5 Minutes With FIFA’s Moya Dodd
As one of the first three women ever appointed to FIFA’s executive committee, the former Matildas vice-captain, practising lawyer and Officer of the Order of Australia used her time to advocate for change and equality. Maya Dodd shares the biggest lessons of her career so far.
My first paid job was on the family orange farm in South Australia. When I was about eight years old, Dad instituted a payment system – when we pruned the trees, we got four cents a tree and six cents if it rained. We had to save up enough money to pay him the equivalent of three ski-lift tickets so we could go skiing on a holiday. It taught me that there was a direct relationship between hard work and rewards and it also taught me to pray for rain.
My first boss was the Honourable Justice Michael White of the Supreme Court of South Australia. I was a judge’s associate for a year. When it came to writing judgments, he was very diligent and measured – he wanted to get it absolutely right regardless of how many times he had to rewrite it. That taught me quality control. He was writing Supreme Court judgments that would be pored over, followed and applied by people who came after him. Words matter. How you express a decision or explain a decision matters to those who follow.
My first lesson in truly good leadership was from Deena Shiff, my boss at Telstra. She would try to hire the most brilliant people possible then create a safe place for them to express themselves and thrive. She was a real enabler of people and you always felt she was on your side. She wasn’t waiting for you to fail; she was always supporting you to succeed. I think that’s the sign of a really good leader: you want the best people around you. Smart people try to hire people who are smarter than them.
One of the first times I knew that inclusivity is worth fighting for was when I was on the FIFA executive committee. It was in the middle of the “FIFA-gate” crisis [in 2015]. Colleagues had been arrested in a dawn raid and the US Department of Justice was looking over FIFA’s shoulder. It had to reform and it was absolutely the right thing to be advocating for equality reforms. I realised there was no point keeping my head below the parapet; this was the moment to be brave and see if I could create change. I was working in a boardroom that had been all-male for 108 years so any difference I made would be a high watermark relative to where it had been. There were a lot of times when I had to decide whether it was the right moment to speak up with a different view. I’m not sure I got all of those decisions right but I would have regretted it if I hadn’t.
Defining moment
“I was invited to speak about women’s football in Iran in 2013. Before I left Australia, I started to hear from women inside Iran, who messaged me on social media, saying, ‘Did you know that women aren’t allowed to go to football stadiums in Iran?’ I found out as much as I could about the subject. I met with some of these women. The conference was being run by the Iranian Football Federation and it turned out that the president of FIFA [Sepp Blatter] was going to be there as well. I raised it with him and I said, ‘You’ll be speaking with the political leadership. Would you advocate for these women?’ And he did. It’s still a work in progress but at that point, I realised how I could make a difference. It’s being in the right place at the right time and having proximity. And having influence with the people who are the decision-makers.”
