Changing The Game

In the aftermath of the 2009 financial crisis, Grace Mugabe walked out of a well-paid position in the mining sector and rewired her skills towards financial literacy, management and business development.

She did so with a single mission in mind: To help underrepresented communities and businesses to improve their financial potential and infrastructure, leveling societies playing field and bringing opportunity to women and minorities.

You can only imagine how much of a privilege it was to talk with such an accomplished woman and open a window into the perspective of someone that is working hard to change the game from its very basis.

Here’s a bit of how that conversation went:

The daughter of a Zimbabwean man with a South African woman, grace moved to Australia when she was eighteen after having lived in both Africa and America for most of her life.

Upon reaching the land down under, she was told by acquaintances that she would only be able to land a job at cleaning and age care, a statement she quickly proved to be wrong by landing a position at a call center and an accounting course at university.

One day, while Grace was working on her call center job, she noticed her company had posted an ad for an accounting position, though the job demanded a certain level of experience that as a student, she simply didn’t have.

That, however, did not stop her from marching up to her superiors and informing them they had an accounting graduate within their ranks, not too long after, the role of graduate accountant was created, and Grace was putting her talents to work.

She credited this achievement to her parents, who taught her from the very start that she could do and be whatever she wanted in life, an educational style that proves its worth in Grace’s story.

Before she could create opportunities for entire communities, she was creating them for herself through her sheer confidence in herself.

Grace’s work in the mining industry was more than just paper pushing, and she often had to travel to the sites of mining projects, certainly not easy work, but she recalled enjoying it quite a lot, even if it created a major issue in her routine.

Grace volunteered at the multicultural women’s health center, and after work she would always have to rush over to the clinic, a game of back and forth that was draining her energy and making her feel as if she was living two separate lives.

The time to choose between the safety of her corporate position and her passion for helping those of a simillar background to her own was coming, luckily her mind was already set.

In her off-hours, Grace started formulating her “corporate escape plan”, to leave her safe (however unfulfilling) position to bring her skills to the service of those that, like her in the past, had to build a future in Australia.

Grace would work on this plan every day, starting from when she woke up at three am, until she would have to leave for her day job, and little by little the business known as “Financially Empowered” began to take form.

Financially Empowered is a social purpose business that equips women and minorities with the knowledge to, upscale their enterprises and provides them with the financial know-how to operate their companies in the Australian financial system.

She also operates a special program dedicated to those who have just immigrated to Australia called “many matters for migrants, which is focused on teaching them how the Australian financial system operates.

Grace mentions that the greatest challenge she has in the program is instructing clients that come from a social context that is entirely different from Australia in a way that is actually useful to them

Cases such as this are worked by providing the migrant with someone they can trust to instruct them about how the Australian economy works in a friendly way and will speak “to them and not at them, throwing around all these big financial terms”.

It’s hard to speak with Grace and not be impressed at her confidence, and wonder how she could have done everything she did without being paralyzed by the fear of failing, especially when you consider some of the challenges she had to go through.

These challenges don’t include only starting her own business from scratch on her off time while dealing with the responsibilities of being an accountant in the mining sector, but also social challenges that come with being an African woman in Australia.

I asked her about this, to which she responded that while yes, she did have to deal with a certain amount of prejudice that had to be overcome, not to mention inner obstacles like the infamous “imposter syndrome”.

In overcoming such hardships, Grace highlights the importance of having a support network comprising friends and family around you that is there to remind you of why you picked the path you’re on.

She also mentioned making a list of all the things she had accomplished after moments of self-doubt, which helped to overcome imposter syndrome.

In my talk with Grace Mugabe, the one thing that shone through everything she said was her courage and determination, not only to accomplish her goals despite what other people may say, but the courage to be herself.

It was through this courage that she sought the things for which she nurtured true passion, to create opportunities where others could not see them, the kind of courage that truly changes the game.

This is the kind of courage that you would like my readers to have to leave this article, so for today’s mental exercise, I want to ask you a very simple question: “how would things change, if you decided to speak out? What opportunities could be created?

When she’s not starting another successful business, or supporting communities across Australia, Jill Tang likes to spend her time advocating for the inclusion of women in STEM fields through her start-up “Ladies Who Tech”.

Through this wonderful business, she has helped over thirty thousand women in eleven cities across the world to see new possibilities in their future, changing the game for women in the industry and making history one dream at a time.

Jill’s amazing work has been reported by Forbes China, The Guardian, BBC and many other media’s across the world, making her simply too cool not to interview in the changing the game podcast.

