Poppy Nichaloff built an online audience before she had kids. Now she's raising two young children and running a business alongside her husband that reaches a lot further than their own feed.

That husband is Jacob Nichaloff, known as J-MILLA, a Mak Mak Marranunggu hip hop artist from Darwin and winner of the 2021 Archie Roach Foundation Award. Together they founded Generation Rise, bringing social media literacy and mental health workshops into remote First Nations communities across the country, work they've been doing for eight years.

In this episode of You're In Charge, Sav Perera talks with Poppy about the boundaries she's drawn around sharing her own kids online, despite building her entire career on sharing her life. She's candid about what it actually takes to run a business with your husband: he owns the creative side, she owns the business side, and neither one crosses into the other's lane.

Poppy also talks about burnout, the five-week trip through 13 communities from Darwin to Broome that left them both exhausted, and the moment she realised motherhood couldn't be the only title she holds. Her rule is simple: she controls the babies, not the other way around.

If you've ever tried to build something alongside your partner, or wondered what it looks like to use a platform for more than yourself, this one is worth your time.

Recorded on Kaurna Land. You're In Charge is brought to you by ThincHer, an initiative of ThincLab at Adelaide University.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Cold open

00:17 Welcome to Season 2

00:21 Meet Poppy Nichaloff

01:24 Back to the beginning

02:51 "It never planned to be this"

03:59 Spotting the gap

05:35 What to share, what to keep back

07:11 Keeping the kids out of campaigns

08:16 Letting them in, on her terms

09:34 Working with her husband

10:39 How they resolve conflict

11:42 Keeping business out of the marriage

13:24 A day in the Nichaloff household

16:07 Mother is not the only title

18:00 The risk of burnout

19:42 Learning to step back

20:37 Reading the warning signs

21:15 Inside Generation Rise

24:09 Inside a workshop

26:43 The mental health piece

29:21 What's next for Generation Rise

29:46 What Poppy wants to master

31:05 Sav's takeaway

32:00 Next week on You're In Charge

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Poppy Nichaloff had an audience before she had kids. Now she has two young children, a business, and a husband she works with every day.

That husband is Jacob Nichaloff, known as J-MILLA, a Mak Mak Marranunggu hip hop artist and winner of the 2021 Archie Roach Foundation Award. Together they run Generation Rise, taking social media literacy and mental health workshops into remote First Nations communities across the country.

Poppy is candid about how the arrangement actually works. He owns the creative side. She owns the business side. Neither one interferes in the other's lane, and when conflict does show up, they trust each other enough to hear it out.

She's just as candid about her kids. She built her entire platform without them in it, and an audience of mums who now turn to her for advice isn't going to change that.

What she wants to master next has nothing to do with a follower count. It's mastering motherhood and running a business at the same time, without losing herself in either one.

The full conversation with Sav Perera drops tomorrow.

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Taryn Brumfitt on the gap she found in workplace wellbeing, and why the same logic sent her into primary schools. Two institutions, one argument.

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The full origin story, from a single non-traditional before and after photo to 200 million people in 190 countries. Including the part where she sold a car to keep going.

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Taryn Brumfitt posted one photograph and it travelled around the world. What followed was 7,000 messages from strangers, a book, a Kickstarter campaign nobody thought would work, and a documentary that beat Guardians of the Galaxy on opening night at the German box office.

In this episode of You're In Charge, Sav Perera sits down with the 2023 Australian of the Year, founder of the Body Image Movement and co-founder of The Embrace Collective, to talk about what actually got built and what it cost.

Taryn is candid about the early years: selling a car, working a second job, and painting a Steve Martin line onto her office wall because the rejections kept coming. She talks about why removing ego mattered more than being the smartest person in the room, why self-compassion beats self-criticism as a performance strategy, and why she is now taking body image into boardrooms through Embrace@Work.

There is also a conversation about doubt that Sav names as her own biggest takeaway. Taryn does not try to get rid of hers. She gives it a rug, a thermos of tea, and a seat in the boot of the car.

