A high-flying financial services executive has described the moment her life fell apart as she looked in billionaire James Packer’s bathroom mirror.
At age 30, Jo Wagstaff was responsible for a $40 million budget and 150 employees working as an executive at wealth management firm Colonial First State in the areas of branding, marketing, product and Client services.
She was then recruited to help improve the Packer-controlled Challenger Financial Services Group, one of the 200 largest companies on the Australian Stock Exchange.
Wagstaff had reached the top of the male-dominated financial services industry at the age of 32 and thought she had everything she wanted.
Former high-flying financial services executive Jo Wagstaff (above) has described the moment her life fell apart as she looked in billionaire James Packer’s bathroom mirror. Wagstaff had reached the top of the financial services industry at the age of 32.
She drove a brand new BMW paid for in cash, flew business class and wore designer clothes.
Wagstaff and her investment banker husband had a healthy 14-month-old boy and were building their dream home on Sydney’s lower north shore.
You did it, darling. You did what you set out to do. You showed them.
Then one day, his whole perfect world came to a screeching halt.
Wagstaff, who is now an international leadership coach, mentor and speaker on mental health and mindfulness, details how her former life unfolded in her new book. Lead like you.
The last evening of this existence began in a corner office on the top floor of an office building with spectacular views of the Harbor Bridge and the Sydney Opera House.
Before a meeting at Packer’s multimillion-dollar Bondi Pad, Wagstaff’s assistant brought her a black lace Collette Dinnigan dress and a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes.
Before a meeting at Packer’s multimillion-dollar Bondi Pad, Wagstaff’s assistant brought her a black lace Collette Dinnigan dress and a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes. Packer is pictured with a mysterious blonde sailing in the Mediterranean Sea in 2022
Dressed for success, Wagstaff took an elevator to a waiting limousine that took her to the front door of Packer’s beachfront apartment.
There, she was greeted by Packer and joined her male colleagues for a welcome cocktail, she recounts in the book.
Packer and his father Kerry were major shareholders in Challenger Financial Services Group and James served on the board of directors.
Wagstaff says in his book that arriving at Packer was “an exhilarating experience of being surrounded by so much male intellectual power.”
“I desperately needed to feel safe, to feel equal, to not feel powerless,” she writes. “Feeling seen and recognized, belonging, feeling enough.
“Alternatively, I would try to compete with them, try to be like them – just one of the boys, living out my masculine traits of action, of effort, of achievement, of competition.”
Wagstaff felt she had finally succeeded and was stunned when Packer showed her around his house.
Wagstaff says in his book Lead Like You that arriving at Packer was “an exhilarating experience being surrounded by so much male intellectual power.” Packer is pictured on his $200 million yacht IJE in Mykonos in 2021
“I vividly remember excusing myself from the group, walking past a huge, beautiful aquarium, and entering the powder room,” she wrote.
“I looked in the mirror, but this time it was different. It wasn’t a superficial look to see if I was attractive enough.
“I looked deep into my eyes and said out loud, “You did it, darling. You did what you planned to do. You showed them.”
At the same time, Wagstaff saw in his reflection “the saddest and loneliest eyes.”
“At that moment, when I was not yet ready to admit it, I saw the truth,” she writes.
“I had disgraced and abandoned myself in my need to feel loved, important, successful, powerful, and ultimately safe, especially in a very male-dominated world.
“That’s the day everything started to go downhill.”
Wagstaff learned to “live, love, lead and succeed true to myself.” The international leadership coach, mentor and speaker on mental health and mindfulness is pictured with her second husband.
Wagstaff’s marriage ended that year and she found “the most dysfunctional relationship possible” as an unconscious way of punishing herself.
She started drinking more and taking drugs. His father was diagnosed with cancer and died.
But Wagstaff, working harder than ever, was so “achieving” that even to her closest friends she still seemed to be thriving.
“I was the perfect swan, looking like I was gliding gracefully across the pond to the outside world,” she writes.
“But underneath, I was kicking my feet at a hundred miles an hour and barely staying afloat. Living on adrenaline and high-level anxiety.
Wagstaff finally gave up her corporate career a few years later when she took lucrative voluntary redundancy and took some time for herself.
She went to a nursing home that had its own maze, which she walked to the top of a hill, then knelt down and prayed to the moon.
“In this prayer, I abandoned myself,” she wrote. “I have entrusted my life and my will to a power greater than myself.
“I said, ‘I’m all yours. I don’t know what I want or need. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I just know that I am deeply unhappy and I am tired. Oh, so tired.”
Wagstaff could have surrendered, but other problems were to arise.
Within weeks the stock market crashed and she lost the harborside house she had bought in Balmoral.
Over the next decade, Wagstaff reinvented herself, found her way and reclaimed her feminine side.
As she writes in her book, Wagstaff had to learn to “live, love, lead and succeed true to herself.”
“It’s the story of my realization of my intrinsic value; learning is enough for me. You are enough. We are enough. Just like us.