Here’s a quick recap of how that went:

We often see the products of one’s journey before learning what it took to get there. In Jill’s case, it all started when she moved from Shanghai to Melborn, Australia where she graduated in finance accounting.

Upon returning to China after graduating, Jill experienced a “reverse culture shock”, as she could not find people who shared in the identity shift that came with her overseas experience, after all there was no structure supporting this community.

Which is when she decided to create one. Thus began Jill’s entrepreneurial journey, which would be marked by businesses focusing in building and sustaining communities, including her third startup: Women who tech.

Having difficulties in fitting in after a long term international experience is something that I know too well as a Brazilian that has work overseas for most of my life, and seeing Jill taking this situation and turning it into positive change is more than inspiring.

And because she had the courage and skill to do that, those that came to the same situation after her will not have to go through the same isolation.

Now, as those of you that listen to the podcast regularly (as you should) already know, women in STEM is a subject which I am particularly interested in, so I could not pass the opportunity to ask Jill about this in a Chinese context.

She replied that despite the fact that the gender wage gap is a universal issue inside and outside of STEM, China was doing better than many other countries.

While explaining this to me, Jill describes how the greatest challenge for Chinese women in STEM is changing society’s views on the subject, including that of women themselves, which is why “Ladies Who Tech” was created.

Naturally, our conversation gravitated towards Jill’s business, Ladies Who is a Tech, as I was really curious to find out what kind of work they performed in making women and girls feel included in the field.

The challenge, she explained, was achieving this end, which demands contribution from all the involved parties, including individual companies, the government and the communities around the women that want to create a space for themselves in the field.

In order to achieve this goal, Women Who Tech provide consultations to companies seeking to increase diversity in the work place, while also helping women within companies to structure a support community.

They have also developed a gender diversity and inclusion app where companies can place their employment branding and job offers exclusively to women and make a focused effort to hire them.

Now, as someone that came from overseas to study in Australia, it’s not hard to imagine Jill had to face quite a few barriers in her journey towards accomplishment, which, as she explains, went from something as simple as language to the innermost sense of loneliness.

Jill recalled that overcoming these barriers was only possible because she was able to rely on an entire community of which she took part, the idea that whenever she would fall, there would be a support net to catch her.

However, she also warns that while having a group of people with whom you share an identity and story is important, you still need to prepare for being pushed out of you comfort zone, as she was in her first days studying here.

Because, in truth, Jill did not like Australia all that much at first, and were it not for her “tiger mom” telling her to do whatever it took to overcome adversity, maybe I never would have met her.

As someone who knows what it’s like to be raised by an amazing woman, and to overcome a severe language barrier after moving overseas, I could not help but relate.

The main lesson that comes out of my wonderful conversation with Jill Tang has to be the importance of tackling the tremendous mission of changing the game with the aid and support of the people around you.

Not just because having people who care for you around greatly increases your quality of life along with your chances of success, but because they too, as individuals who share in your identity with all its pros and cons, stand to gain from your work.

So, for today’s mental exercise, I want you to think seriously and clearly about who are the people inside your community and you can coordinate this community to become a force of change in the world.

Lisa Shreeve has had the drive and adventuring spirit you would expect from a woman that has lived and worked all over the world, and after many years of wondering she eventually decided to apply these qualities for the benefit of the iconic Busselton Jetty.

I was through her passion and leadership skills that the locals from near Jetty were able to organize themselves to save the town’s most iconic landmark after it was struck by the fury of the Alby Cyclone.

Now, In the midst of a global pandemic, she leads this passionate community through the non-profit “Busselton Jetty Inc”, in its journey of reinvention in order to overcome not only the health crisis, but also an extremely competitive tourism industry.

Lisa started out by describing her work in Busselton Jetty as “a dream come true”, largely attributing this positive experience to how the local inhabitants stick together as a community to operate and maintain the Jetty.

Unfortunately, as the world shut down in the wake of the current health crisis, one of the industries that was the most directly hit was tourism and Busselton as a town was amongst the most affected by this change.

Since Busselton is a tourism town, this represented a major threat to the livelihood of most of its inhabitants as their plans for the whole year were flipped on their heads, and many had seen their financial security suddenly threatened.

And it gets worse, according to Lisa herself, “We are about two and a half million dollars down since COVID started and compared to where we would be if there was no pandemic and 40% of our staff have resigned or had to be stood down.”

The scenario for a tourism town like Busselton in the current global stage could not be more grim, and yet with every crisis comes also the need for innovation, and Lisa has been hard at work to ensure her town answers this call.

