Season 5

Season 5 - Change Happens Podcast

Conversations on authentic leadership

Hosted by
Jenelle McMaster

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Season 6

Prof. Andrew Wilks FAA FTSE FAHMS
Molecular and Cancer Biologist, Biotech Entrepreneur

Interview – Change Happens – Prof. Andrew Wilks

Present:	Prof. Andrew Wilks, Jenelle McMaster
Date:	3 December 2024

[00:00:00] - Jenelle McMaster:
It's not often you get the chance to spend time with a molecular cancer biologist, certainly not ever in my case. Until now, where I had the chance to interview Professor Andrew Wilks, who began his journey as a scientist in academia before becoming a serial entrepreneur. Andrew has founded 12 companies in the drug discovery sector.
In speaking to Andrew, it's obvious that the voyage of discovery is literally what drives him. Spending year after year on what can feel like an elusive mission, to discover a protein that may or may not be able to be turned into a therapeutic, which may or may not be able to be turned into a drug that can help save lives.
But Andrew's done that, and continues to do that, having achieved the rare trifecta that scientists dream of having, being at the front lines of discovering, developing, and getting a cancer drug FDA approved. I learnt about managing the disappointment cycle when discovery goes nowhere.
[00:01:07] - Andrew Wilks:
Science is very humbling, you know, sometimes things go right, but things go wrong more often than not.
[00:01:14] - Jenelle McMaster:
I got a peek into what it feels like to know you've discovered something that literally nobody in the world has.
[00:01:20] - Andrew Wilks:
There's a sense of awe and wonderment. It's really quite exhilarating. I looked at the gel and realised that my life was about to change.
[00:01:31] - Jenelle McMaster:
Andrew talks about shifting careers, building businesses and I learned a new word, numinous, which I plan to weave into my conversations wherever possible. Here's Andrew.
As impressive as it is, I can't imagine that you would have known straight out of the gates as a child, that that's what you wanted to be when you grew up. Do you recall what you did dream of becoming when you were a kid?
[00:01:57] - Andrew Wilks:
Oh, very much so. I, I loved astronomy. In the cloudy and dusky streets of, uh, Liverpool, you can't see much of the sky, but what you could see was kind of intriguing. And so, uh, my dad bought me a telescope at some point, if I remember correctly, and I would point it at various celestial objects and look through and yeah, I probably wanted to be an, an astronomer. I think is, uh, it's probably the best answer.
[00:02:22] - Jenelle McMaster:
Do you recall sort of recognizing that you were perhaps a bit more curious than most people, even back then?
[00:02:29] - Andrew Wilks:
I was pretty much practically unique in my street. I was born into a council house estate. So, you know, relatively poor working-class people and, and more people went to Borstel in my street than went to university. So it was, it was kind of the mean streets. Uh, so it, it wasn't a place where you could pop out your head out the window and talk about the less, the latest, um, solar eclipse or anything like that. It was kind of the sort of thing you would read about or, or, or find out about from secret books and things that you would take from the library. Often steal from the library, if I'm honest, which is ah.
[00:03:10] - Jenelle McMaster:
Do you remember having conversations at home, sort of growing up with lots of questions about why things were as they were?
[00:03:15] - Andrew Wilks:
Oh, yeah. Uh, not many answers, unfortunately. My dad was a, worked on the docks in, in Liverpool. My mum was, was essentially a shop girl. So, there was no expectation that I would become what, what I am. In fact, you know, it was a source of huge surprise and amusement. My father followed my career, he asked me, you know, I must've turned 50 at this age. You know, what are you going to be when you grow up son? So that's, uh,
[00:03:45] - Jenelle McMaster:
What did you answer him out of interest?
[00:03:48] - Andrew Wilks:
It's kind of a bit late dad. It's, it's, I'm already well, well, well into this, uh, it's cancer biology thing, but he did like taking my business card around and it was Dr. Wilkes. That was one thing when it was Professor Wilkes. He got a big buzz out of that. So yeah, I think there's a secret pride there.
[00:04:04] - Jenelle McMaster:
So what pushed you to initially pursue a career in academia, and what spurred you to specifically focus on, in the area of cancer research?
[00:04:13] - Andrew Wilks:
I did my PhD in, uh, endocrine research. So hormones, uh, female sex hormones, in fact, and the effect that they had on the uterus in terms of changing the gene expression patterns. So, but, but that taught me to become a molecular biologist. So a cloner of genes. And so, I followed through on that with my first postdoctoral, uh, position. It was there really that I, I kind of discovered cancer biology as, as a, as a career path. And apart from, you know, the obvious, it, it's very much present in everybody's lives. It, there's, there's something cunning and, and tricky about cancers that, that, uh, makes it a sort of formidable foe that's, that's worth, uh, looking at and investigating. So I guess I got passionate about it, uh, as an academic.
[00:05:09] - Jenelle McMaster:
I like that. Is the, the cunning foe, is that something that you would generalize out? So, if there's something that feels like, oh, that's a bit of a tricky one and you're not going to get the better of me, let me see if I can crack this. Does that, does that translate more broadly?
[00:05:23] - Andrew Wilks:
Yeah, I'm, I'm, I think if you asked many of my colleagues, the one thing they would describe me as is stubborn, and I'm hoping that's a positive trait in many respects. So, if my wife calls me stubborn, that's a very different, uh, description as one of my colleagues. You know, science is very humbling; you know, sometimes things go right, but things go wrong more often than not, and staying on task and driving yourself to keep, to keep going is a really essential part of trying to be successful in the profession.
[00:05:56] - Jenelle McMaster:
And how did you, you became a molecular biologist and this was in an era when scientists were, you know, almost celebrities back then, uh, or probably still now. How did you then find yourself working for the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research? How did that happen?
[00:06:12] - Andrew Wilks:
So, well, you, you're right about the celebrity status of molecular biologists, you know, the gene jockeys that were cloning genes and stuff.It was, it was, uh, you, you were getting offers all over the place all the time.
One of my favorite stories, there was, there was an institute in. Vienna called the institute of molecular biology, one of the pioneers of gene cloning was offered a job. They, he was a little bit older than me, but not very much with a ridiculous salary and as a, as a precondition, he asked for, uh, I was either Porsche or Ferrari, I can't remember which is his company car and they gave it to him. This, this guy was driving around Vienna in this super-fast car, uh, cloning genes as he went. And so, I was hoping for a similar outcome for my own career, but so I was living in Switzerland at the time I bumped into a gentleman by the name of Tony Burgess, Professor Tony Burgess, and he'd just become the director of the Ludwig Institute for cancer research in Melbourne and he, he was out looking for someone like me, someone who could clone genes, how things worked. And he said, why don't you come and live in Australia? I thought, all right, that sounds like a good idea, I mean, literally on the spot. I said so, what do you want me to work on? And he literally said to me, do something interesting and that's completely unheard of as I thought, okay, let me do something incredibly hard.
Five years later, I was still struggling to actually get something interesting. But his generosity and support kept going. And then I had a really quite a big breakthrough. Yeah.
[00:07:53] - Jenelle McMaster:
I do need to ask you, did you get the Ferrari in there, in that whole spirit of generosity? No.
[00:07:58] - Andrew Wilks:
And, and, uh, I, I do have a modestly fast car now, but again, it's way too fast for me. And it's not, it is a Ferrari engine by all accounts, but it's not a Ferrari.
[00:08:08] - Jenelle McMaster:
I see. I see. Okay. So back to the, the do something. Interesting. Not really interesting. So what, where did your brain go? Okay, this is where I'm going to, I've kind of carte blanche got the ability to go and do whatever. How did you then decide where you're going to point your focus?
[00:08:27] - Andrew Wilks:
I guess the podcast is around change, but the other thing that is worth bringing up is luck. And as, as I walked through the door at the Ludwig Institute, I had the great good fortune walk into a group of scientists who were literally at the top of their profession. There's a chap called Don Metcalfe, who is known as the godfather of molecular hematology. So, he's kind of figured out how cells of the bone marrow become all of the cells in the blood system, and what are the growth factors that make all that happen. Very nearly won the Nobel Prize. If it wasn't for his curmudgeonliness, apparently, he probably very, he very much would have won the Nobel prize.
[00:09:02] - Jenelle McMaster:
Did he get his face on a stamp?
[00:09:06] - Andrew Wilks:
So that's, that's how, that's how, that's how famous he was. They issued like five stamps with famous scientists on them. And he was, he was on there. And when I, when I give my talks to, to students nowadays, I have to explain what a stamp is, of course, but. That's, that's how famous this guy was.
Don had around him a group of incredible scientists who were really at the top of their game. Some of whom have gone on to amazing things. So Doug Hilton is now the head of the CSIRO, he was one of them. I had the pick of what was it that I wanted to do, and I decided I wanted to try and clone the molecules on the cell surface that received the signal from these growth factors that determined how blood cells, um, formed and so I set about that task, almost impossible as it was.
[00:09:57] - Jenelle McMaster:
Is that because you knew that it would have a direct, like, was there an end game that you were seeking or was it, if I crack this, then who knows where it could go?
[00:10:08] - Andrew Wilks:
It would, it would immensely improve the understanding of how blood cells form. The flip side of how blood cells form is how they malform, how they go wrong, so cancers and so forth.
Pertinent, of course, being in a cancer research institute was the possibility that we'd be able to understand cancer biology that much more fully. And failed are, you know, for four years, struggling to do incredibly difficult things, and then in the fifth year, literally hit the jackpot in a big way.
[00:10:38] - Jenelle McMaster:
So the jackpot, um, I'm assuming was at the discovery of the JAK proteins that you discovered and then subsequently momelotinib, um, the molecule known for being the JAK2 inhibitor.
Rather than me trying to give what will inevitably be a very clumsy description, can you explain what those words mean and what they do?
[00:11:00] - Andrew Wilks:
So JAK stands for just another kinase. It's kind of a stupid acronym to, because I kind of missed the receptor and got the next best thing, which was the molecules inside the cell, just another kinase.
So I could then use the acronym JAK, you know, JAK they're really very famous proteins now, and they're essential to the intracellular circuitry that's part of our cells determine what they're going to do, I discovered these literally with my own hands. I, I remember the, the day like it was yesterday.
[00:11:35] - Jenelle McMaster:
Yeah. Tell me about that?
[00:11:37] - Andrew Wilks:
I, you know, I, I'd labored and labored for four years, failure after failure, very humbling. I thought, well, this has got, this one's going to work, isn't it? You know, and so I barreled into the lab and I spent literally 10 hours dipping things into various temperature, water baths, just to make this reaction work, started to run this gel. So, we didn't analyze things on agar gels. I left about 10 o'clock and I came in about 10 o'clock the next morning and I looked at the gel and realised that my life was about to change.
[00:12:10] - Jenelle McMaster:
Really? In that moment, you knew you could, you could understand the enormity of that thing in that moment.
[00:12:16] - Andrew Wilks:
Yeah. I think that's one of the joys of science really, that those moments. Yeah. Discovering something literally something that no one's ever known before and, you know, sometimes as I did, you go into the dark room and you switch on the UV light and there's a result and that's an extraordinary moment, an extraordinary sensation. I've maybe had it 15, 20 times in my career, so it's quite a rare moment.
There's a word numinous, uh, that, that there's, there's a sense of awe and, and wonderment all of these feelings, you know, come into your head and, and, uh, it's really quite exhilarating. And then the hard work starts because you have to flesh out the story and make something publishable and, and so forth.
[00:13:01] - Jenelle McMaster:
How long does that moment of numinous last for? Like we, is it for a week? Is it a moment? Then you go, oh my God, now the work begins. Like how, tell me about, did you run home and tell the wife and tell your friends? And you guys.
[00:13:15] - Andrew Wilks:
Yeah. In fact, uh, there was a seminar going on and some of my colleagues were there and I, yeah, nudged on the shortly. So, I don't know what the guy at the front giving the seminar actually thought when, when the ripples.
[00:13:30] - Jenelle McMaster:
Is there something you'd like to share with everyone in the room? Yes. Professor Wilkes.
[00:13:33] - Andrew Wilks:
Exactly. Maybe it was too early to actually share the secret, but it was all a very joyous time and then, and my boss having given me all of these resources just doubled and redoubled. And so, I went from a team of like five people to 25 people within six months.
[00:13:48] - Jenelle McMaster:
Incredible. Incredible.
[00:13:50] - Andrew Wilks:
And how long does the joy last? I'm experiencing it now. I still feel that sense, just recanting the story. It lasts forever and you can feel the same sensations. It's quite bizarre. Yeah. I feel I should hand over my Medicare card, this is like some kind of a catharsis for me too.
[00:14:09] - Jenelle McMaster:
I feel like you need to put it on your passport occupation, discoverer of this particular.
[00:14:14] - Andrew Wilks:
I think that's a fine idea.
[00:14:16] - Jenelle McMaster:
Given the picture that you've painted of this incredible setup you had with the Ludwig, you know, Institute, you could basically ask for the people that you wanted to work with. You have the joy of these discoveries, the esteemed profile of academia. You made an incredibly significant decision to leave an academic career and go out there. What gave you the idea and the impetus and the courage, tomfoolery, I don't know, all of the things to kind of go, yep, I'm going to take that leap?
[00:14:53] - Andrew Wilks:
The answer is I don't know, but I can certainly recount some of the circumstances, though it was either a midlife crisis or an epiphany. It's hard to say which I suppose. In biology, there's a famous sort of evolutionary concept, which is punctuated equilibrium. You know, things go along and then all of a sudden it's a complete change.
So, you know, birds develop wings or whales develop flippers or something. And the fact is that prior to that change, all of the things that are necessary for that to happen are all present, they're all there. So, you know, I had colleagues over in, in the US who had similar sort of career paths and the US is well ahead of Australia in terms of developing a biotech industry and a drug discovery. So, I'd been watching my colleagues do this sort of thing. So, I was aware that that was happening. And then the Ludwig Institute being an American organisation had taken patents out on all of these proteins that I'd discovered.
And so, toying with what might happen with that was certainly in the background. The other sensation I distinctly remember having is, is that, so I had, I had a zebrafish laboratory, we were doing zebrafish genetics, looking at this pathway, it was really interesting, it was amazing stuff coming out, but it just wasn't fulfilling in, in, in any sense, and I kind of realised that there was perhaps more you could do, a bigger purpose, perhaps more of a, and in fact you could make. And so all these bits and pieces would coalesce so that an investment bank in Albuquerque had given me half a million dollars of seed capital. I thought, so I left the Institute and I set up an office in East Melbourne, the investment banker pulled the cash. I mean, what could go wrong? An investment banker from Albuquerque in New Mexico. And so, I learned a lesson about business there and then.
[00:16:50] - Jenelle McMaster:
Well, tell me about that. What, what did go wrong? What were the things that you remembered to be that stand out in your mind of, Oh, okay, this is a bit of a lesson for me, I hadn't quite anticipated that. I didn't know that this would be required of me. What stands, comes to mind?
[00:17:06] - Andrew Wilks:
So you're, you're really taking me through some dark times here. It was, it was, it was a really odd situation. So this guy was an investment banker from New York and his wife was allegedly the daughter of a of a Colombian drug lord. I swear this is, I swear this is true.
[00:17:22] - Jenelle McMaster:
You do drugs, but in a different way.
[00:17:25] - Andrew Wilks:
Yeah, I, I'm a drug baron in a very different sense. In retrospect, I should have seen the signs that there was a whole bunch of flakiness and odd behavior going on. There were two companies they were trying to fund at the same time, my company and the company out of San Diego. So we did road shows together, which is how we thought that we were going to be okay. And then this other organization, this other company, fell out with them. The next minute I get calls from this daughter of the drug baron telling me, you know, they were not going to, and by the way, don't think of suing us and don't think of doing anything like this. You know, we know where you live. I mean, I'm making that bit up, but it felt quite, quite a threatening conversation. And so far from realising the dream, and I took the call at one of my daughter's netball games in Doncaster netball thing. So, there's like a Saturday morning, this bizarre call. And so, I realised that that particular Avenue had gone and I was pretty much back to the drawing board. I had no job because I'd left the Ludwig. So that's when I became a professional chess player. Which was hilarious, of course.
[00:18:33] - Jenelle McMaster:
you applied the strategic skills in a different way.
[00:18:36] - Andrew Wilks:
I played in the Australian lightning championships and came sixth and won $123. And that was the only money I earned in, in, in the rest of the tax year. So, and then I came across a, a venture capital organization, uh, that was just starting up in Queensland. The idea of putting dollar one into a spin out company is I think the most important dollar that can be put in and so that, that for me was, and this was six months after the, uh, the fiasco, uh, and so we took off, uh, you know, six months later, they gave me like five million bucks and said, Go and make some drugs that work on these JAK kinases and so it's kind of what we did.
I hired a bunch of incredibly good people, one of whom was with me as we were awarded the Prime Minister's Prize a couple of weeks ago. So he was the med chemist who did that.
[00:19:30] - Jenelle McMaster:
What you're talking about there is what's been called out, you've been called out there's the only one in Australia and actually only one of a small handful of people in the world who have completed the rare trifecta and I hope I'm describing this correctly. Discovery of a protein to creation of a new therapeutic molecule, and then the turning of the molecule into a medicine. Is that, did I describe the trifecta correctly?
[00:20:02] - Andrew Wilks:
You did. I mean, my understanding of horse racing is not. Deep, and so whether that's a trifecta or a quinella, I don't know, but, but that trifecta is extremely rare, I would say.
[00:20:14] - Jenelle McMaster:
And congratulations. I mean, look, it's such a big thing that the FDA approval happened, that happened in late 2023, as I understand it, that's the only, the second Australian made cancer drug to ever receive approval. Was that the vision? Is that, are you pinching yourself that did ultimately, has ultimately come about?
[00:20:32] - Andrew Wilks:
Yeah, I mean, again, so that's kind of what led to the Prime Minister's Prize, but I think that's much more important, if I might say, than the Prime Minister's Prize.
[00:20:41] - Jenelle McMaster:
Oh, I won't tell him that you said that.
[00:20:43] - Andrew Wilks:
Yeah, please don't. We got on very well when we met and I'd hate him to think any differently. But the, but the fact that there's a medicine and, and people are benefiting from it, I reflect on that most days.
[00:20:56] - Jenelle McMaster:
Do you get to speak to people who have taken that medicine, particularly through the trials and they were taking the medicine and I do you have that proximity to the end user?
[00:21:07] - Andrew Wilks:
I, I'm not sure how voluntary it is. I, I, I cyber stalked, uh, a lady who, uh, on YouTube who, who was um, a, an advocate for people with myelofibrosis, which is the bone marrow cancer that this molecule treats. I dropped her a line and we talked and we actually did a zoom call together and we talked a lot about the difference that it made in her life. And, you know, as you're very much insulated as an academic from, if you choose to be from, you know, from the research, you're a little bit more exposed to patients and sort of the ideas that might be important to patients in the discovery part, but you very seldom actually meet the patients. And so this was an extraordinarily moving experience in my point of view, you know, we, we talk about people like me who discovered it and, uh, or invented molecules and the clinicians who put things through the trial. But, these guys are the real heroes of the story that, you know, they, they take a risk based on and trust that, uh, you've done all the right things in the preparation of the, uh, and discovery of the molecule and in her case, I mean, it transformed her life and, um, it's incredible it's just still alive and we're the grandchildren. So it's wonderful.
[00:22:19] - Jenelle McMaster:
I'm sort of reflecting on, you know, you've mentioned it a couple of times, the litany of failures that happens before the breakthrough, if, if a breakthrough even happens at all. So four years before you discovered the JAK proteins. Many other pathways you would have gone down over the years that ended in futility or changing. What gets you through? How do you pick yourself up like day after day, month after month, year after year when it doesn't work out?
[00:22:47] - Andrew Wilks:
I don't know. I mean, there must be something in my psyche. Again, I now have my disappointment phase down to three, three days, you know, so I get bad news, I'm miserable day two by the third day. I'm off on doing the next thing and to my great disappointment when great things happen to similar experience I'm joyous, I'm joyous and then okay on to the next thing on day three partly a defense mechanism because It's mostly disappointment if I'm honest punctuated by this incredible Moments of joy and fulfillment and to be, you know, I can remember before I discovered the JAK's writing to the BBC asking if I could be a researcher on David Attenborough's, uh, sort of, and they turned me down.
[00:23:38] - Jenelle McMaster:
Which you dealt with for three days as a disappointment. Three days and then I would go on to the next thing, yes, of course. I, I guess people assume that when you invent a molecule that becomes a cure for cancer that you make a lot of money along the way. I've certainly, um, seen very, seen some staggeringly eye watering numbers. There's a follow the money slide, I think I've seen around your molecule and around the drug. I've heard you also speak, you know, say that you think you sold out too early. What, what's the process of selling a medical discovery to a drug company like? Watching those kind of numbers change, change hands. What do you wish you'd done differently? When you look back on those things, do you wish you'd done anything differently?
[00:24:19] - Andrew Wilks:
I mean, I, I, maybe it's, maybe it's just me trying to accommodate some of the realities of, of not having benefited from the 2 billion sale of the molecule and stuff. We did sell it two stages before that. So, we sold it for the company for about 20 million bucks. And I made some money. It wasn't a great deal.
[00:24:40] - Jenelle McMaster:
More than a hundred and twenty three dollars of chess.
[00:24:43] - Andrew Wilks:
Yes, more than that? Well, it's better than chess as a profession, I'll have to say that. I'm watching it then literally be flipped to a big pharma company for half a billion dollars, which is what happened within sort of 18 months, two years. Very recently seeing it transacted again at two billion. I feel possession of the molecule and joy that it's getting through. I don't feel any bitterness or disappointment. Other people have taken the risk, the significant risk of, of getting approval, uh, and they put 300 million bucks, which I didn't have, obviously to, um, to, to get that through. And so I, I, I don't feel bitterness or rancor and I've met people who've made a lot of money out of that phase of the thing. And they love me because of the invention. But, uh, they buy me a beer, which is probably the most I've gotten out of it. But, uh, yeah.
[00:25:33] - Jenelle McMaster:
So what's next for you then? Are there any other inventions, research projects, or are we getting close to hanging up the lab coat for good?
[00:25:44] - Andrew Wilks:
Well, I, to be honest, I don't fit into the lab coat anymore. So the lab coat I've hung up a long time ago. And given that I don't, I don't need to do anything other than I ride herd over these amazing scientists. I don't retire, I won't retire. It's, I sit with these amazing scientists on a regular basis as they discuss the results and as they discuss their progress and I'm part of it. I can even contribute. I mean, again, what, whatever intellect I had all those years ago is now replaced by rat cunning and sort of deep experience and stuff. And so I have a valuable contribution to make to these youngsters as they go. And so I really enjoy that. And again, dollar warm.
[00:26:27] - Jenelle McMaster:
What would be your hope, Andrew, for the, the scientists that you work with and alongside and help? What would, what would you want to unlock in that community?
[00:26:35] - Andrew Wilks:
I want them to have exactly the same experience as I've had that again, many of them already had that sort of moment of discovery and that realisation moment, that moment of numinous sort of in discovery, but the actual fulfillment or sense of fulfillment in making a medicine and perhaps even meeting the person or the people for whom that medicine was made and will be transformational in terms of their life experience. That's a joy, unbridled joy. That's something that I wish they all could experience because it really is again, the most fulfilling feeling. It's, it's a joyous thing.
[00:27:19] - Jenelle McMaster:
Oh, what a beautiful note to end on. I really wanted to thank you for sharing that.
This is a world I'm not at all familiar with, Andrew. So it's such a joy to go on that, uh, discussion of discovery. Hearing the journey of a curious lad in Liverpool who is more stubborn than cunning foe. So it turns that, you know, that curiosity into making magic happen. I love the word numinous. I feel like that's one that I will take board with me.
I love the word joy, by the way, but to think about awe and wonder embodied in the word numinous is great. And I think, you know, you talked about luck being a part of what you've done and I'm sure that's the case, but one of my podcast guests had previously said to me, luck is where preparation meets opportunity.
And you have a fancier way of describing that, which is the punctuated equilibrium. Where that moment of change happens because all the conditions were right. And a lot of those conditions that were right for you was where your preparation kicked in. I know that there's thousands of myelofibrosis patients out there that will be eternally grateful for the work and your stubbornness and your persistence and your discovery.
But I hope that others can learn to keep the disappointment cycles low. Three days or less seems to be the target that you've set. But maybe we also learn to keep the joy cycles long because the work that you do is so profound. I've heard lessons about using good technology, having good teams of people around you, fostering community, building trust, and not shying away from ambition, knowing how to deploy capital and staying close to the people who are the beneficiaries of the work that you do.
So, so much in that for me, and I'm sure everybody who's listening to this. So big thanks, Andrew, and thank you for your work that you do.
[00:29:07] - Andrew Wilks:
Jenelle, thank you for that. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it.

