Jenni Walke wins global women’s award for First Nations leadership
Jenni Walke, the founder of Indigenous advisory Elephant in the Room Consulting, has won a prestigious ‘Women Changing the World’ award for First Nations Leadership at an event in Paris.
A proud Bundjalung woman of the Northern NSW Rivers region, Walke established Elephant in the Room in Brisbane (Meanjin) in 2017 with just $43, and has since provided services to business leaders across Australia, North America, Asia, and Europe.
Not a stranger to receiving awards, Walke has now added a ‘First Nations Leadership’ trophy to her cabinet in the 2026 global ‘Women Changing the World’ awards, which altogether received over 1,500 nominations from close to 100 countries worldwide.
“Indigenous leadership is not just local knowledge, it is global wisdom with relevance in leadership conversations worldwide,” Walke said of the honour. “Being in global spaces like these matters deeply. Indigenous leadership brings a lens of long-term thinking, responsibility to community, and care for future generations; exactly what global conversations need now more than ever.”
Walke’s sentiments are echoed in the “Wisdom from Country, Strategy for Business” tag-line of Elephant in the Room, which provides a range of services covering management consultancy, First Nations strategy, cultural awareness training & workshops, and business and leadership coaching, along with supporting local organisations in developing their Reconciliation Action Plans.
The most recent award for Elephant in the Room (EITRC) and its founder follows numerous others, including, in the just the past two years alone, a Queensland Premier’s Export Award and an ‘Indigenous Exporter of the Year’ title at the Austrade-sponsored Supply Nations diversity awards, while the consultancy was also a state finalist in the most recent Telstra Business Awards.
Adding to that momentum, Walke was last year recognised in several categories of the Stevie Awards for women in business, including gold for ‘Building Sustainable Supply Chains’ and silver for ‘Best Female Entrepreneur’ for the Asia Pacific region. Those honours saw Walke travel to New York, where she featured on a billboard in Times Square showcasing Indigenous achievement.
Reflecting on her journey and recent success, Walke described it as a significant moment for Australian Indigenous leadership on the global stage, but added; “Legacy isn’t built in big announcements. It’s built in the quiet choices – the ones that centre community, honour culture, and challenge systems. It’s built in the way we show up, the way we listen, and the way we lead.”
Remarkably, third place in the Women Changing the World category for ‘First Nations Leadership’ also went to an Australian Indigenous consultant and entrepreneur, Ashleigh McGuire from Yuin country on the NSW South Coast, who founded multi-service advisory, business incubator, and co-working hub RipeMentoring in Nowra in 2018 and has also won a stack of previous awards.
