Social Startup 48

Date
31 August -2 September 2012

Time
Friday 6pm -Sunday 9pm

Location
Somewhere in Melbourne – Exact location to be confirmed

Tickets
Price is to be confirmed

What to bring
Laptop, charger

Provided
Meals will be provided, as well as tea and coffee
Wireless internet will also be available for participants

Speakers, Judges & Mentors

Jan Owen AM 

@JanOwenAm

CEO, Foundation for Young Australians

Keynote speaker & judge

Jan Owen is CEO of the Foundation for Young Australians and a pioneer of the youth sector in Australia.  She is a highly regarded social entrepreneur, innovator and child and youth advocate. From 2002 – 2010, Jan was Executive Director of Social Ventures Australia, which aims to increase the impact of the Australian social sector.  Prior to this Jan founded the CREATE Foundation and was its CEO for nine years.  She is the only non US citizen to receive a fellowship for leadership and innovation to the Peter Drucker Foundation (USA) and has been awarded membership of the Order of Australia for services to children and young people.  She serves on the Boards of the School for Social Entrepreneurs; Inspire Foundation; The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI); RMIT College of Business, Industry Advisory Board and the International  Women’s Development Agency (IWDA).

Andrew Mahar

@andrewmahar

Founder/Executive Officer, xpand Foundation

Keynote speaker

Andrew has been a community organiser for over twenty-five years, both in Australia and the Asia Pacific region.

Andrew has been recognised internationally for his work, including winning the prestigious Stockholm Challenge Award in 2001. In Australia, Andrew was recognised through the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award where he was a finalist as a Social Entrepreneur in 2002. In June of 2007 Andrew was recognised in the Bulletin Smart 100 Award for his work as a social justice campaigner. In 2008 Andrew was listed in the inaugural Victorian edition of Who’s Who. In 2009 he received the Australian Information Industry Association’s Community Award for the work Infoxchange had been doing to ensure we live in a digitally inclusive society.

During 2010 to 2012 Andrew travelled throughout the Asia Pacific working with NGO’s to raise their level of digital proficiency to ensure the services they delivered were efficient and effective in the digital age. During this time Andrew presented the keynote address at six NGO Connection Days in S.E. Asia and delivered workshops that focused how to maximise the use of technology.

For over two decades he was the Executive Director of Infoxchange Australia. He stepped down from this position in February 2012.

During this time Andrew established nine successful social enterprises.

Since 2003 Andrew has been working in Timor Leste and used the social enterprise model to build opportunities for young Timorese people.  Info Timor and WithOneSeed are two successful social enterprises that Andrew has established.

Andrew has provided advice and guidance to community sector organisations, government at all levels and the private sector.

His knowledge and understanding has been built on practical, hands-on experience from over 30 years working in the not-for-profit field.

Sofiah Mackay

@sofiah_m

Learning Manager, School for Social Entrepreneurs (Melbourne)

Judge

Sofiah is responsible for the design and delivery of the Melbourne program. Growing out of her passion for people, diverse cultures and social justice, she has collaborated with activists and social entrepreneurs in different forms for over 15 years. She has worked in the youth, health, community and international development sectors in Australia, Colombia, the UK, Indonesia and the Pacific. Her previous roles have included: Expedition Leader for World Challenge Expeditions UK; Facilitator of the YES Quest, a youth enterprise support program; Program Manager for the Oxfam International Youth Parliament; and most recently Capacity Development Manager and PNG Health Program Manager with AusAID. Sofiah speaks French, Spanish and Bislama / Pidgeon English and holds an Advanced Diploma in Group Facilitation. She is excited to have returned to Melbourne, her childhood home, to work with passionate, inspired, action orientated people

Marcus Westbury

@unsongsongs

Founder, Renew Newcastle and Renew Australia 

Speaker 

Marcus Westbury (Renew Australia):Marcus Westbury is a broadcaster, writer, media maker and festival director who has been responsible for some of Australia’s more innovative, unconventional and successful cultural projects and events.

In 2008 Marcus founded Renew Newcastle with his own funds and energy. It’s a low budget, not for profit, DIY urban renewal scheme that has brokered access to more than 40 empty buildings for more than 80 creative enterprises, artists and cultural projects in his home town of Newcastle, NSW.

He is now working with Communities across the country through Renew Australia, a social enterprise established last year.

Cameron Burgess

@uncompromise

founder / uncompromise

Judge, speaker and mentor

I’m a sustainable venture strategist, systems thinker, writer, speaker and agitator – and for the past twenty years have been focused on founding, catalysing and commercialising sustainable ventures with a view to shifting the needle.

I started copywriting for DMB&B at the age of fourteen (their first year of operation), and by the time i finished high-school, realised that advertising was not for me … then, after another year at university in preparation to study law I realised that becoming a lawyer wasn’t for me either.

So i followed in the unmarked footsteps of Australia’s indigenous and did what they had been doing for tens of thousands of years…

… I went walkabout …

After four years living on the road around Australia – including almost a year spent living in the forest in the south-west of Western Australia, and another year spent living in a remote island community between the northern-most tip of Australia and Papua New Guinea, I returned to the world, shaved off my dreads, went back to school and got to work.

I’ve been an innovator in sustainable ventures in Australia and amongst other things:

• setup the first organic restaurant
• setup the first environmental cleaning company
• setup the first dedicated cause marketing consultancy
• was a founding director and current advisor to One Health Organisation
• am a former committee member of the Natural Health Care Alliance (a governing body that worked to bring together 140 disparate professional organizations)
• am a former executive committee member of The Big Issue (Qld).
• have overseen services to over 300 projects – from micro business to multi national – in nine countries in the past four years alone

I move where, when and how life requires – I’m currently on the East Coast of Australia.

