emberin was founded in 2006 by owner and CEO, Maureen Frank. The company was started under the name You Go Girlfriend Pty Ltd. At the end of 2007 Maureen decided to re-brand You Go Girlfriend to create emberin. emberin stands for the embers inside.

After Maureen won her Telstra Business Woman of the Year Award in 2004, she wrote a book, You Go Girlfriend, aimed at helping women juggle their careers and personal lives. It was self published and sold over 10 000 copies. Maureen did a lot of public speaking on the advancement of women (and still does!) and decided to leave her corporate job and concentrate on helping women in the workforce full time. She wanted to create an organisation that focused on creating more successful and less stressful lives for women. A key goal for Maureen was to develop programs which assist employers with their strategies in making workplaces better places for women to work.

In 2007 Maureen released My Mentor – Challenging Women to Step up. Over 3000 women have undertaken that program. In September 2009, Maureen launched My Mentor – Challenging women to make it happen, and My Mentor – Mastering Gender Leadership as well as companion programs – Alumni, Manager and Parental Leave.

The global issue that emberin focuses on is that there is not enough women in senior management positions in our major companies. Indeed, Australia has some of the worst statistics in the Western world with only 8.3% of board positions in the top 200 ASX and women accounted for only 10.7% of all executive managerial positions in the top 200 ASX companies in 2008 (Australian Census of Women in Leadership.) Yet for those of us who are 15 and over – 57% of us work and 72.3% of men work (2006 ABS). The other shocking statistic is that the gender pay gap is still alive and well. As at November 2006, women’s average weekly earnings ($941) were 84% of men’s average weekly earnings ($1,125). This represents a gender earnings gap of 16%.

Emberin is an organisation that innovates and does things differently to others. We use technology and other methods that reflect that women have multiple lives and create programs that are practical, cost effective and flexible.

The emberin mission: To create empowering, positive, practical, no-nonsense products that will challenge the way women approach their work and life in every aspect of their life.