Alice Min Soo Chun
Co-founder & CEO | Solight Design

Interview – Change Happens – Alice Chun

Present:	Alice Chun, Jenelle McMaster
Date:	22 October 2024

Warning: This podcast contains references to adult themes. Listener discretion is advised.

[00:00:00.290] - Jenelle McMaster

What happens when you're a humanitarian entrepreneur, and then the Clintons discover you? Well, that was Alice Chun's trajectory, when her self-inflatable portable solar light was profiled on Hillary and Chelsea Clinton's Netflix series called Gutsy, profiling gutsy women in the world. And what a fitting description that turned out to be.

[00:00:24.540] - Alice Chun

It's not just what the media and the news are telling you about a warzone. There's always, always glimmers and sparkles of hope.

[00:00:34.810] - Jenelle McMaster

When Alice started making her lights, she crammed as many as she could into hippo-sized suitcases and dragged them with her into war zones and areas like Haiti that were ravaged by natural disaster. To provide the locals with a source of light.

[00:00:55.130] – Overlapping news clips

It's being called a catastrophe of major proportions.

Tonight, a state of emergency.

There's been a sharp rise in the death toll.

[00:00:59.410] - Alice Chun

Darkness invites evil. Everyone's like, Don't go, don't go. And I said, I have to go because these kids have PTSD. They all use them as nightlights.

[00:01:11.570] - Jenelle McMaster

Alice has seen the worst of the world, and yet still genuinely finds beauty, wonder, and awe amongst it all. She has a clear belief in a higher power, a focus on innovation for purpose, and is driven by the relentless pursuit to help people in need. This is a story about hope, courage, perseverance, and belief. And ss always, it's a story about making change happen. Now, Alice, it's not every day that you get to see your work being out there recognised by some of the most influential names, and you had Chelsea and Hillary Clinton profiling you. So let's start there. How did that relationship come to be, and what did it feel like to be called a gutsy woman?

[00:02:00.500] - Alice Chun

I think that there's a couple of things that happen with innovation. When my son was born with asthma, I would be going to the doctor's office every day, and there would be so many kids with asthma. You know there's a saying, A worried mom does better research than the FBI? Well, that was me. And being a professor, I did a lot of research, and it turned out that one out of four kids had asthma in New York back then. Now it's 50 % children have asthma, eczema due to the climate. Seventy-five percent of the pollution comes from buildings. And I decided then that I would just focus on solar energy and I was teaching material technology at the time at Columbia University. And the trend in material technology is that everything's getting thinner, lighter, faster, stronger. Then the Haiti earthquake happened while I was teaching at Columbia University. And after seeing time after time, these catastrophic events, these natural disasters happening over and more frequently, I decided to step in and ask my dean, Can we change my studio around to be an innovation studio to help Haiti? That's when we realized Haiti was really a microcosm that was happening globally.

[00:03:25.480] - Alice Chun

Only 10% of the country was electrified. Everyone was using kerosene to light their world at night, and they were spending up to 30% of their income on this deadly toxic fuel. I thought to myself, you know if they could save that money by having a solar light, I researched every solar light on the market, and they were all heavy, hard, plastic or metal, ugly, utilitarian-looking. I'm Korean, and I grew up doing origami. I used the origami design method to create all of our solar light products. I was inspired by the origami balloon, which is a very simple flat packable, collapsible form that can pop open into a cube. So I made a prototype. It was glued, duct-taped together. And at the end of my Columbia session, I called the Clinton Foundation many, many times to come to my final review at Columbia. And finally, someone showed up who is actually now... I mean, that was in 2010. Now, he's actually the CEO of the Clinton Foundation. He invited me to Haiti for Clean Tech Expo. In walks Bill Clinton and the President of Haiti. 110 degrees. We're all sweating with sweat saddle bags under our arms. And he comes over and he looks at my prototype.

[00:04:57.780] - Alice Chun

He says, everybody, come Over here. Come look at this. Tell them what this is. And I like your light. It was just amazing that he was so astounded. He just loved it. And fast forward seven years. Hurricane Maria hits Puerto Rico. 3 million people have no electricity, and we're able to get over 100,000 lights to Puerto Rico to help the people there who were trapped in the dark. Because of our work helping Puerto Rico, I was given a small award by the Clinton Foundation, and I was backstage, and Hillary was there. And I had three minutes to talk to her. She is so supportive, especially women entrepreneurs, and consider her a friend and mentor now. But when I first met her, I had just come back from Dominica, where, again, Hurricane Maria wiped out the grid. And there were seven schools where children were basically learning in tents. And I had flown to Dominica with a bunch of lights in my suitcase and delivered solar lights to all these children in seven schools. And I told her that when I meet with the kids, I tell them, You know the sun is the most powerful source of energy, but the light of your heart and the light of your mind is even more powerful than the sun.

[00:06:33.250] - Alice Chun

And I tell them that I started off as a little girl who was teased and beat up a lot because I look different than the other kids. I grew up in a wide neighbourhood outside of Syracuse, and it was a lot of marginalisation. And I told them, the kids, that I fought with the light in my heart and my mind. And so Hillary heard this story, and she like, Oh, Alice, I love this story. Then she says, Chelsea and I are doing a book. Would you like to be in the book? And then I'm looking behind me, seeing if she's talking to somebody else. There's this Spielberg moment where everything's zooming in and out. And of course, I said, Hell, yeah. So a year later, I'm in the Book of Gutsy Woman by Hillary and Chelsea Clinton. And then they do a docuseries on Apple TV. They came to my home, my tiny, tiny apartment in New York City. 30 people descended on my tiny, tiny apartment, including the Secret Service, Security, a film crew and lighting crew. Hillary and Chelsea spent about four hours in my apartment in New York to film that episode.

[00:07:56.290] - Jenelle McMaster

Amazing. Alice, it's interesting. When you said about answering this question, I can see in your story, peppered in there is the linear aspects to your life, your Korean background, your son's asthma, becoming a professor of design, you doing your design work, the advancements in design. All of that seems very linear. Then there's the chaos in there all through all of that, whether it's the natural chaos of the Haiti situation or the chaos of responding to a whole lot of things happening at the same time. I want to go back to that first moment in Haiti because that seems to be the first chaotic moment where the things of your linear life came together. What was it like for you in Haiti with your duct tape solution out there? What did it ignite in you that made you even want to go over there. Can you tell me about that time?

[00:08:48.540] - Alice Chun

I made 500 prototypes by hand and brought them to the central plateau in Haiti. There were many farmers, most of them were women farmers. When I first gave those 500 prototypes to this one woman, she said that this was a gift from God. The women farmers started singing and dancing and praising God. And she said she didn't have enough money to buy the glass to go around her kerosene lamp. And she had five children at home who had eyes that were stinging at night and coughing because when they're doing their homework, the room is filled with smoke. That's when she said, thank you, thank you, thank you so much. This is a gift from God. Then I know I also knew that they were spending... they're making $3 a day. They're spending a dollar on a candle that only lasts one night. So they can use this Solar Puff and save money so that they could use that money for food or clothing for their children, education for their children, or start a new job. It's a win-win situation. The other thing that I realized in Haiti after the earthquake is that many women are, young women are vulnerable in human settlements because everyone is displaced, and then they're left with tents, and there's many, many tent cities until for years.

[00:10:33.360] - Alice Chun

And when they go to the bathroom at night, they're assaulted because in the dark hides the identity of the assaulter. They can't point the finger at someone. But if they have light, they can see who their attacker is. There was a study where solar lights were given to women. Then the next day at the medical clinic, there was a 30% decrease in sexual assault, which is huge. And so I never really thought of it until I went to Haiti and talked with the people that were working in Sete Soleil, which was where the tent camps were. Then those details ripple globally from South Africa to Uganda to anywhere where there's no infrastructure and women are walking alone at night. Even when there's a city and there's a dark alley, when they have to go home from the bus stop to their home, darkness invites evil, especially after a natural disaster, children go missing because you can imagine if the child, they can't find their parent, or if their parent has been killed, they're just wandering around. Those are the moments right after a disaster where you see human trafficking occur.

[00:11:58.890] - Jenelle McMaster

I can imagine that that would have been an unexpected and maybe an unintended positive consequence of SolarPath, right? I mean, I'm sure you wouldn't have gone out there specifically to shine a light on that.

[00:12:11.230] - Alice Chun

Absolutely. It just made me so much more passionate about doing what we're doing and to help regions where natural disaster strikes or war zones, because this is a very, very common occurrence that happens to women.

[00:12:29.540] - Jenelle McMaster

You have, since Haiti, visited many other red zones and war zones to help those in need. As you say, those are scary places. People are under the cover of darkness, and a lot of bad things can and do happen. What about for you? Were you ever scared going out there? And what drives that courage for you to lean into it? What gives you the conviction that you have the ability to do something about it?

[00:12:55.200] - Alice Chun

I actually say I believe that God has given me courage to go to these places and do what I do because I feel privileged to be able to help people. I've always felt that my life has meaning because I'm able to serve. It's not like I am in the Peace Corps or anything like that. I'm a professor and a teacher and mother and entrepreneur, but I do feel the most empowerment and peace when I have helped people, especially children. Before I went to Ukraine, which is a war zone, I had to fly into Krakow because there's no flights into Ukraine, take a train to the border, switch trains to get on a Ukrainian train to Lyviv and Kyiv. I went by myself with huge huge pieces of luggage filled with solar puffs. Four big, cute. They were like, sizes of hippos, dragging them along with me. People said, Don't go. Everyone's like, Don't go, don't go. And I said, I have to go because these kids have PTSD, and our lights helped the kids in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. There were health care workers that came up to me in a conference and said, Your lights have been used for PTSD therapy with our children.

[00:14:31.670] - Alice Chun

It helps them sleep at night. It calms them so they don't have anxiety. They all use them as nightlights, and the colors make them happy. And so when I heard that the kids in Ukraine, because of the blackouts, there were a lot of... the Russians were bombing the power stations all over Ukraine, so there were many blackouts everywhere. The nurse told me that in their hospital, when there's a blackout, the children cry, and it takes three hours for the nurses to calm them down. So that's when I decided I have to go. And I'm grateful and thankful for people like you to be able to share this story because there's always two sides of the story. It's not just what the media and the news are telling you about a warzone. There's always, always glimmers sparkles of hope that occur once you get there. When I met these kids that were one little girl witnessed 12 of her family members shot and killed in front of her. Another boy, teenage boy had his leg blown off and amputated. Another boy had his arm amputated because of shelling. When I walk into the room with these lights to give it to them, their faces light up and they smile, and they laugh, and they say, Oh, my gosh, I love camping.

[00:16:05.380] - Alice Chun

I'm going to take this camping with me. And I'm thinking, he's like my son, my own son. The same things that he loves doing, my own son does. It's like, they're my kids, too. And in a way, they are because the suffering of these children does have an impact on our kids and what happens, if you believe in the butterfly theory, which I do believe. So I noticed that you wouldn't blame these kids for having resentment or hate, but none of them had resentment or hate in them. And they were so forgiving and kind and generous and loving. And I just couldn't believe how in the darkest of times, you see these glimmers of light and these children. That's the hope for the future of being able to support these children. There's so many other inspiring stories of women, mothers that have had their husband, all the husbands have to go into the military, and they're left behind with the children, and daughters not leaving the country of war. The women can leave the country, the men can't. But the daughters won't leave their fathers because they don't want to leave them alone, so they stay.

[00:17:37.560] - Alice Chun

Incredible, inspiring stories.

[00:17:46.030] - Jenelle McMaster

You speak a lot about hope. I can hear it throughout all of your stories. Although in times of disaster, it can be so easy to lose hope. I can imagine that you would have run into more than your fair share of obstacles. Can you tell me about some of those, maybe the earlier years? What obstacles did you run into and what was that like?

[00:18:08.580] - Alice Chun

In the beginning, in terms of starting this company, I actually started with a nonprofit. I still have the nonprofit. It's called Studio Unite. It was so hard trying to get manufacturing done and getting funding for starting the company, starting just to get the product manufactured. So I ended up starting a corporation, a for-profit company. And we did a kickstarter early on, 2015, and we were able to raise half a million dollars in 30 days through this kickstarter. And that helped us with the first order of manufactured solar light, solar puff lights. But before that, trying to get investors when you've had no experience. I was a professor where I feel it's very important to share knowledge and have dialogue. Well, when I started to become an entrepreneur, I had to have everyone sign an NDA, which is a completely different realm of thinking. Getting past that, being a woman, and also Asian, a minority woman, it's very difficult to get past preconceived notions.

[00:19:34.600] - Jenelle McMaster

How did you do that?

[00:19:36.440] - Alice Chun

I just didn't give up. Move on to the next person. This is a conversation that I had with Hillary and Chelsea, as well in my apartment in that docuseries, when you're really... I've had times where I'm in a fetal position on the bathroom floor and not wanting to get up. Those times, everyone's going go through a hard time regardless. And I just think to myself, if I can just get up a little bit, just 1%, just work on that 1%, and then the next, 1 %. And the next, you'll finally be able to get out of that darkness. But you really need to have a group of people that support you, that are like-minded people that you surround yourself with, and friends, family. And it doesn't have to be a large support system. It could just be one or two people. But to have that is incredibly important. Then that saying, it doesn't matter how many times you fall down, it's that one time you get up. Well, it's not even about getting up. If you fall down, it's like taking just crawling, just putting one knee forward. That's enough. You don't have to get up.

[00:21:05.800] - Alice Chun

You just put one hand forward, one knee forward.

[00:21:10.290] - Jenelle McMaster

Where does that conviction come from? Where do you find it in you to have that kind of self-talk. Let me crawl, let me sit up, let me move that 1% forward. Where does that come from?

[00:21:22.190] - Alice Chun

I don't know. I guess when I was little, being from an Asian family, it was tough. Parents are really tough, and nothing was ever good enough. So I like to say that for most people, your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness. They’re interconnected. And so because I was raised to question myself and to question the world, it gave me perseverance and that fight in me to keep going. And I do have faith. I do pray a lot, and I believe that there is a higher power. Some people are Buddhist or Hindu or Christian and I have my faith where I pray and meditate a lot. I believe that having that mental balance is incredibly important. In fact, lately, I've been really trying to figure out how people of trauma and torture, especially from war, how they're going to survive, how they're going to get back. And I think that one of the most critical things is mental health, because you can get food, water, shelter, your body can heal. But if your mind doesn't heal, if you don't have hope, you're still going to die. And I've seen it happen. I've seen villages in the hillside of Puerto Rico where 40 people committed suicide because they lost hope.

[00:23:13.880] - Alice Chun

And that's why What happens when I give people or when volunteers or our nonprofit partners deliver our lights to people that have no power, electricity, they cry and they sing and dance. They think that it's magic because it's this flat little thing, and then it pops open to a light, a perfect cube of light. And children also think that it's magic. And it gives them delight. I think that what I saw in many situations, big, huge NGOs come in and they drop off supplies like food and utilities and hygiene kits. But I believe that beauty, wonder, and awe is just as important as utility, because beauty, wonder, and awe give you hope. It's the beginning of hope. And so that's what I see when I go to these places and give people light.

[00:24:19.670] - Jenelle McMaster

That's beautiful, Alice. I think it's a really memorable line, Beauty, wonder, and awe. It is the beginning of hope. I absolutely agree with you. With all of that, all those experiences, all of the work you've done, what's next for you?

[00:24:34.370] - Alice Chun

Well, right now, I was just on ABC news because these kids, I don't know where this is going to go, but I got a letter from a teacher in Asheville, North Carolina, and she said her students had made their own solar lamps and sold them. They raised $300 to give to us so that we could give light to one of our missions. And so, of course, I just fell in love with this idea that these kids are change makers, that they're changing the world at the age of 12. And I called my friends at ABC News, and they did this story. And we have a group of doctors that are going to Zambia. I don't know if you know this. It's not on the news much, but there's an incredible drought this year in Zambia. All of their electricity is hydroelectric power. There's a huge shortage of electricity throughout the country, and there's a group of doctors going, and we're bringing our lights to Zambia. I hope that we'll be able to have a Zoom call with the kids in Asheville, North Carolina, and the kids in Zambia holding the lights. I'm going to be working on new innovation and inventions that hopefully we can bring out next year But we just launched a new product last year, which is called the Megapuff, which is a large cube, also has phone charging.

[00:26:10.460] - Alice Chun

It's very, very extremely light. It got a really wonderful review from Fox News a couple of weeks ago, which we got five stars for hurricane preparedness. But I just hope that we're a small company, we're not a big company, but I believe in doing the right thing whenever It's needed. And so whenever there is a disaster, we do whatever we can. And we have a wonderful following of customers and supporters that are loyal and interested in how we're helping in different regions.

[00:26:46.040] - Jenelle McMaster

That's incredible. Look, I want to wrap it up there, Alice, but I wanted to say thank you so much for the important work that you do and your organization does. I feel the perfect alignment of purpose amongst the chaos that you bring and you have continued to bring over the last couple of decades, whether it's genesis has come from asthma or origami, to creating this portable and accessible light, shining a light on so many issues, literally and metaphorically. And listening to you, I feel like I have a greater appreciation of the incredible power of light, the healing power of light. Light gives safety, light gives hope. I can see why children see the magic in it. And clearly, you've put humanity at the center of everything that you've done. You've turned your own adversity, whether it's been a tough upbringing or a tough situation with your son, into your own superpowers, where that resilience and that perseverance is so clear. And it's such a great reminder that we don't need to wait for perfect to happen, right? Just that 1%, all those 1% make a fundamental difference to help us keep going. Somewhere along the lines of those 1% gains, sometimes there's just the angels that come, or it's the Clinton to accelerate awareness and growth that makes the difference.

[00:28:02.070] - Jenelle McMaster

I have to say that I don't often, I think most of us in our day-to-day lives, don't stop to use or think about words like beauty and wonder and awe. You have definitely given me a moment to pause and reflect on those beautiful words. They are the genesis of hope, and you are absolutely, truly a gutsy woman.

[00:28:21.750] - Alice Chun

You're going to make me cry, Jenelle. Can I clone you and bring you here and just keep you in my living room. You're amazing. So, so precise and so articulate. It's a pleasure being interviewed by you. It's wonderful.

[00:28:45.170] - Jenelle McMaster

Thank you, Alice, and all the very best for your work. The Change Happens podcast from EY, a conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.