If you are early in building something, or deep in it and quietly hard on yourself, this one is worth your time.

Recorded on Kaurna Land. You're In Charge is brought to you by ThincHer, an initiative of ThincLab at Adelaide University.

Chapter timestamps

00:00 Cold open
00:15 Welcome to Season 2
00:41 Meet Taryn Brumfitt
01:36 Before the world was watching
03:18 From body positivity to body neutrality
05:26 The motherhood double standard
06:18 The photo that went everywhere
08:50 Kickstarter: $331,000 and 8,909 backers
10:41 "Who's we?" Building the team
12:10 Scaling without diluting the message
14:58 The runner and the coach
16:30 Reframing doubt
18:20 Be so good they can't ignore you
19:55 When they go low, and the messy middle
22:15 The least interesting thing about you
24:14 Body image goes to work
26:55 Getting in early with Embrace Collective
29:32 Movement, not punishment
32:50 Showing up authentically
34:29 Feminine leadership
35:09 Where do you put your doubt?
38:46 Ask for 15 minutes, not a coffee
40:40 What Taryn wants to master next
41:36 Sav's takeaway
42:32 Next week on You're In Charge

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"How hard could it be to make a film?"

Taryn Brumfitt was a photographer with three young kids and no film experience when she asked herself that question. She had posted one photograph, a before and after that ran the opposite way to every before and after you have seen, and it went around the world. Seven thousand messages landed in her inbox from strangers telling her how they felt about their bodies.

She wrote a book. It did well. It was not enough. So she decided to make a documentary, and found out very quickly that first time filmmakers do not get funded. In her words, no one was going to take a punt on her.

So she went to Kickstarter. She set out to raise $200,000 over 60 days. She hit it on day 12 and finished at $331,000, backed by 8,909 people who had never met her. The film went on to beat Guardians of the Galaxy on opening night at the German box office.

What she says about that period is the part worth sitting with. It was not a clean run. She sold a car. She worked a second job. And the thing she credits most is not talent, it is getting the ego out of the way: "If you're the smartest person in the room, there's something wrong."

The full conversation with Sav Perera drops tomorrow.

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Past the headline stat about women in higher ed — Nicola Phillips on what actually slows women’s path to governance and leadership, and what’s starting to change.

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Adelaide University’s Vice-Chancellor on why self-doubt never fully disappears — even at the very top — and why that’s not the problem we think it is.

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What does it really take to lead at the very highest levels - and do you ever stop questioning whether you're good enough?

In this episode, Sav sits down with Professor Nicola Phillips, Vice-Chancellor and President of Adelaide University - one of Australia's newest and most ambitious universities, formed by the merger of the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia. With 30 years of experience across the UK and Australia, Nicola brings a rare mix of academic rigour and hard-won leadership experience to one of the most significant roles in Australian higher education.

Nicola and Sav go deep on the questions that matter most to women in leadership: the non-linear path to the top, the impostor feelings that persist even at Vice-Chancellor level, how to make clear decisions when the buck truly stops with you, and why the human element of leadership isn't a soft skill - it's the whole game. They also talk about what it's like to lead an institution of tens of thousands of people through a once-in-a-generation transformation, and what the future of Adelaide University looks like from the inside.

If you've been waiting for someone at the very top to admit that self-doubt doesn't disappear with seniority - this is that conversation.

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“Not making a decision is just not an option.” That’s how Professor Nicola Phillips opened her conversation with Sav Perera - and it set the tone for everything that followed.

In Episode 1 of You’re In Charge Season 2, our Vice-Chancellor and President sits down to talk about the leadership lessons that don’t usually make it into a keynote: the impostor feeling that never fully goes away, why self-doubt is healthy humility rather than weakness, and what it really means to lead an institution of this scale through once-in-a-generation change.

Honest, grounded, and genuinely useful. Season 2 is here - listen now!

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