Aaron McNeilly

@aaronmcneilly, LinkedIn

Speaker and mentor

B.Eng (Hons) Dip.Sust 

Aaron is all about HUGs.

He is a recent Product Design Engineering and Sustainability honours graduate from Swinburne University. He was awarded the honourable Sir Edward Weary Dunlop scholarship in his final year of study for achieving outstanding academic results whilst performing community service.

Aaron is passionate within the fields of humanitarian engineering, the education of tomorrows’ leaders and in creating environmentally sustainable improvements to the global society in which we lives. From conducting in-school leadership programs to making ‘napkin dreams’ a product reality, Aaron stops at nothing in the pursuit of challenging the status quo.

Aaron experienced the devastating effects climate change had on the demise of the family farm he grew up on in Northern Victoria. As a result, he takes assertive action to minimise his carbon-impact and purses projects which educates the wider community of their own ability to make the world they touch a better place.

Aaron is an advisory board member of HUG – Help Us Grow which is an Australian not-for-profit organisation that works to implement and support sustainable community projects in the rural villages of Uganda in East Africa.

His role within HUG encompasses: advising on engineering projects, helping to establish and maintain social enterprises in Uganda, such as the Suubi Piggery Project, and educating the Australian community as to how they can engage in and assist with current and future projects.

Aaron was recently selected as a member of the Australian Delegation for the 2012 G20 Young Entrepreneurs Summit in Mexico. Through collaborative discussions with over 400 delegate members representing their G20 nations and Southern American countries, a communiqué was formed proposing key actions to help stimulate economic growth, create jobs and foster innovation. The communiqué was presented to President Calderón of Mexico and will be passed on to the heads of state attending the G20 in Los Cabos.

Through the recommendations proposed in the communiqué, Aaron is driven to working with all levels of government and the wider community to help implement the actions which will create growth in economies both locally and globally. 

Jessica Purbrick-Herbst

@BlueTunaMediaAU

Principal of Blue Tuna Media

Mentor

Jessica Purbrick-Herbst is an integrated marketing communication practitioner and principal owner of Blue Tuna Media. I integrate marketing & communication within the sales and marketing structures to direct strategy, and increase business growth and revenue. Having lived and worked in rural Australia, the London sprawl and the New York clutter, I am now based in Melbourne and bring a unique outlook packaged in a rich experience of people, small business and corporate boardrooms. I love the impactful work of social enterprise, and have a thing for Made in Melbourne creatives, Australian agriculture and cycling to work in heels. Blue Tuna Media is an agile boutique consultancy that has been on the go since 2009.

Liz Atkinson

Founder, Zest Possibilities

Mentor

Liz Atkinson is one of Australia’s leading female social entrepreneurs. From moving to Australia as a backpacker in 2001, Liz has gone on to launch Zest Possibilities which houses a group of million dollar companies on an international stage. Combining her business acumen with social ventures, Liz and her team have raised millions of dollars for Australian & International charities.

Within a year of opening the doors in Melbourne in 2006, Liz had expanded to Sydney and by 2010 was an international operation with offices in Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland and Wellington. Today Zest Possibilities has more than 80 people across the two continents and is a market leader in outsourced promotions, sales and marketing campaigns.

With a need to empower women to follow their passion, Liz started ‘ ‘The League of Extraordinary Women’ with 3 other Melbourne based female entrepreneurs.   The movement was launched  in August 2011, and on its first event they set a record for Australia’s First & Largest group of Young Female Entrepreneurs in the same room at the same time.

Liz is an energetic and enthusiastic public speaker.  Her story and focus on Leadership has lead to invitations to speak to a range of audiences including Microsoft, RMIT and The largest Young Entrepreneurs Conference.  Liz will soon be releasing ‘Street Smart’ a book which aims to inspire entrepreneurship throughout Australia.

Kylie Gusset

@gusseting

TONOFWOOL

Mentor

Yarntrepreneur Kylie Gusset is the mastermind/one-woman force of nature/awesome person behind TON OF WOOL, the crowdsourced funding project that showed knitters are a force to be reckoned with.

Using crowdsourced funding site pozible.com in 2011, Kylie raised the highest individual amount (almost $40,000) ever on the site, creating the craft category and blowing minds in the process. TON OF WOOL is a project which sees unmulesed, sustainably raised rare Australian breed Cormo processed in this country, from sheep to skein, for the first time.

The project was born out of Kylie’s desire to support the local Australian wool processing industry, which in turn supports Australian small farmers and puts locally and sustainably grown wools into the hands of Australian knitters as fine yarns (many of them hand-dyed by Kylie).

Kylie is currently a student with the School Of Social Entrepreneurs, (SSE.org.au) to bolster her TON OF WOOL project. A resident of glorious, cafe-filled North Melbs, you can usually find Kylie knitting on the back step of the 57 tram.

Ryan Gunasekera

@RyanGunasekera

Associate Director, Careers, Melbourne Business School

Mentor

I’ve worked on the ground in Zambia and Sri Lanka with NGOs, as well as being involved in a host of different social endeavours in Australia, ranging from Amnesty International, Soup Kitchens, High School Tutoring for recent migrants and Starlight Children’s Foundation.  In between, I’ve also had a careers in financial services and consulting, holding an undergraduate degree in IT and a Grad Dip in Finance from Monash University, as well as a MBA from Melbourne Business School.  I’m also a keen basketball junkie and a runner.