Yolanda K Vega
Yolanda K. Vega is the founder and former chief executive at the Australian Women Chamber of Commerce & Industry (AWCCI). Vega represented Australia at various international forums, and sat on various Boards, including the Australia Government Small Business Advisory Committee. Career. In 2011, Vega was one of three women representing Australia at the first APEC Women's Economic Summit, chaired by Hillary Clinton in San Francisco, USA. The following year, Vega did a keynote at the second Women and the Economy APEC Summit in Saint Petersburg to present her national research findings on self-employed women and female  entrepreneurs in Australia. Vega's national research on self-employed women and female entrepreneurs have also been cited in journals and included in a published dissertation. Over the past decades, Vega's work has been quoted in several books, and has appeared on various television programs, including the SBS documentary film 'Is Australia Sexist?' and on the ABC Q&A talk show. As a social commentator, Vega has advocated for women, and child care. In 2009, Vega represented Australia as a ‘Young Leader' at the 2009 International Women's Forum World Conference, held in Hong Kong. The following year, Vega established  Peacebeliever, a not-for-profit organization promoting peace through music, and for the first time in history, Yoko Ono and Sir Paul McCartney provided their permission for Vega to re-record the John Lennon song Give Peace A Chance, with an added verse, in Spanish. As the publicist for Unknown Species, established in 1995, Vega worked for 'one of the most experienced Web publishers' in Australia before most people had heard about the Web. In 2017, as a Ph.D. candidate investigating how international women's rights laws are ratified in Australia, Vega was awarded the Fay Marles Grant from the  Victorian Women's Trust to assist with her Ph.D. qualitative research. During her Ph.D. investigation, the Australian Institute of International Affairs published Looking at Foreign Policy Through a Gender Lens. Vega started lecturing in 2017, in leadership and management, at Swinburne University and lectured at Monash University in 2020 and 2021.