According to Lisa, the town began to feel the effects of the pandemic around 2020 of last year when fewer and fewer visitors began to appear, and shortly after the state of pandemic was declared, so was a 55-day lockdown.

The very first thing the Jetty’s staff decided to do was coordinate, to sit together and say: “what can we do?”.

Together, the Jetty team formulated a strategy based on new needs from the community that were beginning to arise with the lockdown, and they made plans for the creation of new and alternative activities that they could do while things didn’t come back to normal.

In about two weeks, they had developed fourteen different virtual tours, their marine science team started an educational workshop for those that were doing homeschool, and they promoted several physicals on the Jetty like running, home workouts and dancing.

Another amazing idea that arose out of this meeting were the filmed Jetty tours, including history tours recorded on the train with the driver explaining the Jetty’s history, which raked in 50 thousand views from around the world.

Their activities were not only focused on keeping the Jetty working as a tourism business either, and the staff unde Lisa’s direction also helped in the delivery of medicine to the retired population of Busselton, planting trees and even walking people’s dogs and much more.

When unexpected hardship struck her little piece of the world, Lisa and her team were able to think fast and make the most out of what was for all intents and purposes a hard time for all the world, but also for themselves on a completely different level.

Now, I’ve been living in Western Australia for about thirteen years now, (a comparatively short time if one accounts to my age.), and something very particular to this region is how beyond the state capital of Perth there are not many large cities and towns.

This can represent a series of inequalities when it comes to access to services and infrastructure, so I had to ask Lisa what her view on this issue were, given her background on regional development.

Beyond technological advancement, she also mentioned that “it would be great if certain government departments would decentralize the parliament, which might help with some of those career aspirations too.”

Despite this social challenge, Lisa expressed optimism for regional areas as their situation has been steadily improving to the point where the day when this is no longer an issue is not that far.

If one particular virtue shines the brightest in my interview with Lisa Sheeve, it would have to be her ability to adapt in the face of great change, a virtue that has been the make or break factor for most businesses around the world during these troubled times we live in.

It was though this ability that she and her crew at the Busselton Jetty were able to avoid disaster time and time again, not just for the tourism attraction, but for the whole town in which it stands.

So, if you are on your journey to change the game and facing hard times yourself, there are some questions I want you to make: What can I do to flip this situation on it’s head? What resources are at my disposal, and to what needs can I provide in the pandemic?

Elizabeth Knight is an entrepreneur with a big dream to transform our education system and how we prepare young people for their futures here in WA.

She is the founder of Purposeful, a ed-tech startup helping students to find their place in the world, through their self-exploration and purpose-discovery programs.

During her time at university, she is fortunate to have led Bloom, a youth-led incubator that acts as the catalyst for early stage founders to begin their entrepreneurial journey in WA. 

She is a Fogarty Scholar, a TEDx presenter, Plus 8 accelerator participant and in 2019 received the Boston Consulting Group Scholarship for Australia & New Zealand.

Get in touch with Elizabeth.

Today’s episode of Changing the game was special not only because it was my first ever international interview, but also because I got to talk to Dinia Monge, Co-Founder of Ola Igualdad and a long-time friend of mine.

Ola Igualdad is a consultancy firm created with the sole mission of promoting gender equality in different organizations, while aiding them in achieving greater efficiency and effectiveness with their work.

On a more personal level, Dinia is moved by a strong desire to change the game for women around the world that stems from her own experience with the wall of prejudice that keeps women from ascending to high positions within the corporate world.

She recalls trying to negotiate this routine with her boss at first, who despite being very comprehensive could only do so much, eventually Dinia began to question herself on whether her current occupation was “close to her heart”.

The answer was no, and in what she called an unusually irrational decision, she quit her job in order to find a greater balance between personal and professional.

For all intents and purposes, this was leap of faith, a jump that combined the exhilarating freedom of freeing oneself from a burden combined with the spine tingling fear that comes with the lack of a safety net.

 And much like any other leap of faith, Dinia was bound to land at an important conclusion that revealed her true motivation.

This motivation would eventually lead her into contacting the delicate threads of gender equality in organizations in general and collaborate in the founding of “Ola Igualdad”.

Going back on our conversation a bit, some of the more long-term members of my audience may know that one of the biggest focuses of interest at Changing the game is the extremely important subject of women in STEM.

Thus, learning that Dinia originally graduated in engineering and how extraordinary this is in terms of what it means for the struggle for a more equitable society, I just had to ask what her motivation was to choose that field.

This love of math, combined with being “generally unaware of all the possibilities that math implies” led her to choose between becoming an engineer or an economist, until a certain prominent figure told her:

And out of a desire to see her work produce solid, measurable outcomes, she became an engineer.

