissed: Coercion and control rarely announces itself, arriving instead as a comment about a friend, a preference that your mother visits less, or an offer to take over the budget, and it is the accumulation rather than any single incident that matters.
• A non negotiable has to look like one: If you treat something that is genuinely not up for discussion as though it is, it will be negotiated, which is why the moment to hold the line is early, while the thing is still small.
• The legal system is a tool, not a remedy: Courts can recognise what happened to you but cannot deliver emotional repair, so going in search of validation sets you up to leave disappointed whatever the outcome.
• What is not counted does not count: The census records paid hours precisely and caps unpaid domestic work at thirty, and that gap flows into the administrative systems that calculate child support, leaving two systems pointing in opposite directions.
• The relationship with yourself sets the ceiling for the rest: After a career spent watching relationships end, the one Monica worked hardest on was her own, drawing a clear line between self care and selfishness and treating her own limits as maintenance rather than indulgence.
• Imposter syndrome does not resolve with seniority: It is real, it is worse for women, and it persists in people with every reason to feel qualified, which makes the correction worth borrowing: you are the adult in the room.
• Courage is usually quiet: The most consequential acts are often private, unrecorded and witnessed by nobody, as one small kindness in wartime Sardinia proves three generations later.

Notable Quotes:

1. "If you have behaviour that is a non negotiable for you, but then you treat it as a negotiable thing, it will be negotiated." — Monica Serci
2. "Many people are taught to keep the peace, but sometimes to your own autonomy, there's nothing more that one should protect." — Monica Serci
3. "Thirty hours a week is almost a joke if they were to think about everything they did." — Monica Serci
4. "They're not just names. They're whole worlds." — Monica Serci
5. "You don't need permission." — Monica Serci
6. "Sometimes the greatest acts are quiet and deeply personal." — Monica Serci
7. "I think you see things that many of us don't see." — Cynthia Myssy

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Caroline Smith started out teaching PE. She's now General Manager of Apprenticeship Careers Australia, and the road between those two things ran straight through her husband's terminal diagnosis. Caroline retrained in accounting while caring for Nigel, raising Emily, and later watching her mum slip into dementia. She'll tell you she hasn't done anything special. Cynthia Myssy disagrees. They talk career change under pressure, why resilience isn't a personality trait some women have and others lack, and why the gender gap in trades runs in both directions.

Key Takeaways:

• Career Change You Did Not Choose: When Nigel was told he could no longer work, Caroline's retraining stopped being a someday idea and became a decision. She chose accounting deliberately, for employability across any industry rather than for any love of numbers.
• Resilience Is Not a Personality Trait: Caroline's position is that she did nothing exceptional, that anyone facing the same circumstances would have done the same, and that capability only reveals itself once it is tested.
• What a School Gives You Decades Later: She credits the strength that carried her to her teachers at Santa Sabina and to a Year 12 class in 1994, absorbed rather than taught, years before she knew she would need it.
• Admitting You Cannot Do It Alone: Looking herself in the eye and accepting she could not manage on her own is what made everything afterwards possible, including keeping Nigel at home rather than in a nursing home.
• Recovery Takes Longer Than the Crisis: After years of running on adrenaline, Caroline had to learn how to stop being on alert, and says she has only really managed it in the last three or four years.
• The Gender Gap in Trades Runs Both Ways: Women make up as few as 4 per cent of some construction and automotive roles, men under 10 per cent in aged care and health, and Caroline argues that any field dominated by one gender will create skills shortages in that field.

Notable Quotes:

1. "We're all capable of it, but it just depends on whether we're ever confronted by something like that." — Caroline Smith
2. "You've got to look yourself in the eye and say, can I manage this on my own? And the answer is no." — Caroline Smith
3. "Whether they did it directly or whether you sort of picked up some of that resilience and some of that determination through osmosis, it certainly stuck." — Caroline Smith
4. "It just felt like everything was necessary." — Caroline Smith
5. "Courage is having a crack, even if it means that you're potentially going to fall over or you're going to make a fool of yourself." — Caroline Smith
6. "I think no one goes through life unscathed." — Cynthia Myssy

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