Dan Rosen
President | Warner Music Australasia

Interview – Change Happens – Dan Rosen

Present:	Dan Rosen, Jenelle McMaster
Date:	24 September 2024

Jenelle	At the state of his career, Dan Rosen couldn’t choose between his two loves and so for a while he lived a double life. He worked as a lawyer by day and performed music gigs by night. Except what he once saw as being competing interests was actually what made him the perfect candidate for his CEO roles in the very industry he was so passionate about. This lawyer and musician went on to become the CEO of ARIA for 10 years and then the President of Warner Music Australasia. This is a fascinating deep dive on an industry that has gone through seismic changes.
*Previous audio from Dan*	“Napster has changed everything”. “In a 48 hour period of 1.4 million free downloads.” “You don’t think this is stealing?” “Not at all”. “This is robbery this will kill the music industry”. “You will all be sorry.”
Jenelle	Dan talks about the music industry being the ‘canary in the coal mine’ when it comes to digital changes. Whether it’s shifting business models, streaming platform challenges and opportunities, the impact of Covid on live performances and the music industry at large – it’s been a lot and Dan has been right a part of it all. I want to start by quoting the first line of an article written in The Australian in July 2022 and it read “Presented with a fork in the path, one way leading to stardom and one to the top echelons of academia, the President of Warner Music Group Australasia chose both.” So I love that headline! So wondering if you can bring some colour to that? What was the start of the piece all about? What was the academia offer? And how did you find yourself at this particular fork in the road?
Dan	It was interesting I was asked to go back to Monash University where I graduated Law and Commerce degrees and I was asked to give the speech to the graduates and it was a good moment to reflect on how did a world graduate from Monash University end up running a record label. Came back to that fork in the road where in one week, 21 years ago, 2003 I won a Fulbright Scholarship to go do my Masters of Law at the beginning of the week and ended the week winning Triple J Unearthed with my band ‘Second Dan’. I think it was a pretty good week! Even my Mum was proud of me that week!
Jenelle	Don’t you love that when Mum’s are finally proud of what we do!
Dan	Yeh, yeh, yeh!
Jenelle	But how does that happen? So I’m loving this topping tale of the week with these unbelievable offers on the table. So what inspired you to apply for a Fulbright Scholarship? And, for a music competition all at the same time?
Dan	Yeh I think I was working in Canberra at the time as a Ministerial Advisor and you are surrounded by a lot of very smart people who are all trying to convince me that, that was a good path to take. I always enjoyed study. It was something that I did well. I enjoyed both my Commerce degree, my Law degree and the more I got into it I thought the ability to go to the States would be an amazing opportunity. It felt like the path to take. I think the more random path was that I was still spending my nights changing out of a suit and putting on a black t-shirt and going and playing in an indie rock bands around Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney. So I think I spent a lot of my 20 years where people during the day didn’t know what I did at night, and people at night didn’t really know what I did during the day. There was a few people who knew. Whether I was Clark Kent turning into Superman, I don’t know which was the day, which was the night! That’s what it felt like. A lot of changing clothes in my car running between work and gigs. I think winning Triple J Unearthed felt much more of a long shot than winning the Fulbright as crazy as that might sound.
Jenelle	So there you are in this magical week with two offers on the table. We obviously know the spoiler alert is that you took both. How did you make that decision? What gave you the confidence that you could do both?
Dan	I went over to the US and went to all the universities that you could go to and thought hang on a second I can live downtown New York, close to all the places you can play shows and go to a top 5 law school at the same time. That sounded like a pretty good event. I usually have a motto that nothing happens if you stay home. So after school dark.
Jenelle	Oh.. it would have been tough during Covid for sure.
Dan	I must say there were times where even myself it felt ridiculous or it felt overwhelming or it felt like you’re down a very dark tunnel and you can’t really see the light at the end of it. I think there was a quote that I’ve used before by Steve Jobs “You can only connect the dots in reverse.” So it’s only when you get to the end of it where you’re like ‘Oh well all those things that I did and were interested in actually came together a bit further down the path and I was able to bring them together.’ But whilst you’re doing them it does feel very disparate.
Jenelle	Well maybe I’ll just pick up on that idea in itself. You know, connecting the dots in reverse. What would be one of those moments? Why am I doing this that did come to crystalise for you later?
Dan	It was only when I was called by a recruiter from the ARIA to come back and be CEO of ARIA which is the peak body for the music business in Australia when I started reading the job description I was like hang on a second this is a job that needs policy (cause it’s all about influencing Government). There is a lot of legal understanding cause you are bringing court cases against people who are breaching copyright. The industry is going through massive disruption because of technology. Last you are dealing with record labels and artists so an understanding of the music industry is fundamental. So that was the moment I had this lightbulb moment, I’m like “Holy Hell!” I reckon I’ve got all of these experiences. Even though I was quite young. I was living in New York so you’ve got a little bit more attitude I was like “I reckon I’m half a chance for this!”
Jenelle	I love that by the way and I love the hoodster that comes from all of those experiences.
Dan	Definitely I think that’s the big change in New York. When you’re Australian we told to kind of just be humble which is amazing and don’t really big note yourself. Whereas in America, particularly in New York, if you don’t tell people what you’ve done they’re not going to believe it. So, you’ve actually got to really get out there and prove yourself and talk yourself up a little bit more. I think when you get back to Australia you’ve got to tone that down just a little bit, so you don’t look to arrogant.
Jenelle	I understand that! If I think about all of the things that you’ve done it sort of raises for me the question of identity or how you identify, cause there is many descriptors that I’ve seen of you – musician, popstar, CEO, Fulbright Scholar, father, lawyer. What resonates most for you? How do you describe yourself?
Dan	It’s a great question. I mean at the moment probably husband and father would be my, probably how I would – my most important role and exciting role. Other than that I just think somebody – I think my motto really is to try to leave organisations or places in better shape than I found it. I’m only half way through so I’ve got another 50 years I might be able to add a few more descriptors to that.
Jenelle	I love that! So think about things where you’ve left it better than when you found it and noting that this is a podcast that’s called ‘Change Happens’. So interested in the concept of change and what you drive. So during your time as a lawyer you were at the forefront. I can pick all sorts of examples. But advocating against piracy, and you were one of the biggest proponents of getting legislation passed. That legislation went into effect back in 2015 and allowed for the blocking of illegal pirating websites. Reflecting on that time, and again legacy – leaving something better than when you found it, what did you learn about driving change that you then took forward into your subsequent endeavours?
Dan	That was when I was at ARIA as their CEO. I joined ARIA at the beginning of 2011 and the recording industry – when Napster came in 1999 and the recording industry halved it’s value between 1999 and 2013. I remember when I was interviewing for the job the Board said to me “Why do you want to take this job?” “The music/record industry is dying”. “Everybody says it’s a failing business.” I remember at the time saying “Well, we don’t have a problem with demand”. “People love music”. You walk in. I was in New York. You walk down Washington Square Park and there is a busker playing, and a kid stops and dances. That’s not a learned behaviour. That’s an innate behaviour that people love music. So, we don’t have a demand problem, we have a business model problem and we have to back ourselves to solve that business model. So when I started at ARIA, I think the scene was dual. We need to make it easier as an industry for people to do the right thing, therefore we need to embrace digital, invest in the right business models. But we also need to make it harder for people to do the wrong thing. We can’t do that on our own. That was only something the Government could do to put some costs on the pirate sites. The music industry is like the canary in the coal mine. We were the first industry really to get disrupted by digital technology because a music file is relatively small, so you could share it over narrow band pipes and has broadband came more and more common – we knew you were going to start sharing TV, movies, sport and the like. So, what I started to do was build a coalition of people from news industry, film industry, sports industry to be able to say “Listen this is at the music industry first, it’s coming for you too.” “I’ll show you a graph which shows you where the music record industry revenues goes”. “If you don’t want to follow us down that downhill slope, let’s go to speak to the Government about it.” And, at the time I remember coming in and they were saying “No Dan, you’re just pretending that the world hasn’t changed and you have to embrace digital.” I’m like, “No, no, we understand the world has changed but if we don’t put some parameters around this, our industries are going to continue to lose money.” “For us to invest in new business models we need the illegal business models to be chucked out.” And it took a few years, but we were able to convince them of that. And, now the music industry, record industry has turned around and digital accounts for 85% to 90% of the business and bigger than what it was back in 1999. We’ve seen the same happen in the sporting codes. They’re all embracing digital but had that not of happened, I think it would have been a very, very different circumstance.
Jenelle	First of all, congratulations it’s a massive amount of change by affecting that area then. You then went on to President of Warner Music Australasia and more broadly in the music industry you have been having to navigate some really tricky situations – some seismic shifts. You talked about the digital transformation. The different business models. But also we had the pandemic in there which was crippling to the music industry in terms of live music. Would have had a huge impact on a particular generation who missed out on that. Talk to me about what that was like navigating that change. How you led through that? What kinds of changes you were and have been and continue to drive in the industry.
Dan	Yeh it was obviously an incredibly difficult time for so many people in Australia and around the world. I was still at ARIA at the time when the pandemic hit and I remember coming home one day and thinking to myself I live – at the time I had a house with a home office. I had a family that I liked and a job that I wasn’t going to lose. And I thought there I am and I was super stressed and thinking to myself well I have those three things and I knew that a huge amount of people in our industry didn’t have any of those three. We knew that mental health was already fragile in the creative industries so that was going to be a huge issue and then also we knew that basically people’s livelihood is going to be decimated. I was fortunate at the time to have relationships that I’d developed with the Government at the time we were able to get I think $40m of funding for a organisation called Support Act which helps with mental health for people in the music industry and then Rise Funding which I think ended up being close to half a billion dollars to help put on shows and to provide funding to various events and labels and other people in the Arts industry. Then even NSW through Minister Ayres at the time and Premier Berejiklian came up with a concert called ‘Great Southern Nights’ which was to put on a 1,000 Covid safe gigs throughout NSW which was quite incredible and she told me later she ‘okayed it but she didn’t actually think we’d make it happen.’ But we were able to pull it off and again getting people back out. Having Covid safe shows, getting artists paid, getting venues paid and giving people a little bit of hope in regional Australia. So super tough time. Those initiatives they clearly weren’t able to exactly build back what would happen before but they were able to give people a lifeline through those incredibly difficult periods and I would say that we’re not completely out of the woods. We’re still rebuilding the industry off the back of that.
Jenelle	What I love about that is that you’ve talked about some of the really cold hard structural elements of the industry. Whether it’s the regulatory, underpinnings, fund raising, the statistics about the impact on industry when music is such an emotive heart felt – you don’t even know what’s going on, but you are swept up in collective appreciation of something that is so universal and Great Southern Nights would have been all of that – the feelings of what you’ve been able to create but there is so much structural stuff behind that, that was required to make something that feels so organic in the moment just be.
Dan	I think when you are working in the industry you want it to be like ‘Wizard of Oz’ that behind the scenes everyone is working incredibly hard but the audience doesn’t care who the record label is, who the manager is, what’s happening behind the scenes. The artist and that’s why the artist is always the hero. The artist is our front. Our job is to make the artist look great, feel great, and perform brilliantly and our job is about connecting them with fans and helping them connect with fans. That’s what it’s about. I think at the business level there is so much data. So 20 years ago, 30 years ago, even 10 years ago if you wanted to sign an act it was all about going out and seeing them play live and being in the back row at midnight when they’re going on stage. Now because it is a digital business there is so much data around what songs are working, what’s happening on social media. It is a real conscious balancing act at the moment between let’s call it ‘art and science’. How much of it is ‘gut feel’ still. When you’re looking to sign an artist, you listen to a song and how much is data. During Covid it became all data cause we had no ability to go see an artist play live so it was just the data. Before that it was all art and gut feel and really now it’s finding a way to balance the both. It is a little bit of data but you still need to bring the gut feel and the art and see how the artist performs in front of a crowd, and sit down with the artist and get a sense of who they are and what they want to achieve, and do you align, and that human element. So yeh I think that’s at the moment in the industry, is that, I think it’s healthy tension between data and art. You never want it to become too much data, but you also need to be informed by it.
Jenelle	Yeh and I think if you lose that gut feel you’ve lost the heart and soul of music as well right.
Dan	Absolutely. There is still I think no better data than walking into a room and seeing how fans are reacting to a particular artist, it’s an x-factor that some people have it and some people don’t.
Jenelle	Dan, you’ve talked about Australia in the past being quite isolated within the music scene. I’m interested in that and has the data element changed that? How has it impacted your own career? What do you think about the isolation piece? That you’ve commented it on before.
Dan	Yeh, we’re at a really challenging time I think for Australian creative industries. I think music again is like the tip of the spear on that. We’ve always been isolated and our isolation has been our biggest advantage and biggest disadvantage.
Dan	With growing up you had the ability to a radio played Australian music. TV played Australian music. A lot of people went out to see shows and Australian artists were out there playing and before digital most record stores stocked a lot of Australian music and there was only a limited amount of albums that you could physically fit inside a record store. So, if you can convince a record store to make sure that Australian music was prominent then people had a good chance of picking up an Australian album or CD when they walked into the store. These days we exist with global platforms in music that have the entire history of recorded music available. So at any point in time you could listen to Beethoven, Beyonce or The Beetles. You have that ability. We didn’t have that. Growing up you were limited by your record collection, or your brother’s record collection or what you were quick enough to tape off the radio. Today when Australians are releasing music, they’re releasing music and competing against 30-40 million songs and the entire history of recorded music and every great song that’s ever been released. And we no longer have the gatekeepers around to protect Australian music. So that’s the threat. The opportunity is there is a billion people listening to English music and there is 2 to 3 billion people on digital platforms around the world. So instead of marketing your music to 25 million people, you’re marketing to 3 billion people. So, it’s a conceptual shift of how do we become a much more export focused business from day 1 of an artist’s career. Export was always part, whether it was ACDC, or INXS, or Midnight Oil, or Kylie, they often broke internationally on the fourth album, their fifth album. These days you don’t have 10 years in order to break internationally. So, it’s a conceptual shift of how does local content. How does local Australian content compete in a global platform world? We are constantly looking at what that means for us as a business. Who are the artists we sign? How do we market? What are the levers that we can pull in order to do that? And I think that’s an ongoing challenge and I don’t think we’ve solved it, but at least we know what the problem is.
Jenelle	In listening to you over the various initiatives we’ve talked about, whether it’s regulatory shifts, business model shifts, experiential shifts, the conceptual shifts that you’ve just been talking about. That’s a hell of a lot different types of changes you’ve been navigating or leading – what have you learnt about yourself as a leader? Whether it’s within your own teams? Your organisation? In the industry? In the broader ecosystem? What’s your reflections about your own leadership?
Dan	Yeh I think I needed to recognise that I’m very comfortable with change personally. I probably seek it out and I get excited by it but that’s not the natural state for a lot of people. Change is scary for a lot of people which makes sense. So not assuming.. probably when I was younger I assumed that everybody was up for the challenge and up for the change and recognising that’s not the case and that you need to bring people with you on the journey, which I thought I was probably doing at a high level but maybe not throughout an organisation. So, understanding that change is a scary concept for a lot of people plus there is a lot of people with vested interests to keep the status quo. So, understanding how you shift perspectives and shift attitudes both internally and externally. I think I was better at doing that externally than internally and I’ve learnt to be better at doing that internally as I’ve progressed. So that’s definitely one lesson. Then knowing that things take time. So I’m quoting all these tech guys. But my other great quote was Bill Gates he said “We always overestimate the amount of technological change in 2 years but underestimate it in 10 years.” So thinking longer term that well this digital… and it really happened in music and you can actually look at the decades and shifts. So that’s another good conceptual model to say to people like “We have to plan for this now”. “We’re not going to see the P&L shift in the next 18 months, but if we don’t start this now, the industry will be here in 5 years and 10 years and we’ll be completely all it seeks.” “We won’t have moved and start moving the organisation.” The other thing is ‘completely flip the organisation.’ Because the revenue or the profits are not going to be there to support it in the first year so how do you slowly, how do you transition the business over time guarding towards that 5 to 10 year plan without throwing out the baby with the bathwater in year 1. That’s challenging. That’s really, really difficult. It takes time convincing internally and externally, and trusting yourself that you’re moving the chess pieces in the right possible way and no one gets it right all the time. I think that was my other lesson. I’m definitely, I would say I used to be a perfectionist. I’m getting much better at not being a perfectionist and recognising that with making a decision you are never going to have 100% right on everything and you are never going to have all the facts so it’s more important to make a decision and more the ball forward rather than waiting for perfect information to make a perfect decision.
Jenelle	That’s a real truism for opting for progress over perfection otherwise you’ll just be in a state of stasis. Spot on! So listening to you. I’m going to change tack for a moment, but building off the idea of the lessons of internal change and taking people on that journey with you and maybe slowing down on the internal side, you have always stayed true to your beliefs whether it’s the right musicians or also commemorating your relationship with your family. I know you have a strong relationship with your grandparents who were holocaust survivors and you shared their story in a letter to the Warner Music staff on last year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. So, a very vulnerable and open share. What motivated you to do that? Why was that important for you to do so at that time?
Dan	Well, I think I was speaking with the Global Head of People and Culture and she asked would you be open to writing a letter or penning something for the company and I was very honoured and happy to do so. Growing up in Melbourne all 4 of my grandparents were holocaust survivors. That was my only reality that I realised how unique it was to have 4 people who had went through obviously hell on earth but survived and the major lesson I took from all 4 of my grandparents was their resilience. Their ability to not define themselves by their victimhood. To remember it, but not define themselves by it and to come to Australia and rebuild their lives and fill their children, my parents, with love and with a love of their religion, their culture but of Australia. I think that was an incredible lesson for me compared to what they went through writing a letter didn’t feel particularly brave. If it helps shift perspective or gives some perspective. We’re clearly living unfortunately in time to where there is a rise of antisemitism. It’s up to all of us to try to hopefully bring people back to conversation, and education, and cohesion. That’s the Australia that I grew up in and I think that’s the Australia that we want to live in and certainly any small part that I can play to help that. We need to do it.
Jenelle	So what was the reaction to your letter? And I guess what’s your reflections on what that meant then for you to open that level of vulnerability up based on those reactions?
Dan	It definitely helped people start sharing their own experiences and their own stories. At the moment authenticity is so important because we’re bombarded with so much at the moment and there is so much fake. Whether that’s fake AI stuff or people trying to sell you things. Anytime you can be authentic and vulnerable I think it definitely strikes a cord with people. Again, anything that I can do to try to bring some more understanding of what’s happening for various people at the moment. That’s not just Jewish people. There is a lot of people suffering and a lot of people feeling that lack of cohesion that’s happening in society at the moment. It’s very, very troubling.
Jenelle	It is indeed. Dan when you and I first chatted in prep for this podcast you talked about when you’re looking back at your life you seem to go through a cycle of change every 7 years or so. I don’t know where you are in the 7 year cycle at the moment.
Dan	It’s probably coming back up which is scary!
Jenelle	Is it?
Dan	No, no, no.
Jenelle	Ok well that beats the final question I have for you. Where to from here? What is the new act for Dan Rosen look like?
Dan	You know I’m not sure. I’m really loving where I’m at. I feel very, very fortunate and privileged to work in something that I care about. That I’m passionate about. Every now and then really pinch myself ‘oh like how did I get here?’ I generally do feel that sometimes. I was at the Grammys this year and got to sit on the floor of the Grammys and literally one of my earliest childhood memories is my Mum picking me up from school when I was 7 and telling me that ‘Every Breath you Take’ by the Police (which was my favourite song at the time) won the Grammy for song of the year.
Jenelle	Cool.
Dan	And there I was there and I really did feel like an incredible moment. So hopefully I can continue to add value to our artists here and to our international artists that we look after and continue in this career and find more thing to give back to the community and raise a couple of good kids. That would be pretty good next step I think.
Jenelle	That sounds pretty good to me and I feel like we’ve come full circle on this conversation when you opened with your goal is to do as much as you can for as long as you can. This first half of your life seems to you have packed an absolute punch in there and I can see that energy and passion is not waning at all. For me, listening to you I’ve loved understanding how all the experiences that you collected in your life haven’t been at odds with each other or this duality that people have talked about. I think they’ve all been building blocks because as you say in hindsight makes so much sense. You’re mission to leave organisations or causes better than you found it. Coupled with, how do we make it easier to do the right things, harder to do the wrong things and the ways in which you’ve effected change at a structural level, at an emotive level has been so powerful. You talk about data and gut feel in the industry and that’s exactly what you’ve done to effect change. You’ve looked at the data. You’ve built up the cases and the stats but also you’ve created that really emotional humanistic side of change as well. And I really love the reminders around appetites for change. Not everyone has the same appetite for change and time horizons have changed. We can overestimate short term change and underestimate long term change. If I think of that, if you just remembered those things that people will respond to change differently and change can creep up on you when you don’t expect it and it can pass you by when you are expecting it. Really powerful reminders in there. Not to mention all your demonstrations of authenticity and vulnerability.
Jenelle	So Dan heaps to have taken away from this conversation.
Dan	Oh thank you so much. That sounds good. I like that summary!
Jenelle	I’m glad to hear it. Thanks for your insights.
Dan	Awesome thank you for having me really appreciate it.

[END OF PODCAST]

Robert Pradolin
Founding Board Member | Housing All Australians

Warning
This podcast discusses issues related to mental health and suicide which may be distressing for some listeners. If you need support, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Jenelle McMaster
Sometimes change can happen when a problem and a solution sit uncomfortably side-by-side, prevented from intersecting by a mountain of societal obstacles between them.

News Headlines
“Homeless people are being forced to set up camp at an alarming rate”

“Homeless numbers are up 23% in a year”
“… and while they’re out in the cold many buildings lie empty”

Jenelle McMaster
This was impetus for Robert Pradolin to take his 40 years of experience in the property industry to create an organisation that repurposed empty buildings to deliver on a fundamental human right – shelter for all.

Robert Pradolin
The thing that stuck out in my mind, in New York on one night there’s 78,000 people homeless. We do not want to become America.

Jenelle McMaster
This is a story about shining a light on a crisis that has become normalised. It’s about compassionate capitalism. It’s about giving back and reshaping the national narrative. It’s about educating, creating respectful unrest and galvanising collective collaboration. It’s about stories, it’s about heart and it’s most certainly about making Change Happen.

Hi, Rob, thank you for joining me on this episode of Change Happens.

Robert Pradolin
Thanks, Janelle.

Jenelle McMaster
Rob, you’ve had a long history in the property and housing space and all of that has led up, I believe, to where you are now as the founder of Housing All Australians. You’ve said it yourself, that it’s all felt very serendipitous, but I want to go back to the beginning. Tell me, what inspired your passion for housing and property?

Robert Pradolin
Well ever since I was three, when I built my first cubby house I assumed that all people knew what they wanted to do ever since they were small, whether it’s the cubby house or whether we build something underneath our parents homes and we, you know, stole some bricks from the place next door that was getting built and put the concrete in and did all that, and felt like it’s our little hideaway. I’ve always been involved with things as far as I can remember.

Jenelle McMaster
Amazing! You have had a very impressive 18-year tenure at Frasers Property, which was formerly known as Australand, and I imagine you’d learned many things about building things, as you’ve said, and about the industry during your time there. What are some of the biggest lessons that you learned from those experiences?

Robert Pradolin
Well look, I was quite fortunate to cover a whole gamut of different types, whether it’s a subdivision or medium density town houses or 60-storey apartment buildings. And during Frasers and subsequent to that I was also involved in Salvation Army housing, so social housing, disability housing through Summer Housing which is now called Liverty Housing. So, I’ve come across a fair bit of the housing continuum which gives me a little bit of an insight as to how the system works, and I’ve just found it’s just a slow evolution of learning. You know, I’m always curious and I almost want to see what things we can do better and when I was sort of selling, you know, housing, land and apartments to people who can actually afford to buy them, like most Australians I assumed our governments would look after our vulnerable people. And I worked out that they weren’t - and I’m in the industry. And I said, “I wonder how many other people don’t know what I didn’t know?” And that’s really started a little bit of the journey that’s culminated in Housing All Australians and, by the way, it’s not just me, it’s everyone around the country now. We’re in every State and Territory except the Northern Territory. We’re businesspeople wanting to help Australia through its housing crisis. So, it’s not the individual, it’s the collective that’s important.

Jenelle McMaster
Love that question, how many others don’t know what I didn’t know. Rob, very often we can just assume oh, maybe it’s just me that didn’t that, but I think there’s real power in thinking well, if I didn’t know it, there’s a good chance that others don’t as well. That’s a really good take away. You’ve sort of morphed into sort of the learnings and what sort of questions came up for you, tell me about the story of how you came to be the founder of Housing All Australians. It does seem quite extraordinary. I’m interested in hearing more about how that idea came about.

Robert Pradolin
Yeah, look, founder is a generic word that people always use and it always comes from ideas and then people get around you. But one of the pivotal moments was when I was having a cup of coffee with my daughter in Degraves Street in Melbourne, opposite Flinders Street Station. And a few days earlier there was a news story, where there was a story about the grand hall being empty for 10 years. And during that cup of coffee with my daughter a homeless person came up and was getting a bit of coins just to find a bed for that night. So, we gave him a few coins and after that I said to my daughter, you know, this grand hall’s been empty for 10 years and look what’s sleeping below – homeless people. I wonder how many buildings in Melbourne are empty? And subsequent to that conversation I sort of spoke to the City of Melbourne and Launch Housing and we started to look around for empty office buildings just to provide some shelter for people during the winter months. And we found a few – we were going through a few processes and then one day I got a phone call from the City of Melbourne and they said the ABC has heard about the idea and they like it, they want to run a story on it. I said, yeah but we haven’t found a building yet. So, like I always used to do, I always used to return the journalist’s call even though I may have had no comment, and I said, look, we haven’t found a building yet. He said Rob, don’t worry, because at the same time the ABC headquarters in South Bank was undergoing renovation, so he said let’s pretend that’s one of the empty buildings. So, we shot the story, it was on the air, next day I was on Neil Mitchell for talk back for half an hour. And then I started getting calls from everybody. From wealthy families all the way through to a homeless guy that found my on LinkedIn and said “I’m one of the great unwashed, thank you for trying”, and everything in between. And they said roughly the same thing – we know we’ve got a problem, just tell us what you want us to do.

And that started a whole set of ripple effects until someone that I knew was on a board of not-for-profit called CaSPA Care that had just built a new aged care facility in South Melbourne and the old one with 52 rooms were sitting vacant. And he said, Rob, is that something that you can use for your model? So cutting a long story short, we refurbished 32 rooms out of the 52 room facility with Metricon and their staff and subcontractors and we gave it to the YWCA for vulnerable women. Over 4 years those 32 rooms helped over 130 women stabilise their lives for no capital cost to government.

Jenelle McMaster
Wow!