Now, if Dinia was able to make such a big difference in the world without being initially aware of all the paths opened for her by her inclination towards numbers, imagine what young girls today can do if they receive access to this information?

At first, what made Dinia choose Brazil, my home country, as her destination after graduating from college instead of somewhere like the US or Australia was a general fascination for the Portuguese language.

Even if her first contact with the inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro was a little frightening at first.

This initial fright came more from the unexpected variance in regional dialects in Brazil, but once that barrier was overcome, Dinia tells that she quickly became a Brazilian at heart, fully immersing herself in the culture and history.

There was also what she described as the liberating feeling of a clean slate that comes with going to a place where nobody knows you which gives you the freedom to carve out an entirely new identity for yourself.

Such a feeling came with the price of an initial isolation from some of the cultural differences between Brazil and Costa Rica, combined with an uncomfortable distance from her family

In choosing the road less traveled, Dinia got to have absolutely unique experiences in relation to her colleagues, which in turn equipped her to bring in unique perspectives to her line of work.

Dinia co-founded ola igualdad with a team of United Nations certified consultants and it plays an extremely important role in working alongside organizations of all kinds in order to find the gender gaps within their processes and operations and addressing them.

The first step in this adressing process, she explains, is spreading awareness as “most of these gender gaps are caused by gender bias”, which are unconscious and a part of human psychology, though that by itself is no excuse.

She also explains that because of its inherent relation with the human psyche, this bias can only be eliminated on a long term process, which in turn generates the need for short-term bypasses which are then built with the organization.

It should really go without saying how essential her work is ias it manages to fight inequality from both the individual and introspective front, as well as the collective structural one, both of which are often a great source of suffering and inequality in the world.

A remarkable and adventurous woman, Dinia Monge is someone that never failed to take risks in order to learn, be it in choosing to study and live in Brazil, quitting her job to find balance or taking the charge in the fight for equality.

In all of these steps along her journey Dinia was always able to subtract some unique perspective or valuable insight which she has employed in her quest to make the world a better place for women.

So, with this in mind, it is time for me to ask you: What would you consider to be some of the most valuable experiences in your life? And how can you use them to change the game for yourself and the people around you?

Having Paula Rogers on for the Changing the Game podcast felt like an adventure in many ways as she was the very first guest with whom I had no prior contact before the recording of the episode.

This means that as we learn about her story from when first graduated from the university of Dublin up into the point where she became the WA state director of CEDA, you and I both are going to be hearing it for the first time.

As you can imagine this is quite a privilege, so as we learn about all the ways in which Paula is changing the game, I hope you are just as delighted in the conversation as I was.

Anyone that has gone through college will know that feeling of being pushed out the door into the ever revolving storm that is the world with all the strife and turmoil that it contains.

For Paula, it was no different, except for the fact that Ireland was going through a huge recession at the time she graduated which put a shadow of doubt over her transition from student to professional.

Yet as it tends to be, it was the adversities she faced that forged her path as the fear of never actually getting a job brought her to the bustling London where she got to kick-start her career.

The very first thing Paula and I got to talk about we already have a great nugget of wisdom:

When you set out to change the game in any scale, you will always be met with the challenges of your beginning circumstances. For Paula that was economic recession, for you, it can be the global pandemic we are going through right now.

But it’s essential that you take these obstacles head on as they will provide you with the strength you’ll need to truly change things for the better.

Still on the subject of the beginning of her career, Paula talked about how she got into social studies with the goal of becoming a social worker in the future, which is quite a ways away from her current enterprises a director of economic development.

That is a very common theme amongst my guests as so often they come out of college with a certificate in hands and no idea of what they are going to do.

Paula was no different in this regard having “no idea” about what she wanted to do when going into college and only a faint clue as to the path she wanted to pursue afterwards which had nothing to do with her current career

Thinking back on when the choice was upon her, Paula said that she would have chosen to go for marketing for a college degree, but that she was glad for the experiences provided in the “university of life.”

All of that is to say the simple truth that life in unpredictable and when you first put your feet on the road there is really no telling where you are going to end up. The Paula from college thought that she was going to be a social worker in 2021.

And yet she looks at the great career she has today knowing that despite being unexpected, the path she took was far from wrong.

Just like me, Paula also came to the region of Perth in Western Australia and found it hard not to fall in love with this beautiful place, yet she faced many challenges that were absent from my experience as an immigrant.

She recalled that her first experience living in Australia was back in the early nineties when she worked at Jeans West that was pioneering customer care at the time, but as soon as she could get a “proper job”, she started working at The West Australian.

