Amy Brill, founder, The Brill CollectiveEvery International Women’s Day we’re asked to consider if the needle has moved when it comes to opportunity and growth in our industry. For me – it’s 2025, and yet there still lies an inconvenient truth within the communications and creative industry: the system wasn’t designed for the modern-day woman.
For decades, personal success in PR and Communications was measured by a competition of how many hours you worked and whether you were ‘always on’ – an unspoken expectation to be available 24/7 for clients and colleagues that has now become the norm – and one that disproportionately impacts women.
The reality is, many women in the communications industry are still being forced to choose between their careers and their personal lives – not because they lack ambition, but because the structure of business simply doesn’t accommodate them.
The traditional agency model is built around presentee-ism, where time spent at a desk often outweighs value add. Senior roles frequently demand a level of commitment that assumes a singular focus on work – something that is unfeasible for many women, particularly those who are also caregivers.
The notion that flexibility is a ‘perk’ reserved for certain individuals is outdated and exclusionary.
Women who step away, even briefly, to raise children, care for family, or try to prioritise balance, often find the pathway back to leadership blocked. For the many who try to juggle both worlds, they often end up stretched to breaking point.
It’s 2025 and we hear so much about the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion – yet we rarely talk about the systemic barriers preventing women from advancing in their careers. It’s not about whether women are capable of leading – because we know they are. It’s about whether the system is set up to allow them to lead in a way that works for them. Are they being empowered to optimise their leadership skills?
When I founded The Brill Collective, I knew there had to be a better way. I didn’t want to create another agency bound by outdated structures that penalise talented women just for having a life outside of work. Instead, I built a model that rewards expertise and impact – not the number of hours clocked in an office.
By creating a network of independent consultants and a core team that’s built for the modern world, we’ve removed the rigid constraints of the traditional agency and designed a model to allow talented professionals –many, but not all, of whom are women – to work on their own terms, choosing work that aligns with their expertise and availability.
The result is that we’ve been able to retain and empower top female talent who might otherwise have left the industry altogether. We’ve shown that you can deliver outstanding results without demanding burnout. And we’ve proven that flexibility isn’t a trade-off for excellence.
While our model works for us, I think the industry in general needs to do better.
Communications is now an always-on necessity for brands to succeed and remain on top. Agencies and companies employing comms professionals, in turn, must actively rethink how they structure leadership pathways.
They need to actually offer flexibility, not just lip service. They need to re-evaluate how they measure success from availability and time spent, and ultimately embrace an approach that values output over optics.
This isn’t just about fairness – it’s about the future of the industry. If we don’t adapt, we will continue to see talented women exiting leadership tracks – not because they lack drive or ability, but because the system makes it untenable for them to stay.
Let’s face it. The communications and creative industry prides itself on innovation, yet when it comes to workplace structures, we are stuck in the past. If we want to keep the best and brightest in the industry, we need to build a system that works for them – not against them. If we don’t, we risk losing our greatest asset: the women who drive this industry forward.
By Amy Brill, founder, The Brill Collective
