Tess Beagley didn't come to leadership through a textbook. She came through a football club.
When Williamstown CYMS pulled together their first ever women's football team, Tess and her sister were among the first through the gate. It was the opportunity she'd always wanted but never had — and from that first training session, she was all in.
What started on the field quickly extended off it. In 2020 Tess joined the club committee as a relationship lead, managing partnerships with Williamstown Juniors and overseeing club events. Two years later, when the club needed new leadership, she put her hand up for the presidency.
It was, by her own admission, one of the biggest challenges she has ever faced. Leading a community club through the aftermath of COVID — navigating the very real challenges of getting a club back on its feet, finding a way to work with and through a group of people who all cared deeply but didn't always agree — taught Tess more about leadership than anything else in her life. The most important lesson? You can't do it alone. Leadership is about relationships. It always has been. She likes to think she left the club in a better place than she found it.
She served as President of Williamstown CYMS from 2022 to 2024, alongside three years on the VAFA Women's Advisory Board. And because apparently one leadership role at a time wasn't enough, she also captained the club's inaugural cricket team to a premiership in 2022 — proving that good culture travels across sports.
When she stepped away from the presidency, she wasn't done. In 2025 Tess coached the Williamstown Juniors Under-14 Girls to a premiership — a result that had nothing to do with having the most talented group and everything to do with a club that knew who they were, trusted each other, and solved problems together. That's not luck. That's the early work.
In 2024 she was selected for the AFL Victoria Lead Your Way program — an inaugural cohort of female leaders from across the football community, brought together to connect, share and be honest about the realities of leading in sport. For Tess, it was a rare and genuinely special experience. Being in a room where other women were navigating the same challenges — and finding that you weren't alone in them — was something she hadn't realised she needed until she had it.
It was also the moment the idea for The Early Work began to take shape. Because here's what Tess kept coming back to: from the time they're teenagers, leadership is sometimes mistaken for good performance. In sport, the best player gets the captaincy. But performing and leading are completely different skill sets. The cost of leaving leaders to figure it out alone is real. Players who don't feel safe or heard. Clubs that fracture under pressure. Good people the club should have kept.
Tess leads from the centre — not from the front. She describes a leader's job as providing the canvas: the conditions, the stability, the clarity that lets the people be the ones doing the painting. Calm on the surface. Working hard underneath. Present enough that people trust the direction, even when they can't see the full picture. Outside of football, Tess works in the energy sector as a Key Account Manager, where building strong, trusted relationships with major clients is the core of her work. The skillset transfers. The belief is the same — that relationships are the foundation of everything, and that the work of building them is worth doing properly.