There she made the connections that would lend her a job as a managing director at the publication when she moved back in with her family in 2002, later giving her the opportunity to publish her own books.

Paula’s first and second experiences in Perth were vastly different as she recalls: “There was no internet, petrol stations were only open at certain days on the weekend and I felt really isolated then.”

Her second time living in Perth on the other hand was much more positive as she could count on the grounding force of having her family with her and getting to watch her son “blossom and grow” made her years here better.

When we find ourselves in face of a challenge it is a very natural reaction to believe you have to face it alone, but too often you find that to be a lie as your loved ones will give you not just the means but a reason as well.

Being the state director of CEDA is no small feat. I believe that goes without saying as it is a position that comes with a lot of responsibility and demands no small of competence.

Add to that the challenges that women everywhere have to face nowadays and you can begin to grasp how big of an accomplishment it is for Paula to be where she is today, which was exactly what my next question to her was about.

About the challenges of being a woman on an executive position, she had the following to say:

So often in this show we hear about women having to fight with tooth and nail for a space within companies and organizations and here we can actually see this struggle starting to bear fruit.

If we were to draw a single point from everything Paula and I got to discuss it would have to be about overcoming the challenges that present themselves along our life path.

After all if Paula Rogers reached the incredible heights she is on today that would be because of her ability to take the adversities of life in stride and prosper through, the anxiety of recession and the isolation of coming to new lands.

All of these things became possible through her courage, which is the overcoming rather than the absence of fear. Which finally brings us to our creative exercise for today.

I want you to think about what is the biggest challenge that stands between you and changing the game and what you can do to overcome it.

A property journalist with the WA business news, Katie Mcdonald has earned several awards going as far as receiving the best culture and arts report at he WA state media awards two years in a row.

Coming from an Irish background, Katie recalls that according to her family storytelling is a national past-time, one that she indulged while being as young as three years old when she would fill her notebooks with “random ramblings”.

I’ve never been an avid reader. Much prefering audio books and podcasts. Nevertheless, I was thrilled to talk to this extremely talented young woman about her work, life and mission as she changes the writing and journalism game by winning it.

Originally Katie got into UWA on the psychology course with the objective of pairing marketing and psychology “to understand what makes people tick”, which she assured me was much less evil than it actually sounds like.

Yet as she progressed in her studies Katie began to “miss English” a feeling that soon drew her to more and more “broadening classes” related to communication and writing until she eventually decided to shift her area of studies completely.

Katie defends this decision as one of the best she ever took, highlighting interaction with amazing writers in her classes expanded her horizons and brought to her broader understanding of who she was.

Indeed, often when we must decide on a road it is perfectly reasonable to simply ask yourself “what do I want to do?”, in fact a lot of the time your heart will already be telling you and its always a good idea to listen.

Why? Because understanding what benefits a career offers is not enough, you need to love what you are doing, without that passion there is no changing the game.

As I revealed in our talk and here on this article as well, I’ve never been much of a reader, yet to this Katie keenly replied that stories come in a variety of forms like movies, podcasts and audiobooks which she incentivised me to try out.

Indeed, there is quite a lot of truth to that as those seeking to change the game soon find themselves with an ever-increasing demand for education on a multitude of subjects and must find whatever way they can to fulfill this demand.

And that includes audiobooks as well, which have been my way of covering several important titles in very little time (even if my wife claims that’s cheating).

So if you are not much of a reader try going to the theater or to a museum, listen to poetry sessions and podcasts, gain as much culture as you can from as many places as possible.

The world is full of lessons for those willing to listen.

When Talking about her many accomplishments, Katie humbly attributes the praise she has received to her editor David Turnock who “nurtured her journalism skills” as the award came very early on in her career.

Her “best art and culture report” award on the other hand came from her investigation onto the funding for different Australian artistic groups which revealed that despite the fact that WA did not receive its fair share, it still managed to punch above its own weight.

By doing such important work within a business publication, she captures the attention of business readers who are often the ones making decisions within companies and turning it towards the central role of the arts within society.

In bringing the importance of the arts into the public eye, Katie reenacts that same broadening of vision that she experienced in college, though on an even larger scale, and she does so in a way that helps not only appreciators of art but its producers as well.

After all, if the arts are seen not only for their benefits on an individual level but also for their potential as an investment opportunity, more artists may see their talents properly rewarded.

Eventually our conversation got into the realm of relations between art and business which in itself can be seen as the relation between art and everything else, as Katie herself points out “art is in more places than we realise”.

To illustrate this she used something most people today are quite familiar with, a little obscure company called Netflix.

