The Women Inspired team brings together decades of experience in leadership and creativity. Inspired by the incredible female mentors and muses who inform our own insights, ideas and businesses, our vision is to document a pictorial space for these extraordinary women. Their stories, whether they are of renowned and astonishing achievements or quiet feats of inner strength, must be shared with our community.
Every woman has a story worth revealing: it is this collective knowledge which allows us all to be inspired to rise to our greatest selves. We understand the importance of this feminine knowledge in informing our own directions and practices.
Jaya McIntyre: Creative Director/ Photographer
As the owner and head photographer of Empire Art Photography, Jaya McIntyre brings over 29 years of experience behind the camera and a deep understanding of how powerful being seen truly is. For Jaya, photography is never just about “the shot.” It’s about creating a calm, supportive experience where clients feel safe, confident, and authentically themselves.
Combining photography with neuroscience-informed coaching, NLP, and mindset work, Jaya helps clients move beyond camera anxiety, self-criticism, and limiting beliefs. Her ability to read energy, regulate nervous systems, and gently guide people into presence has become one of her greatest strengths, allowing confidence to emerge naturally, not be forced.
After honing her craft in photographic journalism, the wedding industry and portrait studios, Jaya established Empire Art Photography & Coaching on the Sunshine Coast in 2013. Her personal journey with breast cancer profoundly shaped her philosophy: life deserves to be documented at every stage, not postponed until conditions feel “perfect.”
Whether photographing personal brands, families, or intimate portraits, Jaya has an exceptional gift for putting even the most camera-shy at ease. Her work is rooted in connection, empowerment, and storytelling.
A passionate mentor, community advocate, and creator of the Women Inspired project, Jaya continues to champion visibility, self-worth, and legacy, helping women step into the frame with confidence, courage, and pride.
Roxanne McCarty-O’Kane The Writer Volume 3, Volume 4
Since 2007 Roxanne’s unique and multi-award winning method of storytelling has changed the lives of thousands of budding authors, allowing them to bring their messages to life in nonfiction books with structure, connection to the reader and potential profit.
A prolific ghostwriter, author, workshop facilitator, writing mentor and journalist, Roxanne’s presentations are charged with powerful content and tangible tools that remove the mystery from storytelling and ignite a thought-provoking and emotion-evoking theatre within the mind of aspiring authors.
Her book, The Mindful Author, has become a powerful resource for aspiring authors around the world to craft their manuscripts with confidence, clarity and a true sense of purpose and passion.
As an MC, presenter and speaker, Roxanne’s down to earth, relatable, humorous style engages her audience, inspires their minds and moves them to begin to think laterally about their own stories and how their lived experiences and knowledge journeys can have a greater impact on the world around them.
Megan Krolik : The Writer Volume 2
Megan began writing at eight, crafting A Country Practice fan fiction on her grandmother’s typewriter. By high school she’d written hundreds of stories and later studied Communications at the University of the Sunshine Coast, working as a photojournalist and creative director for Tsunami Music Magazine and major music events. A stint in London led her into humanitarian aid, completing two master’s degrees and working globally with organisations including UNICEF and Habitat for Humanity. Living across the Pacific and Asia reignited her creative writing, inspiring novels, screenplays and theatre. Now back on the Sunshine Coast, Megan balances humanitarian work with writing, ocean adventures and storytelling by the pool.
Melinda Uys: Editor Volume 1-4, Writer Volume 1
Melinda’s background in teaching English and History has given her a thirst for well placed, meaningful and beautiful words. As a content and ghost writer, her talent for capturing the essence and emotion of others, of painting their written story, is well documented across Sunshine Coast businesses, the state and abroad. She is also a fiction writer, keen travel writer and blogger. Melinda lives near Noosa with her family and Trixie, her co-working cat.
Josanne Falla: The Conceptualist 2021
My dream is to support, encourage and give voice to the women of our world.
The idea of creating a book as a centrepiece to showcase some of these amazing, intelligent, resilient and heart centred women emerged when, as the host of a weekly radio program, I began interviewing them. I saw a need to celebrate these courageous women, and share their stories in a way that was concrete and everlasting.
Women Inspired
Every woman has a story of strength worth revealing. Know and be inspired by them.