Laini Bennett, MBA, is an award-winning digital marketer who began her career as a journalist in Sydney, Australia. She worked for a range of mainstream publications including CHOICE and That’s Life magazine, before becoming an editor for legal publisher, CCH Australia (Wolters Kluwer).
While editing her husband’s MBA essays in the evening, she discovered the world of leadership and around the same time, she was promoted to her first management role. Juggling full-time work with a young family, Laini was soon promoted to Editor in Chief.
Laini then joined SAI Global as Publishing Director, where she was responsible for managing the relationship with 300 publishers globally, and a team of 50 locally. She built her division’s product development capability from scratch, launching a series of compliance products including LexConnect and CodeConnect.
Laini went on to become Executive Director, Content, for global legal publisher LexisNexis (RELX group, formerly Reed Elsevier). Here she was responsible for all Australian legal content including strategy, new product development; leadership of 60 editors and product managers, driving innovation in content and digital technologies, and strategic relationship and contract management.
Laini then pursued an MBA full-time while caring for her elderly father and working part time as an editor of Hospital + Healthcare and National Safety magazine for Westwick Farrow. During this time, she rediscovered her love of writing and established a new Women in Healthcare Leadership column. Her aim was to provide up-and-coming female managers with role models whose careers they could both aspire to and learn from.
On completing her MBA, Laini pivoted out of traditional publishing. She joined law firm LegalVision as Head of Content for Australia, New Zealand and the UK. At LegalVision, Laini is responsible for the firm’s vast database of freely available business information services which, together with a data-driven performance ads strategy, generates 90% of the company’s leads. In recognition of her industry-leading work, Laini was a 3-time finalist and winner of the Women in Law Award for the Marketing Communications Professional category, ahead of thousands of other nominees.
Having spent many years in management, Laini believes that wisdom comes from experiencing life and learning from mistakes. She is lucky to have had managers who believed in her and who mentored her along the way. She has since coached and mentored other young managers, enjoying the opportunity to ‘pay it forward’.
Laini now seeks to extend the learning opportunity by sharing the stories of female leaders who most women would not have access to in their day-to-day work life. She feels privileged to have the opportunity to meet and talk with such inspirational leaders, and hopes that their life lessons will empower and motivate other women as they strive to build their careers from the ground up.
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