When we watch a netflix series we are actually watching the combination of several different art forms from the music that makes the score, to the writing of the scripts and the very aesthetic of the scenes.

Which serves to show any artistically inclined member of my audience that art does not limit your options for a future, but rather it can take you wherever you want so long as you find new ways to employ your talents.

Being young, intelligent and well accomplished Katie may sometimes give off the image of someone with an absolutely perfect life, yet she is the first to remember us that life is always full of challenges.

For her this comes in the form of a general lack of acknowledgement for the journalistic profession, but also in the shear load of work she had to take on going from art and culture into property.

There was also the challenge of going into an industry that like so many (too many) others was dominated by men, which meant that along with her usual work to bring information to the general public, she also had to fight for her own space.

That is to say, there is no success that does not come with its own fair share of struggle, and that is something we must keep in mind as we try to exact change upon the world, that this change will come at the price of monumental effort.

Katie McDonald is truly an extraordinary person that has managed to reach great height simply by pursuing her interests and using the talents and interests she naturally developed for the benefit of society as whole.

If our conversation leaves any lasting impression on you, let it be this: If you want to change this world for the better and pursue the things you love, the very first thing you need to do is become aware at the tools at your disposal.

Which leads us to our thought exercise for today: Think about the ways in which you would like to change the game, translate that into concrete goals and then think about what skills and talents are at your disposal for fufilling those goals.

Yola Bakker is a “Creative for Change”, employing her talents across several industries in projects like PODscape and Take2 4you, through which she seeks to bring in new diverse perspectives from the ground up.

The daughter of an Indonesian immigrant, Yola grew up in Darwin where she would develop the artistic talents that she uses today in the promotion of diverse perspectives deeply rooted in intersectionality.

She was also kind enough to accept being a guest in the Changing the Game Podcast where we got to discuss not only her background but also her multifaceted work in the promotion of diversity and intersectionality.

My talk with Yola started with her reminiscing about her childhood in Darwin, and like so many guests admirably do, recognising the privilege she had growing up in an environment with access to good education and living standards.

However, she also takes a critical stance in her education that mostly taught her to “read and write”, while her critical thinking abilities were developed not in the classroom, but through Yola’s creative pursuits.

Studying classical ballet and traditional Indonesian dance, she learned from a very young age about the power that movement and words had to stir peoples emotions and the immense potential it had as a driver of change.

There is certainly something to be said about the role schools play in the development of critical thinking capabilities of younger generations.

There are some modern schools that recognise this role and foment creative activities for the development of critical thinking, but sadly they’re still a minority just like the students with the foresight that Yola had.

Being such an artistic individual, it would be hard to imagine Yola working in the resource industry of all places. Yet that is exactly where she is. And she is the first women employed by the wester mine worker’s alliance.

She explains that her current goal within the field is to re-unionise a series of 20 mining sites where companies have been given free rein to operate as they please, sometimes ignoring proper compensation and safety protocols.

So my first question was inevitably what an artist would do working for a union, to which she answered:

The problem to which Yola refers is the fact that on a national or even global scale, “we’re siloed into working in fragments where you belong in this industry, this is your expertise.”, a problem she hoped to address through “crosspolination”.

Yola knew that she could bring something different into the resource industry space, so she went for it, going out of her comfort zone in order to create the change she wanted to see in the world.

From her current position she uses her talents to share stories that change the way the public tends to see unions, what they stand for and demonstrate that there are interests in both sides of the fence (workers and companies) that are conducive to a common cause.

My second question had to do with Yola’s experience as the first woman hired by Western Mine Worker’s Alliance and she responded by recalling their initial conversations which entailed the issue of representation.

Yet she also told me that in a sense her work was not all that different in helping women deconstruct certain behaviors and ideas imposed upon them by the patriarchy and helping them shift their perspectives.

Yola does this by fomenting the same creative exercises that have given her the possibility of questioning the status quo around her, by enabling these female workers to express themselves through art she teaches them to speak their minds.

Another important aspect of Yola’s work involves creating within marginalised groups a deeper sense of feeling comfortable in one’s own skin while not feeling obligated to accept certain stereotypes and norms of society.

She then spoke of how she has been trying to pass on these values to her children so that they understand the relations between individual and institution, and how they don’t have to accept the rules presented to them.

One of the ways in which she does this is by exposing them to her work as much as possible so they can see how their mother stepped away from the game she was dealt and not only created her own path, but opened a new one for other women as well.

This last concept, as you may imagine, being essential for those looking to change the game.