Robert Pradolin
And now Hansen Yuncken are going back to do the last 20 rooms. They’ve started on site, pro-bono. We’ve got Mirvac doing it in St Kilda. We’ve got another charity called Bridge It – it’s all about young people under 25. We’ve got Henley Homes doing an old convent in Sandringham that’s owned by Mercy Health that they don’t need for 5 to 10 years. We’ve just finished 31 empty apartments by the Better Living Group with all the subcontractors and trades and material supplies – 31 apartments were sitting empty. Over $7 to $800,000 dollars’ worth of works, we spent $50 grand cash. And people were living it in now. So, they’re all occupied. I think there’s thousands of buildings across Australia sitting empty during a housing crisis and they don’t need to be built, because we’ve got material problems across the whole industry. So, next 5 years market will not build many housing because it’s not economical viable, yet we’ve got a housing crisis with our population increase, which I support the population but we have to house people. Homelessness is going to go through the roof. Why don’t we sweat our existing infrastructure better? And that’s why I think some of this idea is quite powerful. And already we’ve got two in New South Wales we’re looking at. We’re doing stuff with Uniting Church in Perth. We’re doing stuff in Tasmania. This is something the whole private sector organisations can get behind – every business has a role to play in helping our society through this housing crisis, because to be quite frank, it’s too big for government to solve on their own.

Jenelle McMaster
There is so much in that and the power of I guess the impetus of that story was the juxtaposition of an empty building with a homeless person there. It makes me sort of think about how many other juxtapositions are around us. You know, we have hungry people with food waste side by side, so I think there’s real power in starting to ask ourselves questions about how do we sweat assets in a better way to create distribution of assets to people who are in need.
You touched on, you know, this groundswell of people who sort of came forward to you and said, you know, we know we’ve got a problem, tell me what we can do. There’s so many problems around us, right? One of the things that I see is there are so many causes, there are so many issues, we often feel a bit overwhelmed with how to respond and where we respond. What do you think it was about this that made people gravitate toward you in a sea of so many things going on? What do you think you’ve learned about captivating the interest and the motivation of people to help?

Robert Pradolin
Look I think we have got so many issues going on in this society now that we’re seeing probably sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed. What I probably go back to is every person understands subconsciously that you need your fundamental human needs to be met. And that’s food and that’s shelter. And in fact we should start – because, again, it’s so confusing for our politicians. You know, where do you focus on? You know, where’s the political self-interest? But let’s get back to basics and say, look, without fundamental needs being met our citizens cannot function and become productive citizens towards society. So shelter to me is a fundamental human need that if we don’t supply we have unintended human consequences that manifest itself in physical and family violence, mental health issues, it flows on into justice areas, policing, long term welfare dependency. We’ve done economic studies or commissioned economic studies through SGS Economics that have shown the strong business case behind housing all Australians, rich or poor, it’s greater than any infrastructure. It’s got a cost benefit ratio on average in Australia to two to one. Most infrastructure projects don’t actually get that. So we’re saying forget calling it housing, this is economic infrastructure for a future prosperous Australia. And as business we’ve all got an obligation to lay the foundations for future generations, and that is what Housing All Australians is trying to do.

Jenelle McMaster
Amazing! Rob, you were the Executive Producer for the Australian documentary “Under Cover” that highlighted a problem which, I have to admit to your question of how many people don’t know this, I didn’t know that women over the age of 50 are the fastest growing cohort experiencing homelessness in the developed world. Staggeringly for me, I do find this statement 405,000 Australia women over 50 are at risk of homelessness today. In prepping for this interview, I did watch Under Cover, and I have to say I was profoundly affected by it. It was incredibly powerful, poignant, confronting – particularly the hidden nature of it. These women live in their cars. They stay on friends’ couches, they are on sofas or they’re in short-term accommodation. Can you tell me about that project and how that came to be?

Robert Pradolin
Well, all credit to Sue Thomson, the Director, and Adam Farrington-Williams is the Producer, because we, again serendipitously, came across each other pre-COVID. So, some of it was shot during COVID. You know, as a man when I discovered that fact that I didn’t know, I was actually ashamed. And Australia, we’re one of the richest countries, we keep on hearing that sort of saying, yet we’ve allowed women to sleep in cars and it’s growing horrendously. And we still do screenings around the country and men that didn’t know that, after watching the film, say I didn’t know that, what can I do to help you? So, it’s a bit of a galvanising call for everyone to actually watch Under Cover, the full version, because unless you don’t know or learn about what you didn’t know you can’t actually say how can you help. And it was really confronting – I still tear up when I watch that back.

Jenelle McMaster
Me too. It’s how I was, yep.

Robert Pradolin
And I’ve watched it so many times but to allow it to continue, well it’s our choice. And when I say our choice, I’m talking about the business and the community generally. It’s our choice whether we want to accept that or maybe – and this is where I sort of started – maybe there’s a few people out there that have similar views to me. Well, I’ve got to tell you, I’m overwhelmed by the business community and, in fact I’ve started to use the term “compassionate capitalism” because, you know, people that are in business are assumed to be all focussed on profit and greed and that is not the case. We are being badly branded as we’re all greedy bastards and there are at least 95% actually really care and the 5% in any segment is always the outlier, yet we’ve allowed it to tarnish the whole industry. So, I think we’ve still got hope in this country to try and turn it around but it needs a collective effort by business to help educate the Australian public about what they don’t know and through that, we create respectful unrest that generates political self-interest, and that’s the way the system works.

Jenelle McMaster
It’s a really powerful set of learnings because you, I guess, in understanding the architecture of the system and how to work the various nodes in the system – where power is, where money meets power meets influence, I guess that’s where you do make change happen.

Robert Pradolin
Well, look, profit and purpose are not mutually exclusive and when you align them they are extremely powerful.

Jenelle McMaster
Certainly, when I watched the documentary it reinforced, as these things often do, the power of storytelling. Tell me about some of the people you’ve me on this journey, maybe some of the homeless people. Are there any stories or encounters that spring to mind for you that have stuck with you throughout the years?

Robert Pradolin
Yeah, look, there’s one that sticks out in particular and, in fact, just thinking about it still makes me tear up a bit, is that in the lake House, which is the one I sort of mentioned to, when we were filming it there, there were a couple of women there and we had a bit of chat to them and one of them said “Can I give you a hug?”. And so she did, and she didn’t want to let go. So, we gave women hope. And I keep on remembering about the fact that she didn’t want to let go. And we’ve got homes for free. Now, I’m a very emotional person, you can probably tell by the sort of tone.

Jenelle McMaster
No, make me tear up.

Robert Pradolin
But, yeah, you know, sometimes there’s just that little gesture that makes a big difference to someone’s life. Even a smile can sometimes make a difference. And even stories of others, I’ll share one more story which, again, was quite impactful to the individual. We do the screenings of this around local municipalities and we had one in the Macedon Ranges in the Kyneton Town Hall and this time about I asked this local real estate agent to help us lease a house that a local councillor decided to lease it to vulnerable people, but I said can you do it for free because, you know, no one’s making anything out of this – and he did! And he did. So, I approached him during the screening – before the screening – and said, “Why did you do that?” And he said, “Rob, a couple of years ago this lady came in desperate, desperate for a house and we couldn’t help her, and two weeks later I read that she poured petrol on herself and burned herself.”

Jenelle McMaster
Oh, God.

Robert Pradolin
Now, that stuck in his mind. That is what he wants to do, how he wants to contribute and there’s a number of these stories around there that, if we start to share them, we can then do something about it. It sometimes feels overwhelming, but I’ve got to say collectively we can solve this problem. And it’s only through collective collaboration and true collaboration that we as a country can stop this happening for future generations. And, in fact, one of the things we’re doing, we’ve got this international speaker coming in September, called Gregg Colburn, and he’s just done a research about America’s housing system, and while that’s all different, the thing that stuck out in my mind, in New York on one night there’s 78,000 people homeless. We do not want to become America. And that is what drives us.

Jenelle McMaster
Wow, thank you for sharing that. You know, it is one thing to have a brilliant idea and, you know, have a whole lot of energy and enthusiasm around the idea. It’s another thing to execute against that idea and it’s clear that your passion and your resolve for the cause has been the driving factor behind Housing All Australians success, but I can imagine it hasn’t always been smooth sailing. I can imagine that you’ve come up against hurdles or obstacle after obstacle. Can you tell me about some of those obstacles that you’ve encountered and how you’ve gone about addressing them?

Robert Pradolin
And before I sort of do that it is a collective. We’ve got a national board and our Chair, Louise Rutten, is fantastic. We all dedicate a lot of time, so it’s just not about me.

Jenelle McMaster
I understand.

Robert Pradolin
Because some of the things, I’ve got to say, if I’m really honest, some days I do wake up and say “What the hell have we created here?” because you do have your bias. Sometimes you think you’re making progress and sometimes you think you’re beating your head up against a wall. So, persistence is the secret to that. As I said to my kid, you know, curiosity, belief and persistence – persistence is actually the hardest one. So the obstacles are always ones where people say well, you can’t do that. You know, why are you wasting your time for, you’re never going to solve the problem, it’s too big for us to solve. I said well, if it is too big for us to solve, that’s fine, but guess what? I’m not going to die wondering because unless you give it a crack, you’re always going to die wondering “What if?”. And that’s something I think all of the people that are involved with us across the country don’t want to sit back and say “What if?”, let’s give it a crack and see what happens.

Jenelle McMaster
Where does that conviction, or the persistence or that confidence to at least have a crack come from?

Robert Pradolin
That I don’t know because sometimes I feel, and I heard this in some of your past episodes, the “imposter syndrome”.

Jenelle McMaster
Yes.

Robert Pradolin
I do feel well I’ve had that all my life. And sometimes you wonder, you know, why people listen to you because, you know, you’re not that much smarter than anyone else to be quite frank with you. But then, you know, the thing that really kicks me on is when someone does reach out – I get a lot of people reaching out saying can I catch up and have a chat. And then you listen to how some of the things that you and the organisations able to do the – allow them to come forward and say “Can I help you?”. And that inspires you because that means that there is hope out there. People do care. And, collectively, we can make an effort. So that sort of picks me up from some of those down moments that we all have and it’s – I’d be a liar to say that I’ve never had a down moment on this journey because that’s just not the human being, or the human psyche. But more often than not it’s the persistence because you believe in something and ultimately, you know, when you’ve had a reasonable career and you’re, you know, comfortable, you want to try and give back. And that’s the position I think a lot of us are actually in.

Jenelle McMaster
Rob, this year’s theme for Homelessness Week is “Homelessness action now”. What does that mean to you?

Robert Pradolin
Well that really what we’re doing, you know? We’ve all got a role to play in these things and we don’t need to let it happen. It’s incrementally happening every single day. It’s being normalised therefore we expect it. But when you look at the long term impacts that we’re leaving for our grandchildren then we have to take a decision to stop that and I reference back the 78,000 people in New York. And once upon a time New York never had any homeless. It was allowed to be normalised, and that’s the problem. We have to draw the line, it’s like enough.

Jenelle McMaster
You know, it’s so interesting when I hear you say we’ve allowed it to become normalised. And I guess statistically if you look at it, that’s absolutely a true statement. That has been what’s happened and yet I found that very jarring to hear, because it was like well, definitely not. I don’t take it as expected, I don’t – but obviously that is what’s happening. The thing that struck me as I was looking at this and watching the documentary is the fact that it can happen on a dime, you lose your job, it’s been through COVID, you’re in a domestic violence situation, a whole lot of different reasons, the tenuous nature of the situation. You can’t even put it in a bucket, nor should you by the way, it says oh, there’s a certain profile of person that would happen to. The pervasive nature of this, the likelihood and possibility and, in some cases, probability that it will happen was really profoundly eye-opening for me. I don’t know whether there’s the normalisation element that is happening but then there’s the registration of that in your mind to really make that hit home.

Robert Pradolin
There’s a lot of sliding door moments.

Jenelle McMaster
Yeah!

Robert Pradolin
There’s people out there that are working that are one or two pay checks away from homelessness. And this is why, yet again, we want to bring the American chap over because it’s all about research, because he’s dispelling some of the myths that homelessness it’s a result of drugs and alcohol. Well, that’s not based on his research. It’s reflective of house prices. So, unless we look at the whole housing continuum and ensure that our citizens have a roof over their head, we’re going to have long term implications that can’t be turned around in 30 seconds like politicians might want to expect it. It’s going to take decades if we start properly with a long-term plan and it must be bipartisan because this is in the interest of all Australians. But the thing that keeps me up at night in some respects, and all of us have, or most of us have kids, is that because the additional cost to future generations is so high and the first economic report, we commissioned established that by 2032 there’s going to be an additional $25 billion per annum in today dollars needed for the unintended consequences. With all the pressures on governments that’s probably going to be too much to add to the ballooning expenditure elsewhere. So, what’s the consequence? Reducing the level of care for those vulnerable people. So, what’s that? Our Australian values are going to get watered down. It’s going to change the future society for our grandchildren in a way that we probably as individuals if we could transport ourselves would feel quite unsafe compared to what we are now. So, in my view, we are heading for a lose-lose scenario, unless we reshape the national narrative with a combined collective support by the community to create this respectful unrest on both sides of politics so that political self-interest is triggered. Because that’s the only way that our system will actually function properly.

Jenelle McMaster
What have you learned about engaging different stakeholders? Understanding self-interest, collective purpose, how you appeal to all those different factions to get people to work together to align to care and to drive outcomes? What’s – what have you learned? I’m thinking about all of us in worlds that don’t operate in the same way that you are, but we all have different experiences with engaging different stakeholders, so I’m wondering what the takeaways are?

Robert Pradolin
I’ve learned that we can’t afford to wait for government. And they are a key stakeholder, there’s no question about that, and we’re always happy to engage with government at State, Federal and especially local level, but we’re not prepared to wait for them because the politics of the way our system works, there’s three and four year windows. If it sits outside of that it’s a bit hard to get them to focus on anything other than getting re-elected. Some of the Ministers have said to me several years ago in a one-to-one meeting that Rob, unless those people vote for it we aren’t going to do much about it. So, recognise the realities of life. Don’t wait around and always bang on their doors because they don’t know what they don’t know either. Make shit happen, which is what our motto is. And guess what? If it suits their self-interest they’ll come along and say, how do we help you? From a democratic perspective, if the voters decide to actually support someone or reject someone based on the polities they need to be fully informed, which is why education is such an important element to it, which takes time. And people say, “How can we help?”. One thing you can do is share the story. Share the story and get other people to understand, get them to watch the documentary, learn and say how do we collectively help. And we had a situation where we finished these 31 apartments and from a company based in Coburg that had all their staff come out to start the demolition – this is the Better Living Group. And as part of that we had a celebratory barbeque. And we had the local pastor of Coburg to come down and supply all the food. He said, look, I don’t think it’ll make any difference at all, but I’m helping in my small way to say thank you for those that did. Well, we’ve all got a role, and his role was to actually celebrate and thank people in his way. So, I’ve got faith in the Australian public, they are very, very generous in times of crisis. Every single business I think has a role to play, whether it’s using their networks, using their products, using their staff and services. Someone that can charge $6,000 dollars a day for their services or do it for free, it’s their choice. And we’re saying, come on board and provide for free and let’s see what we can do without government.

Jenelle McMaster
Have you been able to recruit the next generation in the storytelling and the contribution to this at all?

Robert Pradolin
We’ve started to engage. In fact, the YIMBY movement we’re quite close to in sort of sharing our stories, because ultimately they’re the ones that are going to suffer the consequence of the lack of housing and there’s obviously a bit of a tension between what the Yes in my backyards versus the No in my backyards and I’ve been involved in a number of developments that the outcome after we’ve had so much objection and people were – come out and said afterwards oh, if I would have known that it would have looked this good I wouldn’t have objected. People naturally have that negative reaction, which I can totally understand, and our obligation is to try and teach people or show them that it’s not as bad as you think. And then let the reality of density done well, we must increase our densities in our suburbs where the existing infrastructure sits. We can’t keep on expanding the urban growth zones indefinitely. We have to sort of create an acceptable density where we can grow as a population, provide the fundamental human need of shelter as well as the food because ultimately we just want to live a happy life. It’s not that complicated.

Jenelle McMaster
That’s right. And so, is it as simple to say that success for you is every single Australian has somewhere to live? Is that what the nirvana is here?

Robert Pradolin
Success for us is closing down.

Jenelle McMaster
Ah, nicely put. Put yourself out of a job.

Robert Pradolin
Yep.

Jenelle McMaster
Rob, I’m going to wrap it there. I think this has been such a, I don’t know, there’s all sorts of emotions I feel in talking to you to be quite honest. I fell disappear, I feel great hope, I feel inspired to act and in fact when you and I first spoke I did exactly what you said you want people to do is they ask the question how can I help? It’s exactly where I went as well and I hope that people who listen to this do feel exactly that way, they feel a completion to act, if nothing else please anyone listening to this watch Under Cover, it is a powerful evocation of the stories that demonstrate the criticality of this and I imagining the little kid building the cubby house, if he knew then what he knew then what he was going to be building for so many others. You know you’ve been building cubby houses on a much bigger scale for so many people and offering life lines to so many that have needed it. I love the question Rob about how many others don’t know what I didn’t know and opening up the education and understanding that shelter is a fundamental, universal human right, that we all have the right to expect and we all have the ability to help make it happen. And an understanding that making change happen isn’t easy but at the heart of this is curiosity and belief and persistence because there are times that you’ll run into those obstacles, there are times that there are naysayers, there are times when it feels incredibly overwhelming. If you need to use those times to ride off the hope of others or to remind yourself of a story - a hug that someone didn’t want to let go, a smile that keeps you going then so be it, because this is, as you say, a really powerful, conscious, compassionate capitalism and long may you continue to create that respectful unrest that drives the intersection of purpose and profit to effect the kind of enormous and significant and much needed change that we have to have.
Thank you so much Rob.

Robert Pradolin
No, thank you Jenelle. It’s been a pleasure to share some of our thoughts and as you said we can all make a difference. We just have to make the decision to say I want to be a part of it.

Jenelle McMaster
The Change Happens Podcast from EY, a conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.

