Woodley Advisory Group × Trellis Collective
There’s a truth that many of us in male-dominated industries have known for years: that talent has never been the barrier. Women have always had the skill, the ambition, and the drive to contribute at all levels. What has been missing is a welcoming and conducive environment for them to contribute, collaborate, and lead within.
Change in male-dominated industries has largely been driven by the women who needed it most, and that is not how it should work. Male allyship programs have grown rapidly, but most operate at only senior levels or through largely ineffective mediums: top-down policy influence or online micro-learning that is forgotten by Monday. Neither approach, on its own, creates the deep behavioural and cultural shift that sustainable change requires. That demands earlier intervention, and far greater depth of engagement.
That’s where the Emerging Male Allies Program steps in.
Starting at the beginning … by design
One of the most deliberate and purposeful aspects of this program is who it is designed for.
The Emerging Male Allies Program works with young men who are early in their careers. Men who are still forming their professional identities, still developing their leadership styles, still deciding what kind of colleague, teammate, and leader they want to be.
Male-dominated industries carry deeply ingrained attitudes – ways of operating, communicating, and valuing people that have been passed down through generations of workplace culture. By the time many men reach senior positions, those attitudes have often become invisible to them. Normalised. Just the way things are and have always been.
But the young men coming into these industries now haven’t yet been shaped by that mould. They are open, curious, and when given the right environment, genuinely motivated to do things differently. The Emerging Male Allies Program gives them something transformative: the awareness, the language, and the habits of genuine allyship, before the old ways have a chance to take hold.
This is not remedial work. It is formative work and it’s where the change begins.
Why the room matters as much as the content
In a world where so much learning has moved online, the Emerging Male Allies Program makes an intentional and important choice: it is designed to bring people together in person, in small groups, face to face.
Not because technology can’t deliver information – it can, but because information alone has never changed a culture. There is a profound difference between self-paced, unsupervised learning that skims the surface of an issue versus the opportunity to explore deeply personal values and perspectives in real time, while being genuinely challenged to develop different thinking as you go. One is education at arm’s length. The other is transformation up close.
Because some conversations just don’t happen through a screen.
When young men sit together in the room instead of behind the keyboard & screen something different becomes possible. Guards come down while honesty and openness surface. One person shares something real, and it gives another person permission to do the same. Questions that might feel too risky to type into a chat box are asked out loud, explored together, and discussed with a candour that only a trusted, face-to-face environment can create.
The small group format is equally essential. These aren’t workshops where individuals get lost in a crowd and quietly disengage. They are intimate, structured conversations where every voice matters and every participant is genuinely present and heard. Ideas evolve in real time, while perspectives shift and transform through discussion, not instruction. And the learning that emerges from that dynamic environment – the kind that comes from listening to someone you respect say something that challenges or moves you – is the kind that stays with you long after the session ends.
Cohort 1 bore this out. Participants rated the program 9.5 out of 10 for open participation and reflection, and 9.3 out of 10 for creating a safe and respectful environment. These aren’t numbers that happen by accident. They are what becomes possible when the right people are in the right room, together. And critically, not a single participant left unchanged. Zero reported no difference in themselves.
This is where allyship stops being a concept and starts becoming an engrained cultural shift.
A female voice in the room — and why it matters
We are enormously proud to be developing and delivering this important work alongside Tanya Andrews and the team at Trellis Collective.
Tanya brings something to this program that no online module or written resource can replicate — she brings herself. Her voice, her perspective, her 10 years as a gender equality specialist, and her lived experience as a woman navigating professional environments and educating and mentoring young women in male dominated industries. And in a program designed to help young men understand what it truly feels like to be a woman in a male-dominated industry, that knowledge, presence, experience, and perspective is not just valuable. It is essential.
When Tanya speaks – whether sharing her own experiences, facilitating a difficult conversation, or grabbing a “teaching moment” from a discussion that reframes how participants have been thinking, the room shifts. Participants from Cohort 1 described the facilitation as reading the room with precision, drawing out reactions, both comfortable and confronting, to deepen the learning in real time.
Young men heard things they had perhaps never heard or considered before, told with authenticity and without agenda. They weren’t being lectured – they were being trusted with honesty. And that trust, in turn, creates the conditions for real discussion, reflection, empathy, and change.
The collaboration with Trellis Collective reflects everything this program stands for: that building inclusive industries isn’t something men do for women – it’s something we must do together with women. Tanya and her team are not a supporting feature of this program. They are central to its purpose.
The proof is already here
Cohort 1 of the Emerging Male Allies Program brought together eleven young men from some of Australia’s most respected civil construction and engineering organisations – BMD, McNab, Lendlease, Seymour Whyte, and ADP. What happened across those two days exceeded every expectation.
Understanding of women’s lived experiences in male-dominated industries rose by 79% – from an average of 4.7 to 8.4 out of 10. Knowledge about gender equality in the workplace increased by 47%. Confidence in having open conversations about inclusion grew substantially, equipping participants not just with awareness, but with the ability to act on it.
91% of participants reported their understanding of unconscious bias had significantly improved. 73% said their fundamental perspective on men’s roles in creating change had shifted … significantly. And every single participant – 100% – said they would recommend the program to others.
Perhaps the most telling shift was ideological. Before the program, several participants held a passive stance: that men should support gender equality only when asked. After two days together, that position had completely disappeared from the cohort. In its place, >70% of the participants had moved to believing that gender equality is everyone’s shared responsibility. That is not a tweak in attitude. That is a transformation.
And one participant put it in words that have stayed with us:
“Men must make the change. If it’s not men making a change in an industry that is 80–99% male dominated, then who will?”
— Cohort 1 Participant | Civil Construction & Engineering
That is the next generation of leaders speaking. And they are already here.
Permanent pathways, not temporary gestures
Results like these don’t happen by chance — they happen because of deliberate design within the program elements by experienced facilitators, genuine commitment from companies investing in their young men to participate, and the courage of these young men to invest in culture change before old habits become engrained.
The Emerging Male Allies Program equips young men with the awareness, language, and habits to be consistently thoughtful — in how they interact, how they advocate, and how they elevate others. Participants left with clear intentions: to use more inclusive language, to actively sponsor women in career progression conversations, to speak up when they witness inappropriate behaviour, and to approach leadership with a deliberate equity lens.
When those habits become embedded in a team’s culture, inclusion stops being a project – it becomes the norm. That means workplaces where women don’t just enter male-dominated fields, they lead within them. Where their contributions are valued without qualification and where the next generation of young women entering these industries find allies already waiting for them.
The future belongs to industries brave enough to change
The industries that will thrive over the next decade won’t be the ones that refused to change. They’ll be the ones that had the courage to look honestly at who was missing – from their leadership, their decision-making, their innovation – and chose to do something about it.
The Emerging Male Allies Program provides a valuable tool towards that goal. It provides a space to invest in the right people, at the right time, in the right environment, with the right voices in the room.
To every organisation reading this – if you want to build a culture where women don’t just survive but genuinely thrive, this is where it starts. Not at the top, after the damage is done. But at the beginning, with the young men who will shape your culture for decades to come.
The future of your industry is more diverse, more capable, and more human than it is today.
The next generation of leaders come from environments like this. And we couldn’t be prouder to be part of shaping it – together with Tanya Andrews and the remarkable team from Trellis Collective.
Interested in bringing the Emerging Male Allies Program to your organisation? Connect with us, share this post, and let’s start the conversation.