Hi, I’m Illyana. I'm an unpolished leader, and I think you should be too.

The Unpolished Leader grew out of my work founding WiTCH, the Women in Tech and Cyber Hub, a not-for-profit that supports women in reskilling and staying in the cybersecurity and tech industry.

Through WiTCH, I have had the privilege of speaking with some extraordinary women. Women who are talented, thoughtful, and full of ideas. Many of them are already doing impressive work in their careers.

But something kept appearing in those conversations.

Again and again, I met women who quietly felt like they did not quite belong in the very spaces they had worked so hard to reach.

They questioned themselves constantly. They held back from opportunities. They hesitated to speak up or pursue ideas because they felt they were not ready yet. Many believed they needed to be more confident, more polished, or more certain before they could move forward.

I recognised that feeling immediately.

Because for most of my career I had felt exactly the same way.

I had failed out of university. I struggled in traditional corporate environments. I was often told I was too loud, too opinionated, or simply not the right fit. So I assumed certain paths were closed to me.

For years I thought the problem was me.

But working with those women forced me to see something differently.

Maybe I was never the problem.

Maybe I had simply spent years trying to succeed inside systems that were never built for the way my brain works.

Once you see that, everything starts to shift.

You stop trying to turn yourself into someone else. You start understanding your strengths, your ideas, and the way you work best.

That realisation changed the direction of my career.

And it is why I created The Unpolished Leader.

Because I want more women to experience that moment sooner. The moment when you realise you are already far more capable than you have been led to believe.