Mia freedman who is

She stayed for months, getting on the nerves of some in the office, who thought her too pushy and opinionated, but making herself useful. Indispensable, even. She was only 24 when appointed editor of Cosmopolitan in , and 25 when her son Luca was born. By , when she and Lavigne married, she was five months' pregnant with their second child, but a routine ultrasound a couple of days after the wedding revealed that the baby's heart had stopped beating.

Freedman was inconsolable. She shut off from everyone, including Lavigne, and they separated for more than two years. In , after they had reunited and had another baby, Freedman joined the executive ranks at Nine, hired by its then boss, Eddie McGuire, to ameliorate the network's blokey culture and commission female-friendly programs.

Not many others did, and Freedman left the network the day the show was axed in June , only seven months into her contract. She was glad to get out and, by most accounts, few were sorry to see her go. After her miscarriage, Freedman had spent two years in therapy.

Post-Nine, she climbed back onto the couch. By , Lavigne could see the potential to make it profitable by bringing in other writers and selling advertising space.

He had sold his liquor-sales business, CBD Cellars, and was looking for investment opportunities, Freedman says. In person, as in her writing, Freedman has the gift of instant intimacy. Though she is wary about being profiled, she greets me with a kiss at our first meeting and talks to me as if I were an old friend.

Her tone is confiding, her humour self-deprecating, her manner completely assured. As she strides through the Mamamia office, there is no doubt about who is in charge. But for all her apparent accessibility, Freedman is an elusive subject. I interview many of her friends and colleagues, and their views about her are so contradictory that they might be talking about different people. Some say she is tough, others that she is fragile. She is astute. She is scatty. Other than that she has relentless drive, the force of her charm is the one thing on which everyone agrees.

Kerri Sackville, one of the first contributors to Mamamia, says she was delighted when Freedman offered to publish her work: "I'd followed her career through the magazine world and had a bit of a girl-crush on her. I wrote for her for about two years unpaid. With two other volunteers - Lana Hirschowitz and Amanda Whitley - she "spent a lot of time moderating comments, writing reports on what was going on on the site, just helping her to run it".

Sackville says she then asked Freedman for a favour in return: "When my first book was published, I asked her to launch it for me. And she declined. That stung really badly. Sackville's literary agent, Pippa Masson, confirms that Freedman was asked and declined. Amanda Whitley, who worked for no pay for Freedman for about a year, also ended up disappointed. She and the two other volunteers "had what I thought was a close relationship with Mia, and spoke many times daily via email", says Whitley, who later founded the HerCanberra website.

But it literally was like a tap was turned off. The third volunteer, Lana Hirschowitz, went on to become managing editor of Mamamia and editor of another of Freedman's websites, iVillage. She worked for Freedman for four years and was one of her closest confidantes, but she too grew disillusioned, resigning in Hirschowitz says that though she liked and respected Freedman, she was "often difficult, inconsistent and unreasonably demanding", expecting her staff to share her single-minded dedication to the websites' growth.

Hirschowitz put in hour days but still felt that her efforts were inadequate. If you want to be inspired, educated, informed or entertained and, at the very least, congratulated after the event on your great choice of Speaker browse our speakers. Skip to content Search. Advanced Search. Mia Freedman. Download Pdf. Quick Contact Notice: JavaScript is required for this content.

Quick Search Search. Mia was very entertaining with a great message to all, especially women. Thank you for being such a valuable part of our panel discussion and for your honest, very real answers.

Lovely, articulate, funny, down-to-earth person, who doesn't need notes. Very Informative. Freedman, also known as Mia Lavigne, and her husband Jason Lavigne moved into the prestige property in Bellevue Hill in January in an arrangement that gave them the option to buy the home at a later date. Mamamia founder Mia Freedman, pictured in Credit: Damian Bennett. The pair — who founded the Mamamia media group — exercised the option to buy the property in late , but settlement negotiations with the owner Somna Lala Kumar fell apart and the contract was withdrawn.

The Lavignes went to the NSW Supreme Court, seeking settlement of the property, damages, interest, costs, and an order that the contract was not validly rescinded. But Mia is just that. But into her adulthood she learned that while her father was Jewish, her mother was not, and therefore, technically nor was she.

But as her son approached bar mitzvah age, Mia realised that unless the situation was addressed, she would not be able to participate in the ceremony quite how she wanted to. I had to go and stand in a bookstore and there was nothing, so I had no way to connect to other people or to find information about this particular subject on demand.

After her work experience stint at Cleo , Mia carved out a position as a beauty writer and eventually features editor at the title.