As part of a special feature this IWD in partnership with YPO, Women’s Agenda will be profiling leaders of impact across business. Here, dynamic entrepreneur Hayley Evans shares more on her growth in leadership.
Evans will also feature in an eMagazine with snapshots of 50 impressive leaders building a more inclusive, sustainable and equal world.
Despite all her success in entrepreneurship and scaling businesses today, Hayley Evans’ didn’t always see herself on this path in life. Her prowess for leadership has come from years of resilience and growth.
“I actually wanted to be a hairdresser which makes me laugh now as to see how polar opposite it is to where I’ve ended up,” says Hayley.
The journey, she says, involved a lot of trial and error and hustle, valuable lessons she learned being raised by immigrant parents who had no choice but to carve out their own life.
“To me, entrepreneurship is really just about being a human,” Evans says, adding that she thinks of an entrepreneur as a resilient person looking to solve real world problems for the good of others.
Wearing many hats, Evans is now an entrepreneur, CEO, angel advisor, hyper-growth driven advisor and was a finalist in the 2022 CEO Global Magazines Entrepreneur of the Year award.
Back in 2015- the early days of her business leadership experience- Evans had first gone into the Tavistock Group, where she says she “was deeply embedded across the global business, rapidly scaling the APAC portfolio and working 24/7 with [her] mentor”.
Then, in 2019, the opportunity arose for her to step into the role of CEO at Surge Global, a decision that Evans says left her feeling torn.
Feeling nervous to relinquish the identity she had so diligently created at Tavistock Group, Evans says it was her community of peers at YPO that helped her decide to take on that next big step in her life.
“I took the role and dove in head first,” says Evans. “I learnt, laughed, swore (a lot) and worked on who I wanted to be as a leader.”
Today, under Evans’ leadership, Surge Global employs nearly 400 digital marketers and tech developers who service clients across the USA, UK and Australia as well as oversee the performance of a US$8.6 billion Smart City.
But Evans didn’t stop there. Her momentum drove her to co-found Women Making Waves and channel the power of Web3 Technology into reforming outdated women’s rights laws.
She says this venture began after she moved to Woolloomooloo Wharf in July 2020, during the pandemic.
“I had done incredible things in my career that helped others financially and socially, but my heart felt empty, lost and I was slipping into a place of questioning my purpose,” says Evans.
It was at the Wharf where she met Jess, her soon-to-be business partner in Women Making Waves.
“Through many nights of drinking wine in activewear, laughing and sharing dog memes we connected and found such an alignment in delivering our own purpose,” she says.
As their first project under their business, Waves Tech Ventures, Women Making Waves was born out of the pair’s desire to use community-led strategies and Web3 technology to create new and recurring revenue streams for charities, which would ultimately help to fund the amplification of change.
Through her extensive experience in business and change-making over the years, Evans says her leadership style has evolved as she’s learned more about herself.
Having started out in a “fake it till you make it” phase of leadership and moving into a “control freak” phase, something she describes as being born out of not wanting to let others down, Evans eventually found her footing as a healthy and high-performing leader.
Today, she runs each of her businesses through a set of principles that she developed with an understanding that her job is “to set the stage so that other people can perform and keep them safe along the way,” as she puts it.
With her sharpened sense of leadership, Evans is currently working on a lifestyle brand called Hybrid Human Performance that she says “blends physical, mental, social and financial needs for human connection and alignment across business and pleasure”.
Also on her project list is Myteamio, a proprietary 90 day sprint process which helps organisations align their teams for hyper growth.
Through all of her entrepreneurial endeavours, Evans’ underlying thread is to ensure she’s creating a positive impact. She says this “is the most commercially savvy way to future proof your business and stay relevant.”
“No matter what you sell, today’s consumer – especially our up-and-coming leaders– are demanding and impatient (in a great way),” she says. “They have more disposable income, more of a social conscience and are unforgiving of brands that lack integrity or don’t deliver what they promise.”