Being able to look at the unfair rules being imposed upon you and say “I’m not playing” is not only a phenomenal exercise in individuality but also an invitation for others that have been similarly wronged to do the same.

The more people say “I’m not playing”, the more will the game be forced to change.

It would be fair to say that Yola Bakker has one of the strongest personalities I’ve ever seen. She has the same strength that is shared by most visionaries.

That is the strength to go off the beaten path, to ask the inconvenient questions that most people would censor themselves from even formulating in their heads and finally, the strength to refuse conformity which is so needed today.

With this strong and courageous spirit in mind, I want to propose a new mental exercise: What are the unfair rules with which you and those that share in your identity are expected to go along? What can you do to reject them?

Jemma Greene has been working with the government as the executive director for innovation within the south metropolitan health for the last five years, a career driven forward solely by her firm passion for change.

She brings this passion into concrete reality through the application of entrepreneurial leadership turned towards the embracing of creativity and collaboration within the sector, an honorable work for which she received the 2019 Public Sector Leadership Award.

All of these things make Jemma the ideal guest for the Changing the Game, an invitation which she graciously accepted, giving us the opportunity to share with you some unique insights on her line of work.

Now, most teenagers do not dream of becoming a part of the government as they grow up, and Jemma, who pictured herself as a future actress at the time, was no exception.

Fate, however had other, greater plans for her which first would see her working at retail “for a number of years”, where she learned “how to learn business, how to understand rosters, and how to manage people”, all skills which would come to great use as time went by.

When working in these stores, Jemma discovered that she actually quite liked the administration environment, and learned the skill set which would bring her the success she has seen since the start of her current career.

Which brings us to our first take-away:

If you want to change the game, it’s very likely that you have some high hopes for what you expect to accomplish, which is great, but it can lead to frustration if you don’t immediately take off towards the path you have set out.

But, changing the game is not about where you are at the moment, but rather, your willingness to put in the daily effort that slowly builds the version of the world, and of yourself that is closer to your goal.

Unfortunately things were not always a bed of roses for Jemma as she advanced her career, and like so many women (too many), she had to hear some absurd comments about not being able to join the leadership program because she was pregnant.

Her response was to prove them wrong, not just with words, but taking up leadership roles within human resources in various industries, all the while raising her children.

And, as she took these roles, she also made sure to work towards achieving diversity and equality from where she stood, so that other women would have a better experience than she had.

This goes to show that when someone makes an inappropriate comment in a work environment, the best thing we can do is challenge it, but not just challenge the comment itself, challenge the very worldview behind it.

For Jemma that was challenging the idea that women can’t take up a leadership roles while having children, but it can be any warped view of reality that still has roots within culture. You are likely thinking about examples from your life right now.

Let’s go back to one of our previous takeaways, more specifically the one about putting in daily effort, and how you need to have a constructive mentality throughout this trajectory, a mentality that Jemma summarized in a brilliant way:

Because, sure, you may not be this confident high ranking government official, but the first step to becoming one, is acting as that ideal future version of yourself in the present, making it a reality.

But also, don’t have this unreasonable expectation about being confident all the time and never doubting yourself, even Jemma talks about how some days are tougher than others:

Feeling unworthy before your achievements is a normal human emotion, and one that keeps us humble in the face of our most prideful moments, but it’s important to keep in mind that success only steals you if you let it.

So, fake it till you make it, and when you make it, understand that you bought the present with each past step.

Finally, our conversation got into the central subject of Jemma’s work as an executive director for innovation, which according to her involves “building the capability of staff and people to have the confidence to bring their ideas forward.”

Here’s why I think that’s brilliant: When you’ve started working at a company, have you ever had ideas about how to make its operations better for everyone but shied away from saying anything because you were lower in rank?

Jemma is working to change the game into a state where that wouldn’t happen.

A point I always try to hammer home on the podcast is that one of the reasons why diversity is such a wonderful thing is because it turns the work environment into a space where different ideas from different people can get together.

So, to create a space where anyone at anytime can present a solution for the betterment of the company as a whole not only capitalises on the best part of diversity, but it actually makes it more attractive as a value.

Changing the game is important, it’s necessary, and is also very hard. The world is always looking for reasons to stay just the way it is and it will resist anyone that dares to tell it otherwise.

And yet, we must dare, even if our task is monumental. So, how can we handle the huge challenge that presents itself when we decide to be agents of change? Maybe Confucius was onto something when he said:

Jemma Greene knew this, and now so do you.

Therefore, I want you to depart from this article with the following mental exercise: What is your small stone? That is, what is the small way in which you can start changing the game?

Think about it until you find the answer, and when you find it, keep at it, and you will see the world around you transform.