End audio recording

Leisel Jones OAM

Jenelle: Even Olympic gold loses its shine. What happens when everything you set out to achieve, that you worked around the clock for, that consumed your entire being ends up just feeling like a fleeting moment? Sure it’s something that you look back on with pride, but it ultimately gets put away in a box. What then?
Leisel: It sits in a bank safe and I never look at it again. I thought it was going to change everything and it didn’t. Go, oh yeah and move on - next thing.
Jenelle: This is the story of Liesel Jones. An Australian icon, Liesel is regarded as one of the world’s greatest ever female swimmers, winning 7 world championships titles, 9 Olympic medals and 10 Commonwealth Games gold medals.
Audio of commentators at competition: Jones is absolutely blitzing the red line.
Gold - a World Record, Leisel Jones.
Jenelle: Liesel is now a published author, media personality and celebrated radio host. In this interview, Liesel talks about her journey as a young girl in the public eye, winning gold but losing her spark, making her decision to retire, finding her spark again and the lessons she’s learned on identity, purpose, success and what winning really means.
Hi Liesel, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Change Happens.
Leisel: Thank you, I’m really excited.
Jenelle: Yeah me too. Before entering a 12-year career as a professional swimmer, you were a child and swimming was just a fund hobby, a social activity. What motivated you to make that switch from recreation to competition?
Leisel: I think for me it always was about recreation. I loved that social side of things. I really enjoyed swimming with my friends and having my best friends around all the time was probably what kept me in the sport for so long. So that transition from just a child swimmer and doing what I loved into a professional, the transition was just purely based on making Olympic teams. So I didn’t consciously make the step to become a professional swimmer but it just kind of happened naturally.
Jenelle: Nice way for it to happen. You really wouldn’t have understood too much at that point about how the world works. There you were, age 14, as part of the Olympic team, surrounded by well a whole lot of amazing athletes and a whole lot of adults as well. What was that like?
Leisel: It was very difficult because the next person in age to me was actually my roommate and she was 18. So in terms of a 14-year-old and an 18-year-old, that’s a big gap.
It’s a big gap and you don’t really have a lot in common and it was 18 and then it was probably in your 20s. Like we had people like Suzie O’Neill who was at the end of her career, retiring. Haley Lewis – the changeover was really handy because I had so many great role models on that team of people who showed me what the Australian swimming team was all about, and the values that we lived and died by really and we took on the world and at that time we were really dominant in the world and so for them to pass those to me was such a great honour to be a part of that.
Jenelle: Well tell me about some of those role models. Who were they and what were some of the lessons that you learned from them?
Leisel: Suzie O’Neill was definitely one of the most iconic mentors on that team. And not that she had an official role because she had a job to do at the Olympic Games which was to win a gold medal which she did. But she led by example and I think that was the big thing. Someone like Suzie who’s very introverted, really likes to keep to herself, goes about her own business, puts her head down her bum up, and gets the job done. She was a great person to have and to look up to.
Jenelle: I’m holding up your book here. You talk in your book, Body Lengths, about the early experiences of having your very public actions misconstrued. And one of those was being dared by a friend to do the peace sign on camera if you were to win a particular race, which you did. And I think that you did that for a laugh, a bit of a private joke, but it was interpreted as a “V” for Victory as if you were lording your win over others. You talked about learning quickly to censor yourself, to become grey, to talking cliches and sports speak and just say what was expected of you. What do you think now when you look back on that time and that unconscious or perhaps it was conscious adaptation of yourself then?
Leisel: Yeah it makes me really sad to think that I did have to change everything because the innocence was completely lost in everything that I did really because I was still so young and the peace sign was literally a dare. That’s all it was. It was so simple, yet media made it into this big thing and then people read that and so people think and make assumptions about you as a person based off what they read in the paper when it’s actually not true. So I found that really hard to deal with and you just become this really vanilla version of yourself which is very safe. You don’t want to say anything, yeah, and you just tag the motto, you tag the company line which is you know, I’m always happy, I’m always pleased with that race. You can’t be disappointed and that’s just not the truth. We’re very high achieving people and we get really disappointed when we’re .05 of a second off the time we wanted. So don’t be surprised if people have got emotions about that because that’s their life’s work and people are going to be disappointed.
Jenelle: I think that’s a point well made. Like you have to apologise for the very thing that is spurring you – is the win – and then when you don’t having to pretend that that’s not what you were there for.
Leisel: Yeah. It’s so interesting.
Jenelle: That’s incredibly weird, isn’t it?
Leisel: It’s so weird. And that’s an Australian thing too. It’s really not represented around the world like that. The US and
Jenelle: You mean like a tall poppy syndrome here?
Leisel: Yes, very much so. Yeah and the US are the polar opposite to us. They are loud and proud of every achievement. They shout it from the rooftops and very proud of emotion and people having a personality. It’s celebrated most of the time and we have the polar opposite, you know. Even look at like someone like John McEnroe, his massive outbursts playing tennis and he was a hero in America because people were like – yeah, like this is amazing. The spectrum of human emotion is massive and if we just play in the vanilla bit in the middle it’s pretty boring.
Jenelle: And then how did you deal with that pressure of having to, I guess, subdue that part of you or maybe put on a self deprecating kind of tone where perhaps you were incredibly proud of where you got to or incredibly disappointed with where you got to. How did you deal with hiding that part of yourself or changing that part of yourself?
Leisel: I very much got used to it in the end. I didn’t consciously make that change but just over time I just learned to be smaller, smaller and smaller, and not make such big comments or statements or emotions and it just eventually died. I think that vibrancy just went away, just became just a very boring version of myself.
Jenelle: I’m going to come back to this theme because I think it’s incredibly powerful. I’m hoping that we get to a part where we talk about how we revived the colour in you.
Leisel: Yes, yes.
Jenelle: But I want to just stay for the moment on the drive. Like as you say, you know, you were compelled to win. In your book – I’m going to read a couple of sentences from your book that really stuck with me. There’s a really powerful paragraph where you wrote,
“Let me tell you this. I don’t get up at 4.00am every morning and swim 12kms a day just to be there. I don’t do three-hour gym sessions just to be there. I don’t do weights until I want to cry, I don’t eat like a robot and I don’t give up school and my friends and being a normal kid, just to be there. I do it to win and when I don’t win, when I come third in an Olympic final that I’ve the fastest qualifier for, when that happens, it hurts so much I want to die.”
Twelve years on from writing that Leisel, tell me about your views on winning now.
Leisel: Yeah, well it’s probably very different now. That was a lifetime ago and I feel like a very different person now to what I was then. But the drive was real and the desire to win an Olympic gold medal outweighed everything else in my life at that time and I put all my eggs in one basket to win that and as you just mentioned I sacrificed so much. I put everything on the line for that moment and to me at that point in my life a bronze medal was the most disappointing outcome I could have asked for. I was there for gold and I was extremely disappointed and upset with myself and I felt like I let my whole country down and let my coach down, I let everybody down including myself. So to be disappointed is probably going to be expected, yet I was severely criticised for it.
Jenelle: I do wonder whether the expectations that everybody else that you just named then, your coaches, your family, the country, are as high as yours were for yourself.
Leisel: No, definitely not. No way.
Jenelle: It was a loaded question, I’m quite sure.
Leisel: Well the expectation on yourself is far higher than anyone could possibly imagine because we work so hard, we focus on ourselves the entire time. So I expected nothing less than gold.
Jenelle: Ok, so then conversely what happens when you did win gold? How did it feel? Was it what you expected, was it the high as high as what you expected, did you find all purpose and value and meaning when you finally had the gold in your hand.
Leisel: Oh gee, I wish. I wish that was the case. Unfortunately, it doesn’t feel like anything you think it’s going to feel like. I expected it was going to be roses and glitter and everything was going to be wonderful, and I thought it was going to change everything about my life and unfortunately, surprisingly it doesn’t. So an Olympic gold medal is – it’s a great thing. I’m so glad I achieved it but surprisingly it does not change everything about your life. You just go on the next day and other people have won gold medals and life continues.
Jenelle: And so then what was that realisation like? If you were so, so driven by it then you achieve it multiple times by the way, you achieve it, but it doesn’t bring you the golden and glitter and rainbows and unicorns that you thought it might have, what happens then?
Leisel: It sits in a bank safe and I never look at it again. So it’s funny because that’s where you think yeah everything is going to change but when it doesn’t you think – aww I worked so hard for something that I thought was going to change everything and it didn’t. That’s like life I think. That was a hard lesson to learn. And look I am very appreciative I ever did it. I would hate to leave the sport and have not achieved it, cause I was more than capable of it.
Jenelle: For sure.
Leisel: Yeah, that would be a horrible thing to live with. But in terms of it not feeling like it, I think that happens more often than not. I think a lot of people have a very similar feeling in their everyday life. It’s funny because I’ve – and I put this in my everyday life now. I’m looking at buying a brand new car and I’m really looking forward to it, it’s so beautiful and it has all the lovely things. All the beautiful trimmings and it is – it’s a little bit out of my reach but I really want it. You get that new car and that new car smell disappears after what three or six months or something and then it’s just like every other old car that you get used to and that’s the car that you have and it’s funny that I like refer to it like that because an Olympic gold medal is a very rare thing and it’s a lot of work to put into, but it was a little bit out of my reach. It was very elusive. It was very fancy to have and it was a nice thing, but you get used to it after a while. You just go, oh yeah, and move on, next thing. So it just keeps – the goals just keep moving. And it happens in everyday life. We’re all guilty of it. Loses its shine after a while.
Jenelle: I guess when you were swimming, winning gold was how you measured your success. Now that you’re not in a competitive sport, what do you use as your personal measures of success?
Leisel: Who I am as a person is a big part of that and how I impact others’ lives, is so important to me. That I’m a good friend, or I’m supporting other people, or that people enjoy having me in their lives is just probably one part, because so many people are hugely successful. They’ve won multiple gold medals or – but they’re just an awful person and so for me, yeah, I just – I really want to be just a great person and my friends couldn’t care less about the medals that I have. They’ve got their own medals. I would hate to be coming out of my career with all these gold medals and not one single friend. Yeah being a good person is my aspirations. It’s very simple, but it’s hard to achieve.
Jenelle: It’s interesting that your measures of success now are something so intangible, as you say, when your life as a professional swimmer was incredibly tangible.
Leisel: It’s funny that the things that are tangible get put away and you never look at them again and you work so hard for something that you can hold in your hands and other people get so excited to see yet for me I just – it’s not that I couldn’t care less – I can’t remember the last time I looked at it. So to strive for so long for something that I could hold in my hands that gives me a little bit of joy but probably more satisfaction than anything, but what gives me the greatest joy is sitting with a group of friends that have had dinner, I’ve been laughing the entire time, we’ve been talking about great memories. That leaves a smile on my face for weeks afterwards. So it’s really interesting yeah that you work so hard for things that are just things. We fill our lives with things yet it’s the feeling, it’s the internal that we really should be striving for.
Jenelle: Ah so powerful. So you retired in 2012 after your fourth Olympic Games. You took – I think it was a total of nine Olympic medals at that point in time, three of the were gold. After spending more than half of your life at that time being a professional swimmer, how did you make the decision to retire – I mean you’re still very young – how did you make the decision to retire? What was that process like?
Leisel: The decision to retire was actually probably the easiest part out of all of it because I really hated the sport towards the end. The last 12 months I knew that I was retiring. I counted down the days until I finished. The Australian swim team had changed immensely from what I saw with Suzie O’Neill in 2000 was a completely different team in 2012. A lot of people were a lot younger. I was the Suzie O’Neill of that team and I was struggling with people that didn’t really want to be guided or live by the values of the swim team. Everything had changed. So the decision to retire was actually really easy and what makes it most easy now is I have no desire to go back. So many people say - oh do you wish you could still swim? – No. Oh I thought I was going to get an exclusive comeback interview. – No, definitely not. I’m very happy watching from the sidelines. And not because I hate the team at all but just when I was participating I didn’t want to compete anymore. I’d lost my competitive edge. I had nothing I wanted to achieve. I had done everything I ever wanted and more in my sport and I thought I’ve got a life to live. And also the transition is very tricky so a lot of people are very scared of that transition out of sport and so hold onto it for as long as they possibly can just to delay the transition.
Jenelle: Well let’s talk about that transition cause you have spoken before about feeling lost and grappling with identity and purpose in the years following your retirement and that’s notwithstanding your readiness to retire. So like you said, you’re ready to do this. But you have talked about that transition period of a loss of identity. Can you tell us a bit more about what that was like for you at that point in time.
Leisel: I probably still struggle a little bit with the transition now and I’ve been retired for 12 years. That sense of identity because that was really moulded for me that sense of identity when I was young. I started on the team when I was 14. It was probably given to me that identity of being an elite athlete and performing and doing all of that. Whereas I didn’t really get the chance to discover what I really liked or what my hobbies were. I didn’t have hobbies because I didn’t have time to have hobbies. I had no idea who I was as a person and that’s still a journey I’m on today at 38 years of age that I’m still trying to figure out what I like doing and who I am as a person. So that transition makes it hard when you’re trying to figure those things out. The reality is you still have to make money. So you have to get a job doing something and you don’t know what that is because you have no job experience and I liken it to people that leave the military because we do very military style training. My sense of timing is very to the minute. So if I say I’m going to call someone at 9.00 o’clock I call them at 9 on the dot. And that really rigid military style training is just ingrained in us. And so when we don’t have that, and we have the freedom, we actually don’t know what to do in that freedom space. We have no clue how to fill our time. You just feel very lost most of the time and you feel like you’re blindly just feeling your way through retirement. No one guides you. No one tells you how to do it. It’s hard.
Jenelle: And everything’s prescribed for you. Exactly what you’re eating, when you’re eating, when you’re swimming, how many laps of that you do. So decision making is taken out – away from you.
Leisel: You don’t have to decide anything. Yup it’s all written for you. So – and that was a nice way to live, because like tell me what to do, I’ll do it. I’ll do it to the best of my ability. But no one tells you in life how to do things or what to do and even simple things like feedback. You don’t get feedback in real life whereas swimming
Jenelle: Oh it’s so true.
Leisel: Yeah and people are really scared. So I’ve done an organisational psychology undergraduate degree and learning about feedback and giving people feedback. So people are very happy to receive it and take it but they never want to give it. They don’t want to give any negative feedback, whereas I thrive on that, because that’s my whole life. I need negative feedback to improve. So I’m so used to getting that most of the time. This needs to be better, this is not good enough, improve this, move this, go here, do this. Whereas in real life you don’t get that at all. You can beg for feedback and no one will give it to you because they’re like – oh we don’t want to give you negative feedback. So – I live on that.
Jenelle: Well I would love to hear any advice you have. It’s something that we’re trying to drive much more in our organisation as well, and how do people see that not as a negative thing but as a constructive thing and how do people see who are giving it, see it as a kind, helpful process to deliver feedback as well. I mean any advice for those who are like – yeah how do we drive this – how do we make the conditions safe for people?
Leisel: Yeah, it’s probably there’s a lot of trust involved. So if you do have a mentor or a coach or someone that you work with they probably know you a whole lot better or a manager that understands who you are as a person. Because some people are open to feedback and some people are not. But if you’re someone like me who’s begging for feedback. I really can’t stand, it’s my pet peeve, is the sh*! sandwich. You know when they give you something good then they give you the feedback and then finish off.
Jenelle: You’ll be like just get to it.
Leisel: Please don’t – but just get to it. What can I improve? Like give it to me right between the eyes. I need to know. Don’t waste my time with but you’re doing this so well. Please don’t. Just tell me what I need to improve on. But that’s my style. That’s not everybody’s style. Some people are much more sensitive and need that sh*! sandwich to remind themselves that they are doing things well. So I think it’s individual. But the best thing you can possibly do is know or understand the person you’re giving feedback to. As a manager you should know what their personality styles are like and how they work. And that’s what some of the best coaches I’ve ever worked with and Rowan Taylor is an example of that. Just knew which buttons to push for which people. We would have sometimes 30 people in a squad, he knew individually how each person reacted to feedback or improvements, and he adapted himself to all of those. Yes it’s exhausting and it’s a lot of work but sometimes that’s how you get the most out of people.
Jenelle: You mentioned your undergrad degree in psychology. One of your earliest coaches I know in your career was not a proponent of sports psychology and was not backwards in coming forwards with his views that seeking psych support was for weak people, for losers not winners. You’ve separately talked about your mental health struggles which I expect both of those things might have factored into inspiration for why you studied psychology. What were your biggest takeaways from completing that study and what have you personally taken forward from it?
Leisel: From the study itself I’ve probably learned more from working with sports psychologists and working through my own issues and if I look back in my career, my first coach who said that sports psychologists was for the weak and that only losers were the people that used sports psychologists was probably the most damaging thing that happened throughout my career because that’s when I needed a sports psychologist the most. I was so young, I was only 14 when I made the team. I needed guidance and I needed help more so than ever at that time. I would have been fine when I was at the end of my career because I was older and I had learned But I had no support, absolutely nothing when I was young and that has set me up for failure really, the whole entire time. I could have saved myself so much upheaval in my brain because I could have had some help and a bit of guidance when I needed it most and I think that’s pretty disappointing that someone can have that impact and make that decision for someone who’s so young and so impressionable.
Jenelle: Yup I can relate on that, I actually had a – I used to be psychologist in the military and I used to get back in the day, a long, long time ago, I used to get introduced as everyone folks, the psych’s here, you know what we say, dry your eyes princesses but she’s here to have a talk to you. That’s how I used to get introduced back in the day.
Leisel: Are you kidding?
Jenelle: Nope, nope.
Leisel: Unbelievable.
Jenelle: And I mean we’ve come a long way since then but I can relate to that mentality and then getting introduced like that. Very hard gig to then you know work with people under that kind of intro.
Leisel: That’s an uphill battle then isn’t it, because they’ve already got them offside.
Jenelle: It is. Already making it unsafe for people then to stick around and talk to the psych who’s there to help.
Leisel: It’s so funny because I’m really, obviously really passionate as you are about psychology but that – I find that very fascinating that we have come a long way but yet we’ve still got so far to go in terms of how people can embrace our strength through understanding emotions but whereas people think emotions are weak and whatever. It’s like – uhh no. If you can manage your emotions, you are unstoppable. So yeah. And not just managing but understanding them.
Jenelle: I want to come back to the point that you made earlier which I said I’d come back to. You said early in life you learned to hear the message that you needed to make yourself smaller and vibrancy died within you. How did you make yourself bigger because you did. You have. I can see how many things you do. You’re a well known media personality, you’re a published author, you’re a radio host, you’ve had stints in corporate management roles. How did you revive the vibrancy and make yourself bigger?
Leisel: It took a long time and it took a lot of trust and a lot of work on myself. I’ve done plenty of work with psychologists and coaches and spiritual and all that sort of stuff on myself to discover who I am as a person. And to grow into that person is really hard because it’s kind of like that lobster analogy where, you know, the lobster grows into its shell and once it gets too big for its shell it sheds it and then it grows another exoskeleton on the outside and keeps growing that way and you just slowly keep doing it where you just outgrow your shell and then you build a new shell and then you keep outgrowing and keep moving. It’s probably just a bit like that, you just get a bit more comfortable and get a bit vulnerable and you go – oops I was okay then, I’ll try it again. So keep just expanding in that vulnerability of – oh I’m still okay. And the more you realise that the feedback you get is I’m still okay, you just keep growing.
And so it’s been a long time in trusting the process and being more myself is so much easier than it is anything else. So if you try to be someone else it’s so exhausting, or try to be the perfect person or whatever and I’ve just found life is just so much easier when you just truly are yourself. Don’t feel like you need to apologise for taking up more space or being the biggest, loudest voice in the room. When I started I certainly was extremely shy and I was probably naturally a little bit shy but as I’ve grown I’ve realised, no I actually am – I’m a pretty loud person and I probably actually quietened myself a little bit at the start.
Jenelle: You seem like a really fund, goofball, if I’ve to be honest with you.
Leisel: I am, yeah, totally, and that’s what I’m like and that’s why working at Triple M works for me because I get to be that person every day and I get to be as silly and push the boundaries a little bit and my office is so loose. Sometimes I think this is so me, I love this.
Jenelle: Oh that’s so good. Well Leisel we have the, of course, 2024 Paris Summer Olympics coming up. At EY we’ve got actually four elite athletes potentially going to the Olympics/Paralympics. Give us some background on what they would be feeling and going through in this lead up.
Leisel: Yeah, well as we record this the trials are actually happening. So it’s a lot of nerves because you’ve got to make the team. That’s the be all and end all. You can’t be nervous at the Olympics if you don’t make the team. So it’s very cut throat. Yeah, they’ll be pretty nervous in the lead up to Paris. But it’s exciting, because once you’re on the team you’re like – well I can’t lose here because I’m on the team – and Paris I think would be a wonderful place to have an Olympic Games. I’m just really excited for them.
Jenelle: And what’s your advice to not just the EY athletes going up but all athletes going up for it? What’s your advice to them in this trial period?
Leisel: Yeah I try not to give them too much advice because they’re so competent. They really know but the most important thing is just to have fun because it’s really serious and they put so much pressure on themselves. But it’s those little moments where you have a laugh with your friends in the massage room or the training partners that you travel with or sitting on the bus and it’s those really simple things that they’re the memories I have. And a lot of people always ask me – oh what do you remember about the Sydney Games – walking through the crowds outside some of the events or getting McDonalds cookies which were free, and I was just so excited. It’s those things that you remember. I remember nothing about any of my races – and the friendships. You know, I’ve got great competitors from the US who I’m still friends with or like Croatia, German friends. It’s really cool.
Jenelle: Aww that feels like a nice full circle moment actually when you said you started out doing competitive swimming cause of the friendships sort of almost led you into it. That’s really beautiful. So last question for you. You’ve done and achieved so much in your life, I’m curious to know what’s next for you?
Leisel: I actually have no idea. I have no five
Jenelle: That’s exciting.
Leisel: It is exciting. I have no five year plan. I’m just loving work at the moment and just plodding along. It sounds boring but
Jenelle Aww you’re happily plodding – no, no I can see the joy in your face and I can see a real contentment there which is so fantastic. Such a pleasure to talk to you. I have taken away a lot of things and I know our listeners will all take away a lot. I think if I reflect on the conversation, you talked about from moving away from the achievement of things. In fact there’s a lot of doing in your earlier life. Doing great races and achieving goals, and you’ve moved to much more of a relational measure of success. What kind of person are you, how can you give back to others, what kind of impact can you have on other people, and it’s funny when I think about that shift from doing to being.
When you look back on your life and you’re talking about – it’s the moments where there is the warm down or the getting the cookies at McDonalds. It’s all very relational. So I think there has been that strong thread for you throughout. I think it’s powerful to know when to make a change in your life. That’s a really critical moment and so many of us will hold on to status or things that we think we should be doing, well after we’ve fallen out of love with it or the things that we were drawn to are no longer there for us. So I think there’s real strength in knowing when to make that call.
We talked about the power of giving feedback. Feedback is a gift and so too is the gift of knowing how to deliver it in the way that different people can receive it well in the way it’s intended. We talked about no shame and in fact there’s great strength in seeking mental health support and guidance when we need it. The ability to manage your emotions is a super power and something that we can all benefit from, and it seems to me that, you know, you’ve been known as Lethal Leisel in the past and I would say Lethal Leisel the Lobster – how’s that for a new one for you – constantly outgrowing your shell, and I think that growth seems to keep occurring through more and more exploration of vulnerability and the strength that comes with that and not making yourself smaller and stop apologising for being yourself and stop chasing perfection and rather just think about how you can impact others. So there’s some of the things that I took away from our conversation and really, really enjoyed the chat.
Leisel: Yeah, great, thank you so much.
The Change Happens podcast from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
[END OF TRANSCRIPTION]

