Wrap: Grill The Marketer - Champions of Change Edition

We Hosted Leigh Wood & Tess Palmyre for the Final Event of 2025 - Here's How it Went

In an interesting and challenging turn of events, everyone involved in helping to bring you this event left something at home and had to turn around and go back for it. While I blame Mercury Retrograde, I couldn't help but notice that nothing was too hard to solve, for these amazing souls, and ruminate on how lucky I am to have this community.

Whilst I appreciate that's a random way to start an event wrap up, since it's likely that attendees didn't notice - so why call it out, Carma? Well, because there's so much content out there that's polished, perfect and...bland. I reckon you can hear my voice in your head when I write so it may as well be as authentic to experiencing me in-person.

Back to the guests...

Tess & Leigh were exceptional guests (well, duh) and shared very openly their journeys, struggles and what keeps them motivated to push through barriers.

Leigh spoke of the challenges of moving countries, working in a male-dominated field, and the weight of low expectations.

Tess discussed her lived experience as a women of colour in the world and the industry, and how that impacted her trajectory. Cue the concrete ceiling.

What struck me is how similar (albeit different) the result was; strong women who made their own way when 'the way' wasn't made for them.

We spoke on imposter syndrome, making room for difference in your team, and your every day discussions, and whether it was large businesses or smaller ones that had more scope and appetite to be inclusive (answer: it depends).

We were asked some excellent questions from the audience - and enjoyed the space to explore them in depth - it's probably the least amount of questions we've ever addressed in an event, but the topic required careful consideration and care to each one. I love that the event format can be this flexible to accommodate such a range of requirements.

Now this is where I'd normally put the photo gallery - but slight hiccup there, Peter is in the hospital. Send him all your best healing vibes and hopefully we'll get to see his awesome piccies in the new year.

What now?

I've secured the 2026 dates and season tickets are available HERE while you're all still excited about them. We'll be back int he hot seat on March 19th with an exciting guest to be announced soon.

In the meantime, thanks again to my support crew; Jacqueline, Keith, Peter, Zoe, Mikaela and Gabe because without you all I'd be a frazzled mess.

It's mind-blowing to me that what started as a bit of an off the cuff idea has spanned 6 years and is now a super supportive, smart and passionate community of local talent.

Thank yous

Thanks to the guests who keep saying yes and agreeing to share their experience, expertise and unfiltered stories. We've had some AMAZING folks step up to the hot seat this year!

Zeina Khodr (our first east coast guest - Chief Spark at Paper + Spark), Nikki Atack (Marketing, Sales & Customer Experience Lead at Pentanet), Matt Oakley (Strategist at 303MullenLowe), Tim Woodsmith (Strategist at Rare), Melissa Osterhage (Head of Marketing at Galati Group), and last but not least, our AdNews Champions of Change - Tess Palmyre (Brandable/WAMA) and Leigh Wood (Nani Creative/PADC).

They all join a growing list of local (and not so local) Grill Alum, who have generously shared their time with the community.

And thanks to YOU, dear reader, for following along, attending an event (or three) and asking great questions. If you don't bring it on the night, the event fails - so great job to you all for helping it go from strength to strength this year.

Stay curious! We've got some killer guests lined up for you in 2026, and the previous ones tend to like to stick close too.

The crew

Without these people you would not get the experience you do on the night, and they all deserve way more than the token gifts they got, so here is me showing you how much I love them.

Jacqueline Baril is my microphone non-needing MC with ADHD, and helps me carry the mental load of the event logistics. Mainly by listening to me stress-vent and offering solulu to my delulu.

Keith Hutchings has been with me since the start. The first ever Grill The Marketer was in South Fremantle in 2019 and he came along, and has never stopped offering to help. We let him have a microphone even though he's a white American man. So underrepresented.

Peter Dancewicz is our event photographer and owner of Spoilt Photo Booths, and does such an amazing job at capturing memories made. You should totally book him for your next event.

Zoe Wolski is the smiling face that greets you at the door with the perfected winged eyeliner.

Mikaela McAuliffe helps me maintain The Marketer's website by keeping up with the press releases.

Gabe Mach helps out wherever he's asked, he's filled in for Keith with the crowd mic, bought things I've left behind and carries things I don't want to carry.

Massive thanks to Mike Drysdale who manned the camera on the night (at very late notice) so we could bring you some video. Content creator, Alexandra Csetra, was on holiday so she isn't in the group photos, but I need to shout her out for all her video content during the year!

The Court crew, especially Brendan, deserve a shout-out here for always making sure we're looked after. Who knew you could book a work event there!? Well, now you know.

Our event partner

Thanks for the support of the Australian Marketing Institute in 2025.

If you got this far you're a true believer. Thank you so much!

We're looking to step it up a notch in 2026 with some new event formats (don't worry - Grill isn't going anywhere) so get in touch with sponsorship/partnership enquiries, guest recommendations, and general feedback (because I'm too lazy to make a survey).