Brianna Ragel wins Anita Prabhu Award

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Brianna Ragel (MBA 2012) has won the 2016 Anita Prabhu Women Leaders in Business Award. The award was established by Anita Prabhu (MBA Exec 2005) to recognise and celebrate exceptional female business leaders who demonstrate excellence in leadership and who have successfully implemented new business ideas or best-practices.

Ragel was the Executive General Manager for Marketing at Fronde, a cloud technology and IT services company that delivers innovative solutions to government and business across Asia-Pacific. Leading a team of marketers and inside sales representatives across Asia-Pacific, her role spanned GTM planning, marketing and customer strategy, brand management, lead generation, PR and communications.

Ragel was charged with transforming Fronde's marketing function and developing the company's digital marketing capabilities. The task required her to quickly build strong working relationships and trust both internally and externally, think strategically and lead decisively.

"Today, good leaders have to be change agents," Ragel explained. ​

"With so many moving parts and considerations, leaders have to be hyper alert, adaptable, resilient and willing to continually learn and transform. That's something I have had to do throughout my career, and definitely in my most recent role. B2B technology was a relatively new industry for me. I couldn't have delivered results if I wasn't inherently driven, passionate about my work, and practiced at leading in times of change or growth."

Ragel dramatically reduced marketing spend and lowered the company's cost of acquisition by successfully setting up a new team and making the decision to offshore and outsource some expertise. She also implemented a range of improvements across the company's marketing and CRM systems, lead generation processes and programs, and dashboards and reporting. 

The project required Ragel to draw on leadership and management lessons learnt throughout her years working as a managing editor in Sydney and London, her education at AGSM, and experience as a product management consultant. Though she admits she is still learning and is a long way from becoming the female business leader she aspires to be.

"I have a tendency to want to improve myself, my environment, the businesses I work for, and the people I lead," said Ragel.

This coupled with her belief that education, hard work, proactivity, and doing right by the people you work with have driven Ragel to seek success no matter where she is or what she is doing.

"I'm passionate about businesses delivering value to customers, and all their stakeholders for that matter, through ethical, collaborative and innovative means," Ragel noted.

"I'm now in a position where I have expertise in these areas and can help companies understand and leverage them for growth, sustainability and social impact. That's what true leadership is about, using your knowledge for the benefit of others."