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From stylised LP covers featuring conducting ‘super star’ Herbert von Karajan to Netflix’s 2023 Maestro biopic of Leonard Bernstein, narratives of musical leadership have long been dominated by the figure of the transcendental iconic male conductor. This paper explores findings from the speakers’ recent study of women’s musical leadership. Directly challenging the male maestro tradition, the project explored women’s musical leadership both upon and widely beyond the podium, covering women’s work in music education and the music industries, women’s work leading music within spiritual and sacred practices, and women musicians’ networks, collectives, and societies. Focussed upon work carried out as part of the AHRC-funded Women’s Musical Leadership Online Network (2022-2024) and through co-editing The Routledge Companion to Women and Musical Leadership: The Nineteenth Century and Beyond (Routledge, 2025) – within which we co-authored a chapter exploring industry pipelines and mentoring schemes based upon interviews with a range of women leaders working in the music industries – we will outline our key learnings around the importance of mentorship, networks, sustainability, and self-care and propose alternative models of musical leadership.