Originally a corporate lawyer, Pia Turcinov today is a portfolio career manager, holding several positions connected through the common focus of innovation, technology and diversification.

Pia’s career evolved from legal advisor, to company director, innovation advisor, and finally to diversity advocate, a position at which she dedicates herself to changing the game by following her main principle of “navigating life with curiosity.

Having her on for a talk on Changing the Game Podcast was actually one of our first live interactions, yet we hit pretty strong by talking about her trajectory, values and mission.

A daughter of first generation immigrants from Austria, Pia was raised in Australia to reap the benefits of this land of opportunity down under. Opportunities which she took to start her career as a corporate lawyer.

Or rather, she settled for law after missing med school by just three points, a second choice Pia described as odd due to her being “pathologically shy”, but one that she took out of admiration “for the TV shows with the power suits”.

That is not to say, however that she did not enjoy her time in legal practice, which she describes as exciting, but at the same time “one dimensional”, for someone that was very creative at heart. Which would later make her leave law to take over the family business.

Some may find her decision to leave such a stable area like law to be strange, but often in life we find ourselves having to choose between security and fulfillment, and it takes no small amount of courage to choose the latter as Pia did.

It also takes no amount of smarts to be as successful as she is after making such a decision.

Pia attributes this risk taking aspect of her personality to how her parents raised her in a “pure working class” way, valuing tenacity, hard work and knowing how to calculate the worst possible outcome then taking the plunge anyway.

This is what led her to do what she does today, propagating the idea of “portfolio career”, which she describes as “not having to be anchored to one particular activity, or one particular source of income.”

From a practical standpoint, this career model is excellent as it doesn’t tie you down to a single stream that will ruin your life if it ever dries up. There is also a personal benefit in that it makes you immune to a very common modern anxiety: The fear of failure.

After all, when you have several things going on, it will not be the end of the world if one of them doesn’t work, and you will have the inner and outer tools to replace it at will.

For those of you that may know about my personal background, I’ve had get over crippling shyness myself, and hearing Pia talk about her having similar issues to the point of being “pathological” really made me relate to her.

Like myself too, she had to go out of her way to escape her comfort zone, something that she largely credits to law school which pushed her into public speaking situations, but also to her role as the step manager for the starlight children’s foundation.

This particular role involved a couple of relatively uncomfortable activities for introverts, including being the very face of the organization, leading the business aspect of the enterprise and giving a speech in front of a thousand people at a sponsor dinner.

After, saying yes and having a panic attack at home, she gave the speech, and to every scary situation from there on she would do the same thing until it came naturally.

Saying yes to things that make you scared is not easy, but it’s a necessary for our personal growth since often saying no tends to lead to worse consequences than fear, not just in the form of lost opportunities, but also of personal stagnation.

In essence, saying no to a fear can mean sticking to it forever.

As of late Pia has also been dedicating herself to the promotion of diversity, specifically gender diversity through the inclusion of women in technology, a passion she claims to have started with her being raised by a fierce strong woman herself.

Yet, through her mother’s fierceness, and her fathers unyielding support she came to realise that if there were barriers that came with being a woman, she could overcome them through hard work.

This support and motivation from her parents is what made it possible for her to pull through in a male dominated area like law. Now she seeks to pass on the lessons that she learned from her parents, using her voice to uplift the surrounding women.

Another strong motivation for Pia is the fact that, being the mother of three daughters, she feels responsible for preparing the next generation of trailblazing women.

Talking about the promotion of equality within the technology market, I found it was the perfect opportunity to address some of the obstacles we are facing on the field to get more women in STEM, and what would be the next step to overcome them.

Pia summarized her answer with “keep doing it”, that is keep pushing STEM subjects in the education of young women, but also keep teaching them about finding self-worth, how to articulate with confidence and how to develop the necessary skill sets.

She also points to the need of teaching these things at a much younger age, as so many girls (too many) still reach their teens saying that they are not good at anything.

The efforts being made to include women in STEM fields have already yielded good results, but they can be even better, which is why we need to crank it up to eleven now and deepen our dedication to the women of the future.

What impressed me the most about Pia Turcinov was her courage and ingenious approach to life, her way of operating with full certainty that obstacles and limits are two completely separate things.

Having the courage to face challenges head first, to put yourself out of your comfort zone, to grow, is essential both for yourself and for anyone that may follow in your footsteps in the future. There is no changing the game without changing yourself.

So, for this closing reflection, I want you to think about the things that keep you from pursuing your game changing ideas, if they are valid or not, and then come up with plans of how to overcome them.