Virginia Hyland.
Virginia Hyland, Advertising Hall of Frame inductee, gave the keynote at the 2026 AdNews Emerging Leaders.
Look around you, what an exciting room this is with the best up and coming talent that will lead the industry of the future.
I want to share my journey with you. No necessarily the bright and shiny version as Hall of Fame inductee, but where it started….it started with my Dad.
My dad grew up in Orange, where it was bitterly cold, snowing in winter. In a two-bedroom fibro cottage on a housing commission estate. Two parents. Eight childeren. Ten people in that house.
Not much money. No guarantee of anything. He scrapped his way through to earn enough money to put himself through teachers college. My Dad believed in education, constant learning and bettering himself even if the world hadn’t given him a great start. He was a true optimist from the wrong side of the tracks nicking oranges from orchards to survive the hunger pangs.
He went on to become a school principal to a tiny school of 100 hundred students on a winding brown creek in Gilgai in Northern NSW. He instilled in me the belief that you can be whatever you want to be, which I wondered about, as I squatted on the rocks of that brown winding creek trying to catch yabbies.
With that belief instilled, at 17 years old, I took the nine-hour train from Gilgai to Sydney — with $150 between me and the big world ahead.
That kind of belief doesn't come from nowhere.It comes from someone who built it themselves on their terms. From nothing. And passed it forward.
He would have loved to be here tonight, proud as punch to see me share his wisdom. Sadly, he passed away a few months ago.
But I know he's standing at the back of the room.
I walked into the Sydney Morning Herald wanting to be a journalist.
That dream ended fairly quickly. They took two cadets a year — from very well-connected schools. I didn't stand a chance.
There was a back door.
I barely passed a typing test at Herald Classifieds. They took pity the 17 year old kid and gave me a job. Every day I filled out cold-call sheets – calls made, number converted, selling advertising to timber yards and boating shops — convincing them that a fourteen-point headline would help them stand out from the competition.
Every day. Calls made. Calls converted.
That job taught me three things.
First: how to start a conversation with warmth and humour, with people who didn’t want to talk to me
Second: how to really listen — for what isn't being said as much as what is.
And third: that NO is simply one step closer to a yes.
Shortly after, I witnessed union strikes, the new world was upon us – computerisation. The Sydney Morning Herald layed off 100 men.
Many of these men were mid career, had young children, with a job they believed they would have for life
Two retrained. Two adapted. Two stayed.
Two.
My lesson at 19 years old: reinvention protects longevity.
At twenty-nine, I decided to launch my own agency.
As one of a very small number of female founders in a field dominated by men.
Many said I wouldn't make it. That no woman could successfully run an agency in the cut and thrust world of media.
My team and my clients clearly missed that memo. Building one of the most successful independent media agencies of it’s time.
This industry has given me experiences that become the best stories of my life.
The most powerful editor, Nene King screamed at me: "Get the **** up to my office. Now."
She refused to run a Coca-Cola ad next to her prized Woman's Day Fergie toe sucking editorial.
Somehow I convinced her to reconsider, as she inhaled her spliff.
And sweating it over whether an expensive billboard would be torn down because it was thought Lady Gaga's nipple was showing….
….convincing the authorities it was actually a mans hard hat on her chest.
And then there was the COTY pitch.
I had just given birth to my daughter.
One day later, Gavin Blackburn — Managing Director of COTY — called me.
"I'm so sorry," he said. "But global has mandated a pitch. Presentations and price bidding is in two weeks."
I spread the files across the hospital bed.
My husband John stood beside me, holding our newborn daughter. She was hungry and crying. It was two in the morning. We were in a global media rates bidding war at 2am, same time around the world to try and save my biggest client and many jobs.
We won. Five times over, working with COTY for 25 years, becoming part of their family. Against agencies with ten times our resources. Who couldn’t believe that I could possibly beat them.
Why did we beat them, because no matter how much our world changes, relationships matter. Because trust built over years cannot be bought in a pitch document.
People will always be the point of difference.
Not the technology. Not the credentials deck. The humans who show up, who care, who stay when it gets hard. Culture builds businesses.
And because none of this happens unless someone quietly holds the centre.
For me, that person has always been my hubbie John.
2009 the Global Financial Crisis.
Our clients cut their budgets in half overnight. We got knocked. Hard.
So we reinvented. We broadened our capabilities. We leaned into the gaps the market had left open, creating a content production arm when social media exploded.
And we came back stronger than we'd ever been.
I now realise that challenges were not obstacles. Challenges are part of the adventure.
The GFC didn’t end us. It forced us to grow in directions we’d never have found otherwise. Every crisis holds an invitation.
Selling to Havas
After seventeen years of building, I sold the agency to Havas Media — one of the global Big Six. Becoming the CEO.
And what I discovered at that scale — what genuinely surprised me — was that the fundamentals hadn't changed at all.
See the gap others have missed. Build a purpose your team wants to be part of. Show up for your people in the hard moments. Have the belief — even when others don't — that you will find the way through.
Scale doesn't change the fundamentals. It amplifies them.
What works at one person agencies works at 200 people agencies. Warmth, trust, purpose, belief. The bigger the team, the more culture matters.
Joining the Board of the MFA
I wanted to pay it forward, I‘ve spent a decade on the amazing MFA board. Proudly being part of the team developing our EVP “We are the Changers”. Pushing for pay parity. Helping build industry structures that give everyone a genuine seat at the table — not just an invitation to stand near it.
Because the industry I want to leave behind is not the one I walked into….
Now I’m back in my indie world running SQUAD M&A, helping other indie agency founders realise their potential, helping acquirers find the right cultural fit agency acquisition.
My Story
I've told you my story tonight because I think you might be on a similar journey.
The computerisation version. The cold-call sheet version. The hospital bed pitch version. The GFC version. The daunted by the future version.
I was exactly where you are…..and you can be exactly where I am.
What I’ve learnt
With a great adventure under my belt this is what I know:
Our industry is small – be kind.
Always care for your team. Mine have carried me on their wings.
Some days it felt like the whole world was caving in.
It didn’t.
It was just another lesson – preparing me to be more resilient, to ask for help when I needed it, to challenge my thinking, to back myself and to step into my next growth chapter.
AI, in 2026 is a new adventure for us all, it will change us.
But our heart remains human.
- Ideas come from people.
- Trust is built between people.
- And great work still happens, when people feel safe enough to take risks together.
I started tonight in Gilgai. A small brown creek. A bright blue sky. A girl from the sticks wondering what was out there in that big world.
I had no idea.
What was out there was this. This industry. These people. This career that has tested me, broken me open, rebuilt me, and given me a life I could never have imagined from the creek bank.
The best years of our industry are not behind us.
They are right here. In this room. In you.
I believe — without hesitation — that you will do things none of us can predict.
And I hope, somewhere in the middle of all of it, you remember what I tell my kids every day:
From Gilgai to here —
be brave, not perfect.
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