Prof. Dr Megan Davis
Pro Vice-Chancellor Society | UNSW

Jenelle McMaster
Hi, welcome to season five of Change Happens. I'm Jenelle McMaster, and I have the great privilege of speaking with influential and interesting leaders on their experiences of leading change and the lessons that they've learned along the way.
This podcast is called Change Happens, but what about when it doesn’t? Today, I spoke with Professor Megan Davis, a constitutional lawyer known for her work on creating the Uluru Statement from the Heart and for her advocacy work for the Voice Referendum. That's the referendum that didn't get passed. It's the change that didn't happen.
News Headlines
“Australia has said no.”
“…overwhelmingly rejected a Voice to parliament.”
(Prime Minister Albanese) “This moment of disagreement does not define us, and it will not divide us.”
Jenelle McMaster
In this conversation, Megan shares the highs of being the first indigenous Australian to be elected to a UN body, the highs of working on the Uluru Statement, to the deep woes of the no vote. Megan is very clearly a constitutional lawyer, a deep thinker with that kind of lawyer-like detachment that you need when you're taking on this kind of structural reform, except that there are those moments. You know, the ones that really get you, when you're reminded of just how deeply it impacts lives.
Megan Davis
“Aunty, I'm really scared.” That's the first thing she said to me on the referendum day. You didn't go into this thing to make children feel unsafe. We did it to give them a better tomorrow.
Jenelle McMaster
In this episode, Megan takes us through her journey from lawyer to leader and discovering the power of leading not just with the head, but also with the heart.
Well, hi, Megan. Thanks so much for joining us on Change Happens.
Megan Davis
Thank you for having me. I'm really happy to be here.
Jenelle McMaster
I've heard you described a number of different ways. I've heard you described as shy, stubborn, very measured, an introvert, someone with a great brain, someone who, you know, when they speak people listen. I know that you're the middle of five children and your sister Lucy has described you both jokingly, and I dare say lovingly, as bossy and a nerd who carried the constitution around when you were a kid. Tell me, how would you describe yourself?
Megan Davis
I don't know. I mean, I suppose all of those things. Lucy calls it nerdy, but certainly I see myself as a deep thinker who takes indigenous rights and Australian democracy very seriously. Definitely stubborn, but I carry my opinions lightly, meaning if there's a plausible argument for me to change my position, I'm not an inflexible thinker. So I will change when faced with evidence, but yeah, I mean all of those things and none of those things I guess.
Jenelle McMaster
I understand. What was it about the Constitution that could capture a 12-year-old's mind?
Megan Davis
Although we weren't a very political family, meaning neither of my parents were particularly politically involved, we were definitely schooled in Australian politics and part of that was an understanding that decisions made by Australian politicians have a really acute impact upon indigenous populations. The Constitution is an important part of that because it contains the rules about what the Commonwealth can and can't do. So, if you don't understand that rule book, it's hard to understand how the system works.
Jenelle McMaster
But as a young girl walking around, there must have been something that intuitively or inherently you grasped about that. That I imagine might not have had these kinds of words applied to it, but it ignited something in you back then.
Megan Davis
Probably my mum, who she, she's really brilliant and you know, we laugh about it now, but I believed everything she said. Everything! There's one family story where she used to say to us if you kids drink your Milo or cup of tea with a spoon in it, she’d tell this story about a family in which the mother’s eye popped out and rolled onto the table when the spoon... Anyway, I believed it right until quite late actually, a bit embarrassing on my part. But she has all these kinds of funny myths. She should have authored fairy tales or cautionary tales, but she, I suppose she was really articulate in not just Australian politics, but global politics. I remember being in grade 6, 7, 8 debating reasons for World War One and World War Two over the dinner table. Like she was just a very worldly, intellectual kind of person. But also Dad's family at a very young age, you know you, you start talking about things like Protection Act. You start to realise that lengthy period of racial segregation that our people experienced and you talk about different reserves and missions, Aunty this and Uncle that visiting from this reserve, this mission. At an early age, you're pretty cognisant of the fact that these are laws that are passed to restrict your movement, restrict your freedoms, and maybe it was just that's what I was meant to do, meaning I was attracted to the notion of rules and laws and how they're used to oppress people but can be used to redeem people as well.
Jenelle McMaster
With all those conversations, and I've heard as well you talk about discussions with your family, about giving voice to the voiceless amongst all those conversations. Was there an end game that you and the family sort of talked about what you hoped to achieve or see change?
Megan Davis
Maybe no. You know, she used to talk about speaking up for people who can't speak for themselves. And I'm not diminishing that people have a voice. But it's a metaphor for power and power structures that I think it wasn't just about being Aboriginal, growing up it was about being poor. So that underclass very rarely have advocates who advocate for the rights of the underclass, because people just assume if you're poor, you're poor because your family didn't work hard enough. Well, when in fact we know that there's all sorts of reasons why people are poor or impoverished. If we look at Aboriginal people, you had generations of people that worked for 60, 70 years, 80 years for some people, as servants and their wages that they earned were stolen from them by the State. In the early ‘80s, Joh Bjelke-Peterson, he built highways and hospitals using the money of Aboriginal people who had worked their entire lives on the railway, you know, as domestic servants, et cetera. So part of Aboriginal intergenerational poverty is that property and income were taken from people. There's a complexity around poverty.
We lived in a family that was a housing commission family where mum didn't have savings. If something went wrong, we had no money to draw upon. We had no one to help us. And that feeling of vulnerability never leaves you really. It always stays with you. For people who just don't have options, that really drove that idea of how do you - how do you find a voice in a world that doesn't think you deserve one?
Jenelle McMaster
If I just fast forward a bit, one of the many memorable achievements that you've accomplished was becoming the first indigenous Australian woman to be elected to a UN body. What did that kind of milestone mean to you sort of coming from that background you've just outlined there? What did it mean to you and how did it then impact your career?
Megan Davis
So, it's actually the first indigenous Australian because people think Mick Dodson was the first, but he wasn't elected. So, Mick was appointed. And so, I was the first indigenous Australian to be elected to a UN body. It was, it was really important. I mean, I started at law school looking at international human rights law, that's when I first went to do some UN work at UN conferences when I was working for an Aboriginal organisation in Southeast Queensland, and then in my final year of law school received a UN Fellowship in Geneva. So, I started that work at a very young age, then came back to Australia and continued to participate in the drafting of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And then I did my PhD in the area, and my masters in the area, and it was an important trajectory.
The position came open and Jenny Macklin was the Minister who asked if I would like to be Australia's candidate. I am still eternally grateful for her because if it was any other Minister, it would have been an Aboriginal man, a “usual suspect”, who got that position and probably not qualified to have that position. So, I was really grateful for the Minister, to actually know that I was qualified in this space and that she chose a young Aboriginal woman to do that role, and so I ended up serving 12 years all up. It's been a huge piece in my professional career, that sometimes I forget about actually, when I think, when I'm doing all the all the Uluru work. It's been good post referendum to be able to kind of return to some of my international roots.
Jenelle McMaster
You certainly have made a huge contribution in that period of time, but you are, as you make reference to the referendum, your moment of change came from the work on the Uluru Statement from the Heart. You ran many dialogue sessions during that time, you spent a lot of time with government, a lot of time with community. What did you learn about engaging stakeholders through that?
Megan Davis
I learnt a lot from the first process, the expert panel process, because we were as appointed as experts. I learnt a lot about making sure First Nations people are properly included and consulted on what those options are, otherwise it's all decided for them by other people and in that consultation, I learnt about how governments, when it comes to Aboriginal issues, are really unimaginative and they choose the path of least resistance, and they call it political pragmatism. That's politically pragmatic. That's what we’ll get up. And there's no time for them to reflect, nor do they want to, on the merits of a particular option. I learnt a lot about governments and politicians in this process as well. I don't think they realise they're patronising people. Even people like Aunty Pat, who's my colleague and is 83 years old, they almost infantilised citizens and say, look, you don't understand how politics works. But citizens have changed the world in many ways beyond the ballot box, and one of the lessons post-Uluru was very few of them had read the Uluru statement or the report, and so we were always grappling with a political elite that were illiterate on what Uluru really was about.
Jenelle McMaster
How do you keep going when you are trying to drive that kind of change and there is double talk, I guess, around the need to be pragmatic or the cultural illiteracy? How do you keep yourself motivated and continuing to push forward?
Megan Davis
It was a difficult year last year and then you get to the end of a process, which is an earnest process, that so many of our people participated in. It's frustrating. You just have to keep smiling. It's tough, partly because you feel frustration that, yes, you're in the door advocating for this but so many of our people desperately needed that change, particularly in relation to disadvantage and poverty. And having many, many people speak on your behalf, it's frustrating for them. You keep going. The seven months after the referendum were really difficult, but you know, I feel really energised by the 6.2 million who voted yes. There's so many kind Australians stopping me everywhere who said they voted yes, that support the reform and that's what keeps you going. Like, I feel energised to keep pushing on.
Jenelle McMaster
You have lightly touched on the seven months period there and I think about that huge set of roller coasters that you've been on, whether it was the high of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, the low of the rejection from the Turnbull government in 2017, perhaps the high again of it going to referendum, then as we all know that the referendum was ultimately unsuccessful. Let's just start there with the day of the vote. What was that like for you before, during, after that day?
Megan Davis
I mean, before, we were just very nervous because the polls didn't look great. I was more worried about my staff, about the Uluru use and the impact that the campaign and the referendum result would have on my nieces and nephews. I'd really thought about it as a constitutional lawyer, but I do recall the morning, so my little niece, Mimmy, who's named after me, she’s called Megan. But Mimmy said, “Oh, can I sleep in auntie's room?”. So she slept in my room and we had this big, beautiful king size bed and I remember waking up in the morning, because she's got the most stunning, snow white, cascading curls, and I woke up and her little face was kind of staring at me and the sun's coming through and she looked at me and said “Auntie, I'm really scared”. Like, that's the first thing she said to me on the referendum day, “Auntie, I'm scared” and you know, that was awful cause you didn't go into this thing to make children feel unsafe. We did it to give them a better tomorrow. I hadn't really thought about the impact on all the jarjums on Monday who had to go to school and to be faced with an Australia that was seemingly hostile to them. And for so many little kids who've grown up in an era where they learn language, they do welcomes or acknowledgements, you know, kindergarten and those early years are really precious, but have been magnificent in teaching. They learnt about the stolen generations, they know about NAIDOC, they know about reconciliation, and we've seen them grow up through this. It never happened in my time. And then I felt like, you know, are we undoing all that good work because now they go to school knowing, at least in Mimmy's electorate, most of the mums and dads voted no. It was tough to see the impact on the community. That's been the hardest is to see how hurt people are.
Jenelle McMaster
How have you navigated those feelings? What's the conversation that you had with Mimmy?
Megan Davis
Her mum was a really big – she ran her organisation in Southeast Queensland called Mob 23 so they were really actively really involved in the campaign and she's really cleverly walked them through it. I think most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families kept their kids home from school for the first few days, if not week. And we've spoken, they understand, you know, obviously in our family we do a deep dive analysis based on the data about what went wrong and you know we don't want them just running around this world saying well the vote went down because the nation's racist. I don't think that's why the vote went down. And so we work with them to make sure they understand in a nuanced fashion what happened. You know, post referendum our people just hug their kids and held them tight. My oldest brother kept his kids home for three days and they flew the flag and watched Aboriginal movies or listed to Aboriginal songs and I think that's what the community did. We got each other through it. It still hurts and I think many people feel really hurt and rejected. I just stayed at home. I mean, I was obviously over tired, so I slept for about 7 weeks, but it's a bit different from me because it's so intellectual in my head and I lived it 24/7 for 12 years. You know, it was a lot of work.
Jenelle McMaster
I wanted to ask you about that because a lot of what you've talked about is the, you know, the head part, the mechanics of the Constitution and how the architecture works, and then most moments that you talk about with Mimmy and the community is heart and what have you learnt when you think about driving change around the head and the heart and what needs to happen to engage both?
Megan Davis
I've learned so much. In the early days of the dialogues, you know, a lot of the old people kept saying reconciliation was the wrong framework. And I remember, I've heard it so many times from elders over the years that I just kind of switch it off because, you know, mentally in my head, I'm like 1991 the Act was passed and then there’s Council did it’s work and then brought out its recommendations and John Howard said no in 2001 and then, you know, I've got this trajectory and I can think it through intellectually, but I started listening, which is the point of dialogues, and really hearing what the elders were saying, which was reconciliation presupposes that there's a relationship and that we're actually just reconciling a friendship that had a conflict or attention. And they kept saying, but we're not reconciling because we haven't met. I learned a lot about listening and not being such a know it all in that space and actually what the elders were saying was probably true. The choice of the centre of the country was about the heart. I don't want to keep crying through this interview. That was a big lesson about love. Our elders have been through so much. I was so blown away by their generosity and the dialogues, because they're the ones that went through compulsory racial segregation. They're the ones that ate, you know, rice and flour and peas with weevils in them. You know, some of our senior elders now are kids who grew up in that protection era. They've had their children removed, they've grown up away from family. The things that they've seen and experienced and they come together and like all the young generations, angry and the older generations saying, let's offer an olive branch to the Australian people. You know, we need to coexist and we need to work together and they need to belong to our culture and we need them to feel like they belong to our culture because they grow up here and they - they're born here and they die here. I mean, I remember sitting there in some of the dialects, just going holy, what? And it's the most extraordinary thing. And there was so much love put into those dialogues and so much, you know, there was anger, but there was a lot of love and care about the messaging and about the fact that Australians need to feel a part of this Aboriginal footprint because it's part of them too. And that was Uluru, it was meant to be an invitation to Aussies to feel a part of us. I learned a lot about emotion and heart and maybe switching off that part of your brain, which is so structured and only thinking about acts and only thinking about courts. It's why it was so heartbreaking to see it just deteriorate into this terrible campaign that suggested that these people, who weren't the usual suspects, they were just ordinary people from communities that were picked by their own people, were derided as being elite. You know, people in low-income jobs, low satisfaction jobs. It was heartbreaking, but I did learn a lot about softening, I guess, my approach to listening and law reform and change.
Jenelle McMaster
Megan, when we spoke in the lead up to this, you mentioned that you didn't see yourself as a leader and that, you know, somehow you found yourself in a role that was being asked of you or you were in that position. Tell me about why not and where you are with that now and your, I guess, comfort with that mantle.
Megan Davis
I remember the day Turnbull ruled out a referendum and the Voice and I remember one of my lawyers, we were driving to an award or something and she just burst into tears. We had to pull the car over because she was driving, so it's really dangerous, and I remember thinking to myself, I've been up all night on the phone to Noel and Pat worried about the reform and I thought oh, I haven't thought about the impact it has on my team and how they must be feeling because they are all young and they've never experienced the Australian government saying no. And they just didn't understand why he would just say no. And I remember consoling her and thinking this is what leadership is, like, this is what it means to be a leader. I became a leader in that movement, I guess. That obligation, we felt very strongly about it. I'm in a position where I can do that as an academic, whereas most of the mob have to go back to work. They don't have the time and the resources to devote 24/7 to structural reform. Yes, I'm there because I'm a constitutional lawyer, but you also do become a leader in that space. And I'd like, you know, I’d like to get to that place where I don't always have to explain and justify, you know, to, you know what I mean, hey, like?
Jenelle McMaster
I do, I do.
Megan Davis
Not always having to say I'm not a leader, I'm not a leader and I'm sorry and apologising all the time.
Jenelle McMaster
What's next for you, Megan?
Megan Davis
Next is a chair at Harvard Law School. So, I'm teaching a couple of classes on recognition and another class on indigenous peoples in international law. And we'll just spend, you know, the year there regrouping. We've started a listening tour, so we're already out talking to our 6.2 million Aussie friends. We've been doing a lot of research on who those friends are. They're very staunch in their vote, which is terrific. They're deeply saddened by the loss. It's important and we can see many, many issues happening across the Federation of the past seven months, where, you know things would have been different if the voice to parliament had have got up. For example, the new Rapid Review Violence Against Women Committee doesn't even have an Aboriginal woman sitting on it when Aboriginal women have been at the forefront of activism and advocacy and law changes in relation to violence against women, we’re still being not included. We're still not at the table, and in fact that particular group appointed an Aboriginal man to the committee who will now speak on behalf of Aboriginal women. It's urgent. We're not closing the gap. It's just, it's not happening.
Jenelle McMaster
Megan, if I was to ask you what you feel most proud of as you look back on the many things you've done, what would your answer be?
Megan Davis
Uluru. Yeah, the dialogues I'm really proud of.
Jenelle McMaster
And the legacy you want to leave behind?
Megan Davis
Well, I hope at one point, we will have some form of constitutional recognition. It's the only thing we haven't tried as a nation. The only thing. We want to leave a better Australia, right? And if that means more Australians feeling a part of Aboriginal culture and more Aboriginal people feeling a part of Australian culture, that's the kind of nation that we want to nurture.
Jenelle McMaster
I think that's well said, and I hear in you still a lot of fire, a lot of hope, a lot of positivity and lot of determination in there and I think that probably harks back to those attributes that you opened the interview with, you know, you said you're stubborn but a flexible thinker, and I've seen that borne out with the way that you've been operating here and I do feel like I've gone on a bit of a journey with you in this discussion when you were talking about structural reform. I could see that deep thinker that could really understand the framework of change that needed to happen and then towards the end, as you were talking about your learnings and the emotion, your whole affect moved with that and it was beautiful to see. Thank you for sharing with us those moments, you know, vulnerability never leaves you. I could - I could hear it in your voice as well from your upbringing to now, the fire of democracy is built to change. And so therein lies the impetus to do exactly that. And I think that, you know, your willingness to lean into the hard stuff, not take the simple, superficial answer, but move into the complex and really get to the heart of it, the power of listening, the power of driving community to create solutions, the realisation of how head and heart have to work together. The last thing I'll say, Megan, is that I hope that you never from here on in, apologise for being a leader. Be proud that you are. That's exactly what you are. And so doing it all day, every day out there and long may that continue.
Thanks for your time, Megan.
Megan Davis
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Jenelle McMaster
The Change Happens podcast from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
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Simon Crowe
Founder and Managing Director | Grill'd

Intro: Hi, welcome to Season 5 of Change Happens. I’m Jenelle McMaster, and I have the great privilege of speaking with influential and interesting leaders on their experiences of leading change and the lessons that they’ve learnt along the way. Not many people would be able to say that they’ve built something out of nothing and stayed true to their vision and purpose the entire way through, but I think that’s very much something that is true of today’s guest, Simon Crowe, Founder and Managing Director of Grill’d. Grill’d is known for its quality burgers and sustainable food practices. Simon had to overcome many obstacles to get to where he is now, most noticeably a public court battle with a former co-owner and business partner. Simon says, “It was the most horrendous thing that’s ever happened. It was really challenging and certainly unfortunately, it made me distrustful of people which is just not my normal stance”. This was a really surprising conversation for me. Simon is so hard on himself. You’ll hear in the first half of the conversation that he keeps going to the things he hasn’t done well and this is all despite him building an unbelievable successful business and having mastered the formula for successful burgers and franchises with almost 175 stores. He’s on a mission to liberate burgers from badness. Hear, hear, I say - and thankfully, for all of us wannabe an actual burger eaters, he’s absolutely achieving this. Yet his humility, his self-judgement and his vulnerability is palpable throughout the discussion. I took a lot away from this interview. I hope you enjoy this chat with Simon as much as I did.
Jenelle: Hi Simon, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Change Happens.
Simon: Pleasure Jenelle.
Jenelle: Let’s start with where it all began for you. I know that your father owned his own business. Tell me, do you think it was always destined to be that you would own your own business.
Simon: Yeah, I do, actually. Undoubtedly, travelling to dad’s pharmacy after school, walking there with my sister, waiting for my mum to finish serving customers and then doing the delivery rounds and dropping off the prescriptions to the old people’s houses and saying hello and them telling me how much I had grown since they’d last seen me. They always ran their own business. I watched dad in the local community. I saw him serving that community with pride and probably didn’t know what a lot of friends dads did in the workplace. So yes, in short, I thought one day I’ll have my own business, that was inevitable. The question was “what was the business to be and how long did it take to find!”
Jenelle: Well that’s a great segue to the next question. So I understand that you’re a person who’s had lots and lots of ideas, created many many business plans and I know you had other ventures before Grill’d but given food wasn’t necessarily where you had your expertise, what was it about that idea that made you want to have a crack at that.
Simon: I often think it’s time and place. I have written business ideas. I looked at pet insurance when I was living in the States. I looked a myriad, of silly ideas, including one where it was a hand car wash before car washers were popular. The business idea took a long time to find. Knowing or determining what to do. If you had of said “food” to me some years before, I would have said “no way, that’s not my piece.” I would certainly focus on a consumer or direct-to-consumer business but the food piece was quite scary upfront and really it was a time and place. I was almost 30, I’d been looking for business ideas. I knew that I had sacrificed personal relationships and I hadn’t bought a home simply because I wanted to be eligible or able to take risks without consideration for others. So again, eventually I think I got to the point of contemplating ideas and never executing or jumping into the deep end and, at some point, with a bit of daring from my friends, I did.
Jenelle: Okay! So, the friends dared you. What was the aspiration at that time? Was it to be the little burger shop that was quite good and successful or was there an aspiration to be Australia’s largest burger chain or the world’s largest burger chain? What was the plan?
Simon: No, I think I’m driven less by outcome and more by intent and that’s both a strength and a weakness I might add but I was at a company called Procter & Gamble. I left there in a hurry to have my own business and went to work directly for a business founder and entrepreneur called Clyde Davenport who owned Davenport Boxer Shorts and it was a wonderful learning experience and then I went to Fosters International and worked out of Melbourne, almost with the best job in the world, I was selling my country in a bottle. I thought when I was with Davenport, that success would be having enough money to travel overseas once a year. It would be about creating a lifestyle where I could be proud of what was created but I always saw it in the parlance of a small business, never a big business. Success for me wasn’t properly defined except that of determining and driving my own train. At Fosters, I’d seen a round of redundancies, not once but twice. It was interesting to see some of the guys who I respected almost duck their heads trying to hide from the redundancy bullet, if you will, and I thought I don’t want to be that, I want to create my own destiny and actually control my future. So it wasn’t about a big business, it was about a business and pleasingly then, Grill’d gave the opportunity for scale but that wasn’t part of the proper consideration up front. It was to have a million dollars. I didn’t know if that was pre-tax, post-tax, cash-free. It was just a million dollars.
Jenelle: [laugh], one million dollars!
Simon: [laugh], yeah yeah exactly [laugh]. It sounds so silly, doesn’t it!
Jenelle: No, it sounds awesome. You’ve got to start somewhere. Tell me about that sentence that you just said “you would drive through intent over outcome”. Can you explain more about what you mean by that.
Simon: I think, you know, I have a fear of failure. That’s because there’s two things. One is I think at heart, I’m a perfectionist. Two, if setting a goal and that goal is not achieved, then it feels like failure and interestingly, I probably live in that perpetual state of glass half empty because when I set a goal, I generally set it to be pretty big and therefore the chances of getting there and achieving it are often slim but for me that’s not the issue. My view is if the goal is big enough, then achieving one third/one half or two thirds is generally better than not actually starting or reaching for something that’s more challenging.
Jenelle: So that doesn’t sound like a fear of failure to me! That sounds like you leaning into some big hairy audacious goals.
Simon: Look, I think there’s a truth to that in that I can see opportunity or I see opportunities sometimes as big. When I get to committing to that, there’s a cliff that you need to stand on before you jump and I need to be pushed off that cliff.
Jenelle: So that push for you was some mates daring you. Is that what the push looked like for you?
Simon: Yeah absolutely. A lot of my friends have known for a long time that I wanted to have my own business. It’s why I went to Davenport. It’s why I went to Fosters International. The intent was to bring back ideas or concepts from overseas. My friends have been with me all the way through, daring me to do it because at some point they just said “you just have to commit” and a wonderful friend of mine, Andrew Barlow”. I had my 50th just over a year ago and I read the letter that he wrote me from that time because I’ve kept it and it was very much around “we believe in you, you haven’t got anything to lose but ego, you’ve got all the skills, you’ve got the capability. Just do it”. But it really goes back to having people that care about you, who believe in you and I was very fortunate that I had that situation.
Jenelle: That’s an incredible friend and friends around you that did that and I think that’s a fantastic story. The story starts to take a little bit more of a sour turn now unfortunately. You did start Grill’d with two partners but not long after you started the business, one of your partner exited and a few years after that, your other partner took you to court and ultimately ended up leaving the business too and that was quite a public court battle and given what you’ve just said then, all of that background about fear of failure, about trust, about being pushed over the cliff, about people believing in you, what was that time like with those two partners. It feels particularly poignant now when I understand a bit more of your background there, what was that time like for you?
Simon: Look, those two gents are called Simon McNarama and Geoff Bainbridge. Simon left on June 30 2010. I had to sign contracts at about 11.50pm that night. My wife had been hit by a car during that day and I still remember the hospital saying to me “I want to let you know that Sophie is still alive” and they were first words they said before then explaining that she was in a pretty banged up state after being hit by a car when she was out running. Signing the deal for Simon at that point was put into context of this thing called business is not that important because I had nearly lost my … or she wasn’t my wife then, my fiancée and we had a little kid who was nine months old, but Simon and I had some real challenges. He was fundamental to the business early because he is such a great operator. He’s an accountant. He was based in Melbourne and he had done it before, that is, he had built a small business and had made that business very successful, I might add. So we had a challenging time for a while there and, no surprise, my fiancée, his wife, who was also a friend of mine, those two got together and said “what’s going on here, this is ridiculous” and Simon is still one of my best best friends. For Geoff, that was actually 2015. We had an enterprise agreement issue at one of our franchise partners, understandably that has a halo affect across our brand and Geoff wanted to exit the shareholders agreement because he said “I don’t want to be involved in the business anymore”. We’d been challenged and/or frictional for a couple of years. It probably wasn’t a surprise and then he chose a course of action and took me to the federal court. It was the most horrendous thing that’s ever happened. It was really challenging and certainly unfortunately, it made me distrustful of people which is just not my normal stance.
Jenelle: I’ve got to believe that you have built back trust with people over time. How did you do that, it would have been an incredibly confronting period of time for you.
Simon: Yeah.
Jenelle: How did you run the business during that time, how did you build that.
Simon: Look, there’s a couple of moments in our journey and every business has significant challenges. Nothing is an easy or linear path and certainly over time, you learn to ride those bumps differently and better but that was the first significant episode for me and for Grill’d because we’d had a wonderful ride in terms of publicity, in terms of consumer appeal, in terms of momentum and when you’re small and you’re on a growth pathway, you almost feel invincible and a wonderful mate of mine who’s the CEO of AESOP, Michael O’Keeffe. He also wrote me a wonderful letter at a point in time, you know, and this wasn’t entirely linked to the Geoff scenario but it was about businesses hitting a plateau when once upon a time you were defined by energy and excitement, potential and momentum and then you actually have to realise “who are you and what do you stand for”. Well interestingly, that plays true to me through the Geoff scenario because I felt compelled to protect my people from all that was going on. I therefore tried to wear the stress and the challenges of a significant and ongoing legal dispute on my shoulders and I asked the guys to keep running the business. If I had my time again, I would have changed that dramatically. I would have brought them into the fold. I would have asked them to support me. It would have been a collaborative thing together, albeit I still didn’t want to or wouldn’t want to burden them too much. I thought it was my fight to have, not theirs but upon reflection, when I alienated myself and/or withdrew, that wasn’t good for my relationship with them either, in terms of trust, in terms of working together. So all of that played through and Michael’s email to me about “well, you better know yourself”, that came to pass through and out the other side of the Geoff scenario and that was for me to say “well who am I, what do I stand for as a person, let alone that of a professional” and if you believe in being vulnerable, if you believe in being trusting, if you believe that people need to have a voice and if you believe that genuinely, there are wonderful ideas across the group, you just need to listen. I started to find myself again, but it wasn’t easy. It took a long time. I can talk about it now without there being emotion associated with it but it certainly and another future event, but those two events certainly shaped me meaningfully. It made me stronger, it made me more resilient but I think that they did take a chip out of the … the duco of the car and that chip was one of trust.
Jenelle: Thank you for sharing that Simon. I think that’s incredibly … you continue to be vulnerable in sharing that. I can still hear the emotion in your voice and I think they’re always really powerful questions to ask anyone to ask themselves at different points in their life, who am I, what do I stand for, what do I believe in. How would you articulate the answers to those questions. What did you learn about who you are?
Simon: I know Jenelle, it sounds silly. I used to be, I think, very evolved for a 27 or 30 year old on an emotional level in terms of engagement with others and clear in my own self identification. I think as time has passed, I’ve become less about Simon the person and more about Simon the businessman which isn’t, I think, balanced or something I should be celebrating. I’ve got an opportunity and that’s what Grill’d has given me, optionality. I’ve just got to learn to take it but the optionality is there for me to actually make sure I’m not just a decent or reasonable businessman, but a great person and I sometimes think that I’ve let one lead and one lag and who am I. Well I know in a business sense who I am. I’m resilient, I’m perseverance, I have a drive and I have a desire to actually be proud of what we create but that’s not who I am as a person. I hope I’m considerate. I hope I’m loyal. I hope I’m there for people when they need me and I hope I’ve actually got patience but no doubt, my patience and my time, my connection to my friends isn’t what it should or could be and I’ve let Grill’d either be the excuse or the reason for not being engaged enough with that friendship group. You can’t keep taking cookies out of the jar and not put them back in. So I’ve got a finite amount of time to make change to the way that I lead and operate so I can be a better person, not just a reasonable businessman.
Jenelle: It sounds like those are the things that you are going to get to but I know that you have been doing them. So what are the things that you are proud of that you have been doing, in light of all of those hard lessons and hard battles that you’ve had in there. What have you been doing to get the balance of Simon of the businessman/Simon the human to where you feel really comfortable.
Simon: I don’t think I’ve been doing enough. I know that going to the gym makes me better physically and mentally and yet I’m not doing it properly. I know that I get energy when I actually engage with friends, particularly one on one. So I’m not doing enough of what I should do in that regard but in terms of being a servant to Grill’d I feel proud of that. I feel like I’ve got to make sure that ego doesn’t get in my way relative to having founded the business. You know, do I know everything! I know Grill’d really well but I don’t know everything and in fact I think our business could be far more successful. How do I put a CEO into the business so I can play to my strengths and again, I was very very fortunate that I went to a business moons ago called Procter & Gamble and I hope that Grill’d can become a place a little bit like that, changed my life for good and I’d like to do that for lots of people that are in our business.
Jenelle: In what way did it change your life for good?
Simon: Look, I was young when I joined Procter & Gamble. I’d been rejected by numerous companies including P&G, coming out of university and I had called them to ask why I didn’t do so well in the interview and then six months later, I called them after I got some better results at university because I didn’t engage with university the way that I should of and then the gentleman that answered the phone, the guy that interviewed me, his name is Simon Fraser, he’ll always be important to me. When I said “look, I’d like to be reconsidered because I’ve now got some better marks, is there a possibility of doing so”. He said “that’s great initiative”. Simon, about … I’m going to say 2010, six years after Grill’d had started rang me up and said “Crowie, did I ever tell you what happened that morning”. I said “no mate, what happened” but he said to me “sometimes things happen for a reason. You rang and only half an hour before that, a graduate who was supposed to start on that day said she had pulled out and therefore there was a space available which hadn’t been available had you called the day before. So you know, I’m not being fatalistic, as my wife says trusting in the process of life. Procter & Gamble then taught me the benefit of brand, how brands stand for something meaningful, how they pass the test of time and how they cross borders internationally and they also taught me how values are inherent in the business that wants to be something that’s beyond only selling a product and those learnings have been with me ever since.
Jenelle: That’s amazing and I have to tell you that is exactly how I got my break into my working career …
Simon: [laugh] … really!
Jenelle: … I also got rejected from a job and like you, I called back to get some feedback and as it turned out the person had declined the offer, maybe an hour before I called and that’s honestly set me up in life but I would say, I know you say you got lucky, but you know, the definition of luck is where preparation meets opportunity. So your preparation, you went back and did your studies and then the opportunity came. So let’s not deny both of ourselves some kind of hand in that [laugh]. I’m really glad Simon, that you talked about the things that you’re feeling proud of. This year is Grill’d 20 year anniversary. You have almost 175 locations, I think, across Australia. Your first international restaurant in Bali in Indonesia. You’ve given away millions of dollars to charity, you’ve invested in sustainable businesses and anyone who’s listening to this who doesn’t know about your background could be forgiven for now realising the extent of that success but despite all that growth and all that success, you’ve managed to stay true to a motto that you’ve shared many times “get big and stay small”. I can hear that as an undercurrent in what you’ve been sharing with me today but what does that mantra mean to you and why is it important to you?
Simon: There’s a rational reason and an emotional reason but I’ll try to deal with you the rational first. We’re in the burger landscape and the burger landscape is arguably the most popular food category in the world.
Jenelle: Oh!
Simon: Yeah! The category has historically been dominated by multinational fast food players who are at the bottom of the rung relative to food quality, food integrity and service in terms of engagement. So we have a brand that tries to play to a local environment because we believe that we can make a difference in local environments, to communities, we can actually engage with them and that’s what my dad did and my dad did that exceptionally. I still remember every Christmas, he would close the doors the day before. All of his customers would come in and they’d come in throughout the day and have a glass of champagne and have a chat with dad. So the first time I had sort of seen him in mere type role and it was lovely to watch because I could see how he was positively impacting them and their lives. So there’s a vocal piece that is fundamental to our business. That’s about staying small. There’s a rational piece that says we’re never going to have the money that McDonalds does and McDonalds defines the burger landscape because they spend so much money. So don’t try and compete with goliath head on, make sure you’ve got your own style, you know who and what you stand for and make sure that therefore you play to your niche. Now I don’t want our niche to be small. I want our niche to be big. You need to be able to engage people’s hearts in business. I think playing local does that to our people internally and if we engage our people internally, you know, respectfully I don’t need to worry about our guests because they’ll always get looked after. So if we’re going to be different and therefore rebels with a cause, we had better know what actually we anchor ourselves in and for me that’s local, that’s sustainability, that’s high quality product, that’s being proudly Australian and that’s making sure that our front line teams are the hero of this business and the real hero is the restaurant manager because the restaurant manager in our business is the person that leads the charge across those 175 restaurants which therefore means 175 communities and that means a truckload of people per week.
Jenelle: That’s fantastic and I have been long trying to herald the … the goodness of burgers way before there actually was any ability to have good burger, usually after a big night out I would herald such a thing and I’m very grateful for you doing that genuinely. So you’ve talked quite a bit there about the heroes of the business and really trying to engage hearts. You’ve talked about the importance for you growing up in your career of having access to development opportunities. How do you create the environment at Grill’d for your staff to develop their experiences and learn leadership skills?
Simon: Look, I’d say for us our people are always going to be our greatest asset but have we nailed this – no, but we’ve got a turnover post-covid that is greater than it used to be, even at a restaurant manager level. At a restaurant manager level, we got to a turnover less than 25% which means that our guys were in the position for four years and given that most of them have actually grown within the business, that meant they were often were with us for 6/7 or even 10+ years. So our business turnover is greater than I’d like it to be and that’s the challenge and the opportunity. How do we become a brand that gives people a career. How do we give them the development and the learning that they need and want and we’ll always try to get talent from the outside but growing and developing talent from the inside is really the hallmark of a business that has a strong culture and therefore by default, often and generally a strong brand. So we do have training programmes internally which are getting more and more robust all the time. We engage them to say “be part of your community and the local matters”. Each restaurant each month gives away $500 across three different groups in their local community. Our people and our teams then go and often work with and side by side with those community groups. We encourage them to do that. We’re now trying to set up an ownership structure which is in existence. It’s called “Our Grill’d Partner Programme” where notionally the RM or the restaurant manager owns 5% of the business. We’ve got 12 of those in 170 restaurants. We’re about to put down another five and then we’ve got a pipeline for another 15 to 20 and we’ve migrated the GP programme, which is Grill’d Partner to a JV – a joint venture programme to an ownership programme and eventually to then franchises or franchise partners and what’s the intent of that. Well, there’s nothing more significant in our business than (a) our purpose and that’s to positively impact the lives of our peoples and communities through engagement, energy and education and that plays into our values and our values are passion, leadership, ownership and trust. They’ve been with us from the start and in 2021, we added sustainability and if our guys believe in our purpose, if they understand our values, then the thing that I want to do is double-down and triple-down on one of those values being ownership and we can positively change their lives if they can take an ownership pathway and grow significantly their earning capacity and also their management and leadership skillset and that’s what we’re trying to do, feel that we’re going to be an employer that is best in class and that because if we want to be the brand that presents itself or the opportunity that presents itself, then our desire and need is to have brand in business inextricably linked. That means people on a journey for a long time and believing in what we do because we are more than just a “burger joint”.
Jenelle: So clearly there’s been an increased focus on sustainability and ethical consumerism across the convenience food industry in recent years but Grill’d was the leader in sustainable food practices well before it was fashionable. I know last year you introduced the “game changer burger”, understood to be the world’s most sustainable beef burger, produces 67% less methane and now you’re investing millions into companies that make sustainable products that you can use across your business. Tell me about that strategy, where that passion comes from and how you came up with that so much earlier than perhaps others have.
Simon: Look, I am fortunate that I’ve got permission to make Grill’d the brand I want it to be and I had this argument with my chiropractor just the other day. He was saying businesses should have no say in societal movements. Their intent should be just to make money for their shareholders and I disagreed with him vehemently. I know I could make a whole lot more money at Grill’d if it was only about dollars but that’s easy. I could squeeze this lemon so tight and make a whole lot more money and drop that to the bottom line and the beneficiary of that is potentially me but it’s just not of any interest. It doesn’t mean that a successful business with a scorecard with increased profits isn’t what I’m driving to but not at any expense and my view is if we’re playing a long game and we’re playing a holistic game then Grill’d is my vehicle for making a difference to society and that means I want to be proud of it and that means that when I talk to my kids, they’re always interested in what’s going on from an environmental perspective and from a sustainability perspective, but it’s not my kids only. It’s actually the people that work at Grill’d. They are the ones that actually made us take action. The front line of our business is the front line of Australia’s future and they’ve got views that they speak openly about and eloquently about and passionately about and my view, again, is if we’re running this business to make them proud, we’ve got to be conscious of what’s happening in their consumer landscape and the political landscape and the socio-economic landscape and look, I am a fan of all things sustainability but we talk about sustainability in a broad sense. Animal welfare, number one. Natural resources, number two. Our people, number three and our communities, number four. So all of those play into how we think about sustainability at Grill’d and we try and make that a focus across all parts of the business and if we can take little steps, I believe often the little steps actually create momentum and I think we’re being good at taking lots of little steps because we believe in that.
Jenelle: So really uplifting to hear you talk about that. As you say, maybe there’s more dollars made other ways but to create more ethical, more sustainable practices is a road that is a little tougher. What have you learnt from choosing to go down that road – upside and downside?
Simon: Yeah look, there’s … there’s both. I see myself and it’s not true but it’s just how you … it’s just self talk – right. I see myself as an outsider. I see myself as a challenger of the status quo and I see myself as an opportunist that says “if someone says no, I’m going to find a way” and I read about asparagopsis which is a native red seaweed out of Australia. I read about it in the paper and it was the CSIRO about to do something, raise money to actually then try and commercialise by feeding asparagopsis to cattle. It reduces their methane expulsion and I just dive into these things because I get curious and if I get curious and I can see that it might intersect with Grill’d, I get passionate. If I get passionate, I try and understand it and dive deeper and deeper. We’ve got an investment in a business called Great Wrap. It’s a gladwrap made from potato peelings …
Jenelle: Oh wow!
Simon: … and it has therefore no plastics associated with it at all but that’s the space that I enjoy playing in, putting our money where our mouth is and trying to help sometimes small businesses grow. I’ve had that benefit from people believing in me. I want to try and believe in others.
Jenelle: Fantastic. So final question for you. Extraordinary amount of knowledge and lessons and experience and pain and joy in all of that, but looking back and knowing what you know now, thinking about your younger self, the person that was waiting to be pushed off that cliff by his mates … what would be the advice that you would give to that person now?
Simon: I think I have an intensity and sometimes a lightness but I’d play more to the lightness. I expect to be proud of Grill’d always but for me, it’s about remaining playful. I sometimes forget that everything we’re doing is about a journey and I’m trying to get to the outcome too quickly. I’ve got to remember that I operate with an intent to jump fast and quickly and businesses as they get bigger can’t move at that same pace and if I try and do that, well then I create upheaval rather than positive change but if I go back a step, you know, one is I’ve had pretty good people in my business always but occasionally when you get it wrong, make changes quicker. Put a structure in place ahead of your growth curve. We did that really well in the early years and I would say probably that’s one of the things that I haven’t been challenged on enough by not having other shareholders in the business. I haven’t put the structure ahead of the growth in some parts of our business. At 170 restaurants, we’re playing catchup from pre-100 and once you get behind, it’s really hard to get in front and the other one is which I probably keep doing time and time again “hey Simon, if you’re doing this again, don’t get sucked into the detail all the time – learn to be the master, not the slave”. Having said that, I enjoy being the slave and I enjoy being in the detail. So that’s a hard one but if I was to say again, you know, starting a business today, talking to my younger self, I don’t think I would have done it if I knew what was ahead but what I do know is that my super powers, if I’ve got any, are passion, drive, resilience and perseverance. So it would be knowing that you are going to need those super powers and you’re going to need to rely on them often and meaningfully.
Jenelle: Very well said and in fact if I was going … I’m just going to go to a wrap-up now and you’ve called out all the words that I would have said exactly about your passion, drive, perseverance, resilience. I’d add vulnerability. I’d add courage to those words and it’s funny, as I’ve listened to you and I know we started out with you talking about your fear of failure but I have to say I don’t even know if I’m buying it. I think your curiosity and your purpose and your passion has trumped any fear of failure every day of the week and thank god it has because you’ve done remarkable work and even when it’s been tough, you’ve been able to forge through that and come out with some really powerful lessons. I’ve really reflected on your comments about, you know, surround yourself with people who care about you, who believe in you and who are prepared to safely push you off that cliff when you need it. I loved the counsel from your friend about, you know, you haven’t got anything to lose but ego and I think, you know, where there has taken a chip along the way, you’ve done that in a way that it’s kept your confidence in yourself but perhaps made it more about others along that way. I’m grateful to the role modelling of your dad and what that has meant for you to stay close to community. I am really impressed with how you’ve managed to stay true to the mantra of “get big and stay small”. I think the intent behind that is really powerful, that you can mobilise a contingent of passionate rebels with a cause and engage hearts and clearly connect purpose to values and, as I said, I think that your fear of failure, the fact that you said if someone says no, I’ll find another way, it means that you’re prepared to face into it. You said you were an outsider, you said you’re an opportunist, you’re a challenger of the status quo and so if you add to that a bit of the lightness that’s going to trump the intensity, my god, you have nothing but amazing feats ahead of you as well. So Simon, thank you so much for your time today. I’ve really enjoyed the conversation.
Simon: Thank you Jenelle, me too.
The Change Happens podcast from EY – a conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
END OF TAPE RECORDING

Simone Clarke
CEO | United Nations Women AU

Jenelle: Hi, welcome to Season 5 of Change Happens. I’m Jenelle McMaster and I have the great privilege of speaking with influential and interesting leaders on their experiences of leading change and the lessons that they’ve learned along the way.
News broadcasters: “The mounting loss of life” – “almost a woman a week” – “in the fight against domestic violence” – “killed by men they knew”
Jenelle: Are we going backwards?
It’s a big topic. When it comes to the achievement of gender equality and the fighting for human rights, the path to success requires big changes to happen. It needs to happen in homes, in workplaces, in communities and societies. It also has to happen at many levels. It needs to happen at policy, system, mindsets, cultures. A whole lot of things have to change. The goals are big, they are hairy, they are audacious. The KPIs and the markers of success for achieving them can be unclear and at times seem immovable. With International Women’s Day coming up this month. We thought the CEO of UN Women Australia, Simone Clark, would be the perfect guest to discuss what success looks like in the arena of gender equality and women’s rights.
When it all feels overwhelming, and it certainly can, Simone looks at the impact that can be made on a granular level. She talks about stories. She talks about the creation of empathy. And the changing of lives, one person at a time, and how that can fuel hope and ignite something much bigger.
Simone: The imagery of the large aircraft leaving Afghanistan and people literally climbing up the landing gear trying to get out, she was pregnant, standing in a drain near the tarmac, breastfeeding her baby and subsequently being able to come to Australia; resettle.
Jenelle: Simone is dedicated to fulfilling her purpose of making an impact that is felt rather than tangibly counted. She’s worked in lots of places, from UNICEF right through to the AFL. And her work has benefited the needs of women and children everywhere and has empowered communities all around the world. Simone’s passion for the causes she believes in and the roles that she takes on makes her journey even more captivating. Here, she shares the lessons she’s learned on being comfortable with discomfort, with creating the space to make big changes and looking for moments of hope even in the darkest of times.
Jenelle: Well, hi, Simone and thank you so much for joining us and kicking off what is now Season 5 of Change Happens.
Simone: Fantastic. Great to be here with you.
Jenelle: I want to start – we can start all over the place – but where I’d like to start is with where you are today. You are the CEO of UN Women Australia and you have been for the past two and half years. What led up to you taking that role?
Simone: It’s been quite a journey as the cliché goes. I have spent a large proportion of my career working in international development, in sustainability, both for the private sector and for the UN as well as for individual organisations and causes. So, it’s been a cumulative build, if you like, to this point. My focus has always been on women and children, to a large extent, and then more broadly in terms of the environment and how we treat the environment and how that has an impact on our livelihoods and humanity more broadly. So, somehow, I’ve always been involved in spaces that try to tackle our big, sort of, hairy, audacious goals as a planet and as humans and really it is the culmination, I think of probably the last 30 years of my work. In particular, working for sustainability and international development and for women and children more broadly. So, it feels like absolutely the right place at the right time after, you know, quite a lengthy career and quite diverse career really. Interesting the things you learn along the way that contribute to where you end up, so to speak.
Jenelle: As you say, a bit of a culmination of so many experiences that you’ve had. What does it feel like now to be personally seated in that position of leadership and to be part of this massive global movement?
Simone: It’s very interesting, I think, in terms of timing, there’s probably been no better nor worse time to be in the gender equality space, and I mean that with all due respect. I think there is collective will globally around the value of women and what they bring and obviously that’s reflected in the sustainable development goals, in particular, number five around gender equality. So, it’s certainly an opportune time to be working in that space, but cumulatively we are also seeing a regression along a number of the statistics. So, it is both a huge responsibility, I think, and a challenge, but also a coalescence of intent which really is the thing that spurs me on every day because I feel like there are a lot of colleagues, a lot of people, including yourself, Jenelle and others who are working in the space who are committed to the contribution of women and how is that is best reflected and how we move the barriers for that sort of full participation of women. So really important time and I think it’s a generational shift; it will continue to be a long game not a short game. So, it’s a wonderful role, a lot of responsibility in terms of trying to bring people along but also it’s very hard to point to a definitive outcome and say, if you invest X you will return Y. We try to do the lot, but I think it’s particularly in the role where we are generating funds for programs in developing countries as well. It’s building that empathy base and that collegiality, for want of a better word, between women and men globally to ensure that women have an equal role to play; an opportunity more than anything really.
Jenelle: You’re right. I mean these are big, hairy, audacious goals that we’ve got here and necessary ones. When I looked at the focus areas of the UN Women Australia website, or actually it was the UN website, there was no shortage of very lofty goals in there, and amongst a number of them were ending violence against women and girls, there was ending poverty through enhancing women’s economic empowerment. There was women’s inclusion in peacemaking processes and negotiations. So lots of really important audacious goals in there. You’re, I mean I think you’re amazing, but you are still human in this. What do you see as success on your watch? How do you measure your contribution? Talk to me about that for yourself.
Simone: Sometimes it’s very easy to be overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenges we face and with all due respect and with most of my colleagues in the UN and others working in the sector and beyond, it can be a bit overwhelming and I suppose so when you talk to impact it’s really about looking at the outcomes and the impact on a much more granular level. I have had the joy of meeting with individual women that have been touched by UN agencies, like UN Women, UNICEF, UNHCR, and the thing that keeps all of us going I think that work in this sector, in particular, and those who support us, is the fact that there is - even if it’s one woman’s life that we can change – if there is one opportunity or possibility we can open up for a single woman or a community or a country or a gender, that is a really positive thing. So the scale is vast, the challenges are vast, but for me the thing that keeps me going I think is that hope that when you meet women who we work with and they tell you their stories about the impact that we have had in whatever organisation or agency I’ve had the fortune to work for, that’s really at the core, what it is we’re trying to do. You know change takes time, but it is also very individual. So how do you make an impact on one person’s life when you are also reporting on global goals and things like the SDGs and the gender gap report. Those stories are the things that keep us going and there’s a litany of those and most of them are positive, although often in really appalling situations. So, it keeps us all going really.
Jenelle: Yeah, and it’s an interesting point about the power of story in there and moving things. When you and I spoke; we were chatting last week, and I was talking to you about, you know, change and you said, change is less often about that, you know, seminal moment on the big thing that happens, and you said it’s often super slow and happens over a thousand iterations. Tell me a bit more about that and one of those stories that has stood out to you is potentially one of the moments that made that difference to you.
Simone: So I think on a really personal level, throughout my career, I’ve had the opportunity to talk to women one on one about you know the challenges that they face and more recently towards the middle of last year we held a round table in Brisbane and it was focused on Afghanistan and the women of Afghanistan and I had the good fortune to have a conversation with an amazing woman. I’m sure you’ll remember the imagery of the large aircraft leaving Afghanistan and people literally climbing up the landing gear, trying to get out of Afghanistan in what was a pretty appalling situation, and the woman that I met; she was literally pregnant standing in a drain near the tarmac, near the runway, on that very day, breastfeeding her baby, and had subsequently been able to come to Australia, resettle and had been supported by agencies along the way. And when I stopped and had a conversation with her and she said thank you, and I was like, thank you, I haven’t done anything. But she was – she said you know again, and again, thank you, because support of UN Women and organisations like yours means that I am now here, sheltered, in a transition program, I’m employed and I’d like to do more work and my family are safe. Yeah, when you’re standing there literally putting yourself in her shoes and understanding, albeit from a distance, what she must have gone through, the faith and the hope around that is that we’ll continue to be able to do that. So it goes back to the starting point where we talk about you know one woman’s life, one child’s life, one family’s life, that’s where it starts with.
To know that you can have an impact that’s – I mean to me that’s the reason why we do what we do and why colleagues far braver than I work in these hotspots all over the world. Our rep in Afghanistan is an Australian woman. She’s absolutely amazing and every day she literally risks her life to work with women in Afghanistan and I don’t think you can put a price on that or a value on that, and as you can appreciate, working as a woman in Afghanistan, particularly after recently when international workers in particular, women, were told that they weren’t allowed to work in the country, that became really problematic for a lot of women who were working in international development. So it’s situations like those that really give you grounding in being part of something bigger but also engaging Australian women and men here to understand what that looks like for other women and the shoes that they walk in.
Jenelle: That’s really powerful and I guess even just listening to you describe that woman on the tarmac and talking about her gratitude for being able to work and feeling safe. I mean these feel like basic human rights that should be afforded to anybody. So the fact that that is something that’s being called out is remarkable; is really sad to hear actually, it’s bittersweet.
Simone: It is.
Jenelle: It’s so distressing that we find ourselves in a situation that that should be an exception for her.
Simone: And you know another story was around the FIFA Women’s World Cup last year. I had the good fortune to meet a young team of female footballers who were under the stewardship of a local football club in Melbourne, and they were just excited that they could play football. I mean for them it was just about to be able to get out on the pitch and kick a ball around. But knowing that they were here alone and that their families were back home, potentially unsafe, but they were able to be here under the stewardship of a program. Incredible to think that something as simple as playing football or soccer as we call it, is denied to so many and yet here was a, you know, a great example of Australians doing amazing things for young women and girls who are living under threat of violence every day. It’s those sorts of stories; it’s knowing that somehow we are making a difference, and I mean that collective “we”. It’s not just our organisation. We work in partnership with literally hundreds of different organisations. That’s the critical mass we need for change.
Jenelle: You mentioned something a little earlier around one of your measures of success, around building an empathy base. What did you mean by that? How do you build an empathy base?
Simone: Yes, that’s a very good question. One of the key challenges we have in Australia is to share the stories and the understanding of what life for women looks like in countries other than Australia, because granted we absolutely have our own challenges; we have an aging population of women who are homeless in this country, which is appalling; we have high gender based violence statistics as other countries do across the globe. But to do the work that we do, and don’t get me wrong, Australians are incredibly generous per head of population and as well as our government and our overseas aid program. But one of the things we often struggle with is trying to get people here to understand, just the day to day challenges, and I think sometimes it’s really hard to even begin to comprehend what it would look like for a woman in Papua New Guinea going to the markets and knowing that she was under threat of violence every step of the way. What the life for a young girl going to school in Iran looks like and taking off her head covering so that she can have her own autonomy. When we look at Roe v. Wade in the States and sexual reproductive rights. There are things that do affect us, but then there are things that we have to try and create an understanding and empathy for the fact that things we take for granted are so often not even available in other countries.
So when I talk about that empathy base, very often we have conversations about, well you know charity begins at home and we need to look after our own women and children; absolutely. But when you look at the comparative scale of gender issues facing women in other countries, compared to ours, whose lives are actually at risk even for talking about gender based issues, some countries they’re accused of being witches, there is violence against women who choose to speak up. So it’s really trying to get Australian women and men to understand the challenges of women elsewhere and what they can do about it. Because, it’s also very easy to feel powerless and I think that’s one of the things that we as human beings, absolutely identify with. It comes back to those stories. How do you build an empathy base, how do you get people to care? I think fundamentally people care but sometimes I think the extent of the challenges. I mean if you look around the world at the moment, there is war crisis conflict in a range of countries and it doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. And I think it’s easy also to go, well that’s not our problem, it’s someone else’s issue to deal with. Unfortunately, it does have a ripple effect.
Jenelle: What have you seen personally, Simone? You’ve lived a very global life which must have helped to see how women are treated in different parts of the world. You were born in Fiji, you grew up in Sydney, you’ve had a chance to work across South East Asia and North America, what was some of the things you saw that then has impacted your world view?
Simone: It may sound incredibly basic but I’m always struck by the fact that it doesn’t matter who I meet and in what situation, we all want fundamentally the same things. We want to be able to feed ourselves and our children. We want our kids to be safe. We want to be able to live safe. I’ve been in parts of remote China and met a woman who was dying of pancreatic cancer and she had young children and she was concerned that her children were not going to be able to fend for themselves. That she would die. Who was going to look after them? And it always just strikes me that somehow, sometimes, we think, oh that’s, you know, that’s other people’s problems, that’s other women’s problems. We all face the same challenges. We all want the same things for our families. We want the same things for our kids and we all want peace and security, and yet everywhere I travel - I was in Timor Leste, after you know, in the late 90s. Same situation there. I’ve worked in quite a few different emergency situations. The response that’s needed. It’s the same, you know, it’s water, it’s sanitation. For women it’s sanitary products. We do a thing called the Dignity Kit because if you think about – if all of a sudden your home was being bombed, what would you need. You know, it’s like the bushfires, when there’s emergencies. What do people do? What do you grab? What are the key things that are so important? So you know we’re looking at technology and how even personal records can be protected in and through things like blockchain. So it’s fascinating that the number of things that can be done but it always, to me it comes down to that commonality of how do we want to live our lives, and that’s pretty fundamental as a basic human right; water, sanitation, somewhere to live and a livelihood and food; these are the pretty basic needs. I don’t think people are asking for too much and sometimes I think we forget that. My experience is just again the commonality of humanity more than anything.
Jenelle: Such a great point about that. I’ve often said there’s more that unites us than what divides us.
Simone: Absolutely.
Jenelle: And sometimes it doesn’t feel that way, but I think that’s what you’re speaking to there. You’ve certainly worked with an impressive collection of organisations. You had that role with UNICEF, Mission Australia, Safe the Children Alliance, even AFLW. There seems to be a real commonality around social conscience and purpose. Am I reading that correctly, and if so, where does that come from?
Simone: I don’t know. I think I’m probably the – well I’m not probably I am the youngest of five children. You had to fight to get a word in. So I think that’s probably the – living in a challenging environment is not something that’s new to me. But I think it’s just always been something that’s driven me, that being purposeful has been at the core.
I mean, I remember when I came back from working with UNICEF and I joined the AFL and I got a lot of questions; what are you doing working for a football club? And I was like, well, okay firstly, what woman in Australia gets to be part of a start up of a football club - (a) - and (b) the genesis for the football club in Western Sydney, the Greater Western Sydney Giants, was really about creating the community club that embraced all the community. It’s a very culturally and linguistically diverse community and it was really about how football could be a way of bringing people together. So at the core of what others saw simply as setting up a football club, the really strong driver for me was, but here’s a really interesting vehicle around how sport can bring people together, how it can cut down barriers and it can mean, you know, different cultures, different approaches. We had a large population in Western Sydney of women who wanted to play AFL and there was a really strong local club of women who were involved. You know, wearing the head scarves while they played. They were amazing. I mean these were just amazing women who loved playing AFL and they brought this, you know, culturally and linguistically diverse dimension to Australian Football League. It’s that galvanising purposeful driver that is the thing that gets me out of bed I suppose very morning. It’s also the thing that depresses me sometimes because we feel so far away.
How do you make an impact? An impact can be felt in lots of different ways. Like I often speak to people who work in the private sector and say, oh wow you know what you’re doing, you know it’s so altruistic and it’s great and yes it is, but don’t underestimate the impact and the change that you can have wherever you are. You don’t have to work in the not for profit sector. You can have far more impact working in the private sector, for example, in government. I think it’s really just about what is an impact you want to make and how do you make it?
Jenelle: How did you learn where best you can have impact? What gave you the strength of conviction where others might have looked at something that had a really lofty set of ambitions, and go, yeah yeah I think I am the one to be able to effect change here, I can make impact? What has given you that self assurance and level of conviction?
Simone: It certainly started I think way back with my first role with UNICEF because at that stage it was about children and women and children firstly and then women and I always believe that you know children were absolutely innocent, they have done nothing but been born into a world where for better or for worse they will struggle, whether it’s through nutrition or access to water or whatever. So I think we need to be their champion.
Jenelle: We’ll use that as a segue to my next question, speaking of children. You can’t be a woman working on gender issues and not be expected to ask about the impact of motherhood on your outlook. So even though it might be slightly cliched, I do want to understand your perspective on that. You’re a mother of three, two daughters and one son. Are there differences in the way that they see the world because of what you do?
Simone: Absolutely. I think it would be an absolute understatement if I said it – it didn’t have an impact on them. They are all in their 20s and they are adults in their own right. It’s obviously had an impact on them. How they choose to respond and live their lives I think is probably governed by being exposed to that and seeing mum go off to work each day and thinking well what are you doing mum, and why are you doing that? So I think it’s built in just through osmosis that that’s been built into their DNA.
Jenelle: And maybe also the other way around. Their impact on you and your view, your world view.
Simone: Yeah. Well, and again, you know, I look at my children when they were young kids. I mean we would go away on holidays and invariably it’s just a very weird thing. But usually at Christmas time and around that time of year you’ve got disaster season, you’ve got emergencies that happen and I used to sort of pinch myself and think here am I with my three young children and we’re incredibly safe and you know there’s much to get caught up in.
Can I pay the mortgage or whatever those day to day concerns are. When you compare your life and your livelihood here in Australia with what is being experienced – I mean it was back when the invasion of Kosovo happened and that was back in the late 90s. I was away with my kids who were very young then. How would I feel if all of a sudden I had to pick up my belongings and walk across the Victorian border, for example. Because this is what some of these women and families were doing and the kids were with them and I just – everything we talk about, every type of impact is predominantly generational so I need them to be better humans. There’s a bit of hope there when I look at my daughters’ generation because even when they tell me about things about you know what’s happened at work, and you know, how things are going, they have much more confidence in negotiating salaries or being able to have a conversation about their worth and their value.
Jenelle: Absolutely.
Simone: Way more than I did as a young woman starting out in my career, right. So I take absolute hope and the faith in that. It’s interesting with my son because I often, you know, look to him and you know he’s an amazing young man as well and works really hard. But the interesting distinction is I don’t think my son ever questions his seat at the table. I don’t think my daughters do either as much as I possibly did but it’s just an interesting observation that, you know, and we joke and he always gives me a hard time about the gender pay gap and just because he knows it will give his mother a rise, but
Jenelle: My kids do the same to me.
Simone: Yeah, exactly. Just prod the beast. Don’t do it Sam I’m not in a good mood. You know I just think it’s the difference between women now, hopefully and in the future. You know that notion that women question or challenge themselves around whether or not they should be at the table. Well I think that’s changing, and you know that you can’t do what you can’t see. The more women in senior roles like yours, the more women who are speaking out. And young women can see that when they are in the office, wherever they are working. That’s a really important message because how do I aspire to be something that I can’t see? Quite frankly when I finished school a lot of girls were told, well you can be a secretary, you can be a dental nurse, you can be a teacher if you’re really lucky. You know the conversations around graduate programs and working in large corporations certainly wasn’t happening in my cohort of friends. And that’s not because they weren’t all educated.
Jenelle: It would be nice to see the load not just fall on the women to push to have more of a seat at the table but maybe the men also helping in redesigning the table itself.
Simone: Absolutely, and I think we’ve seen that now. I mean I speak to a lot of men about this and you know gender equality isn’t a women’s issue, it’s a community issue, it’s a human rights issue, and there’s a lot of men that see the value. Again it comes back to making space at the table, absolutely, and you know being able to also juggle parenthood as well as time out from careers with having families, because that is a reality. Or trying to do it all, and you know I think a lot of us try and do it all and we do as well as we can. But there’s always trade offs and so I think it’s probably a combination of opportunity, possibility and I heard somewhere recently, someone said possibility is a privilege, and I thought what a great way to capture it, because possibility is a privilege. Because when you don’t have any possibilities where do you go? Where’s the aspiration, where’s the ambition?
Jenelle: Staying on the theme of gender equality here and we do have coming up March the 8th, it’s International Women’s Day, and I know that that’s one day and we’re talking about this every day, but it’s a real opportunity to shine more of a light on the issues that we’re talking about. Tell me what does International Women’s Day mean to you on a personal level? What does it look like on the day?
Simone: Well again it’s been a bit of a progress. I remember talking about International Women’s Day years ago and you know you get the same old, oh why do we need an International Women’s Day, you know that’s every day of the year, and you know I sort of say now, well you know it’s one day of focus but we need 365 days of action. But what it does do is increasingly we’re seeing more and more businesses, corporations, even schools and other things, really focus on women, focus on the need for more women engaged in you know leadership. We’re seeing more conversations around investment in women. So for me International Women’s Day is a really important day to say let’s not forget what we do in those other 364 days a year, but also to really focus on what are those barriers, whether it’s political leadership, whether it’s representation, whether it's leadership in companies, whether it’s living a peaceful and secure life without threat of violence, and gender based violence against women. So I think it's a really important day to remind everybody of also the value of women because you know when we look at first responders through COVID, when we look at front line medical workers, when we look at teachers and we look at those lower paid occupations by and large, the majority of those people are women. They take on amazing amount of responsibility doing those roles. How do you assess value and it’s not always in a pay packet? Recognising the value of women I think is really what it’s about. And even if it sparks a conversation that goes on, on that day, but continues with friends, with families around the dinner table cause the more conversations we have, it’s more about visibility and understanding. That’s a good thing.
Jenelle: Now this year’s theme for International Women’s Day is count her in. So it’s about accelerating through economic empowerment. Talk to me about that. You mentioned – you know when we were talking last week about if ever there was going to be a silver bullet in something that’s so complex and so layered that we should be looking to financial literacy and economic empowerment. Tell me a bit more about your observations of that.
Simone: As an organisation financial empowerment is a strategic priority for the organisation and we know that if women are at risk or don’t have control over their own livelihoods or their finances, it’s very hard to fundamentally reach equality. It’s also very difficult to avoid and/or remove oneself from an abusive relationship. We know financial coercive control is a big problem as well. So if we look at investing in women and women understanding that and being more across and in control of their own financial literacy and their own livelihoods, then it means that they are less at risk of those other things that undermine them. Whether it’s gender based violence, whether it’s leadership, whether it’s in emergencies and in times of crisis what they do. So it is a silver bullet insomuch as if we can address financial and economic empowerment, then we know that that is going to be the silver bullet for addressing some of those other cross cutting issues that impact women.
It’s also really important because you are investing in a cohort of people who have a huge contribution to make and continue to do so, but often considered as a less value. Venture capital for female led enterprises. We know that female led enterprises are more productive. They are usually more profitable, and yet less than 4% of venture capital, even in this country, goes to female led organisations or endeavours. So what would that look like and we know that there’s been a raft of studies that have been done around, you know, if you invest in women the returns are tenfold. India at the moment are looking at this very complex problem around not having enough women in the workforce and/or not enough investment in their own enterprises. And so again if you go back to the stats and the data that sit behind it, we know that if we invest in women, and we have more female led enterprises, and we have more women in leadership positions and running businesses, the profitability and the return on investment is higher. So why wouldn’t you? So there is an economic case for support and I think sometimes that gets lost and then sometimes you get a bit frustrated cause then – why do we have to keep creating a business case almost for why women should be equally represented in a boardroom or why they should be equally invested in. But again, if we look historically – the Industrial Revolution – it’s been largely driven by men, for men, and so I think now we’re playing catch up. But we have to play catch up a bit faster because there’s still a lot of work to be done.
Jenelle: There is and you talked about how change and frustration go hand in hand, particularly when there’s no real visible measures of success. You talked just then about your daughter or how the next generation have got a level of confidence that perhaps you and I didn’t have in negotiating things which is fantastic. But I mean alongside that I see week after week after week a woman is killed at the hands of a man that they generally know. You see report after report that talks about, you know, whether it’s 80 years to 150 years to 300 years before we get gender equality. Are we going backwards?
Simone: Yeah, probably we are. Look in certain indicators I think the other thing is too is we’re starting to measure more. So there is a sense sometimes that we’re going backwards and it’s taking us longer. But if we look at the complexities and the indicators that we’re using to measure that progress, they are becoming more complex in and of itself. The point that you made at the start of that was really around violence against women and gender based violence. And I suppose out of all of the priority areas that we work in, that’s probably the most flummoxing to me, because we can stop it. It’s not something – we’re not trying to find a cure for cancer. We can stop violence against women. So what’s holding us back?
Jenelle: That was going to be my question to you.
Simone: Well, I don’t have the answer except to say that you know I think it fundamentally goes to the value of women. So if there was still people wanting to control and to undermine and to exert that control, the power through physicality and violence, how are we ever going to address that imbalance? And I mean the fact is, and I have this conversation with women all the time, gender based violence could stop tomorrow if we just stopped doing it. So why aren’t we? So that’s where it comes back to – you know we talked about either building empathy or understanding all value around women. Why is it okay to – for a partner or someone that you know, abuse and or you know inflict bodily harm on a woman? I don’t get it and I know that I work with a lot of other organisations on the ground. Here every year we do a campaign about ending violence. So what’s at the heart of that? And you know we often talk about it’s really – it’s a cultural change. But it’s also not just an Australian cultural change. We’re seeing it across the globe, so again to me, it always comes back to the – well how do we value women and how do we let others exert their power over us?
So again I’ll go back to the coercive control example where a woman through her bank account, her former partner was sending her one cent into their back account a hundred times a day and saying I’m going to kill you. So you imagine when you get an alert saying that you’ve paid for something. This was coming up almost you know a hundred times a day. So the coercive control – and that was through the banking system – was not enabling that but he was able to do it, and we’ve just seen some recent reforms around that which have been fabulous because the major banks have now said, if we see behaviour like that now, we will shut down those accounts. There’s a role around systems change, around protections that aren’t just about physical violence. They’re around what are the systems that are enabling those kind of behaviours to perpetuate and why are women still at risk. Then there are policy levers. Then there are systems levers. Then there are you know the way that we think and the way that we act and then there’s cultural and there’s ethnicity and there’s a whole lot of other things that impact the way we view women. So we’re not just working on one front, we’re working on a whole range of fronts and that’s where the complexity can sometimes be overwhelming.
Jenelle: How do you make sure that you don’t get overwhelmed, that the overwhelm doesn’t take over?
Simone: That’s a very good question. Look I think we all get overwhelmed at certain stages and it doesn’t matter whether you work in this space or not. I mean I get overwhelmed when, for the last two years, every time you look around there is something else awful happening to women. You know we look across the globe, whether it’s Africa, whether it’s the Middle East, whether it’s Central Europe, and to be perfectly honest it’s hard not to get overwhelmed. A number of times that I know colleagues do the same thing. It’s just, this is just too hard. Like how do we get traction? I think the only thing that gives you hope is that some things are changing, and so we do get overwhelmed and I think you know when there’s criticism about – oh you’re not doing enough – you know as part of the UN system you’re not doing enough, you’re not doing it fast enough. Look I appreciate that. I completely agree with that. But also conversely it’s what would you have us do differently? And so that’s where innovation, technology, new ways of thinking. You know the old construct of philanthropy of here’s a dollar go away and feed yourself, or let me teach you how to fish. You know that old adage, it’s that, it’s how do we use new technologies, new ways of doing things that are going to help us overcome some of the – I mean the climate crisis is also having – you know - and that’s an intersectional challenge that is impacting women more greatly than men. So where do you work? Do you focus on climate change? Do you focus on gender equality? These are all joined up and so that’s why it’s hard to sometimes to decouple them. So organisations like ours choose to work on the priority areas where we see are the greatest risk to women and try to do something about them. But yeah it’s – sometimes it’s a lot easier to be overwhelmed than to maintain the rage, so to speak.
Jenelle: And in those times is there a particular story, image, policy change, system change that you take your mind to, to help you kind of keep going with it? Remember when we did this, or you know, what do you do to pull yourself out of a situation when you were in the overwhelmed stage?
Simone: I think sometimes other people do it for you which is fabulous as well. So not so long ago I received an email from someone who was more or less defending an aspect of work that we were doing years ago and sort of went out unasked and unprompted – sort of took a position to defend the work that was being done and outlined the list of reasons and sent it back to me because it had come across her desk in a different world and it wasn’t about UN Women, it was about a program that was being run, and there were criticisms of it. I think it was context within the UN system and when she came back, and as I said, unprompted and unbeknownst to me, she went back and said well actually I think that’s incorrect. So let me tell you this is actually what did happen and this is what’s happening and this is what’s being done, and to have that happen, to have somebody else step in to defend or lend a hand or that solidarity. And I think that’s one of the things about the women’s movement that is the most all encompassing is you know women looking out for each other and that notion of solidarity. That’s what pulls me out of my hole sometimes. Because it’s very easy to go, wow this is all too hard, it’s all a bit personal, it’s all about me. Well it’s also about half the population. So it’s those moments and those acts of humanity at its best, that’s when it drags you back out and says, okay we’ve got this, there is hope on the horizon. I think you know we’ve had this chat before about hope being the eternal motivator, cause if you didn’t have hope you wouldn’t stay doing any of this, and if we lose hope then we lose any sense of ability to change what it is we have in front of us. So I think that’s the other thing that keeps all of us as humans going, as you know hope for a better world, and what’s the legacy we want to leave our kids. I don’t want my kids to grow up in a world where you know women are abused and racism is just part of the DNA. Absolutely not required. Shouldn’t be here, so how do we change it?
Jenelle: And what is the legacy that you hope to leave in the time that you are in this role? When you move on what would you want to be able to point back to?
Simone: It would be ridiculously, and incredibly overstated, to think that you know I would be able to go, great my work is done, and we move over. I think, and there was a great quote; I think it was from a former head of UNICEF which was all about, you know, we don’t inherit the world from our parents we actually are custodians of it for our children and for the future. So I think what I would like to leave is perhaps, whether it’s a positive view or perspective about how we can change things, whether it’s pointing to a group of women or a program or an initiative and over the course of my career you know there’s been some where I’ve thought, no I’ve had a hand in that, I’ve had a part of that. The legacy I want to see left is that our children, our daughters and our sons, we have an absolute joy living in this country, being incredibly grateful for what we have, having empathy for those who don’t have the same opportunities that we have and that the privileges that we have and that we leave, that basically it sounds very corny, but that we leave Australia a better place than we found it. And not just Australia, the globe perhaps.
Jenelle: I think that’s a really powerful legacy. Really powerful legacy Simone and I do think it’s easy to get disheartened by what seems so massive a task. But what you’ve achieved and your ability to keep going despite those challenges is phenomenal. From the conversation today, you know, it’s really reminded me about the importance of building a strong empathy base, sharing the stories, helping people understand what it looks like to walk in the shoes of other people that might not be in our natural orbit. A reminder about the commonality of humanity that regardless of who we are or where we are – actually we all fundamentally want the same thing – peace, security, sanitation, dignity. These are human rights, and so why would one person be more entitled to that than another. The reminder that you gave us to not underestimate the impact that all of us can have, no matter what sphere that we’re working in. To challenge ourselves on where we think we can have impact.
A reminder we’ve got International Women’s Day coming up and it is a great opportunity to listen to the stories of others, to reflect, to think about the value of women, to learn, to engage, to spark a conversation that hopefully sparks further action. When you talk about change you’ve talked about the power of story telling. The power of invoking images, whether that’s an Afghan woman standing on a tarmac holding her baby to ignite something, couple that with systems change and policy levers, it happens at multiple levels, and I think when the overwhelm gets high, remember that we cannot lose hope. We need to remind ourselves who we’re doing it for. We can get caught up in ourselves and whether or not it’s us making enough of a difference. But to remember who we’re doing it for and lean into the solidarity of that very group to remind us what we’ve done. So lots of takeaways, Simone, I really, really appreciate your time.
Simone: Great – thanks so much for the opportunity. Thanks Jenelle.
Male voiceover The Change Happens podcast from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.
[END OF TRANSCRIPTION]

Jenelle McMaster, EY Oceania Markets Leader, reflects on what she's learned from great leaders through her discussions on the Change Happens podcast.

EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients.

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