Finding Meaning In Work

Hello all and welcome to another episode of the On Meaningful Work podcast. In this episode I am thrilled to be speaking with Matthew Boyd. Matt is the cofounder of Vollie and now the founder of Natureboss. In this episode we dig into Matt's various adventures from growing up in England, immigrating to Australia and establishing himself in Advertising here in Melbourne. A volunteer stint at the Royal Children's Hospital changed Matt's perception of work and inspired him to found Vollie. We dig deep into his entrepreneurial journey and the grit required to get Vollie off the ground. I loved this conversation, I learned a lot from Matt and I hope you do too

 

About Matt

Matthew is the CEO of NatureBoss, an online marketplace which connects corporate teams with environmental groups that can facilitate meaningful experiences in nature. NatureBoss is on a mission to evolve the way businesses connect with the environment.

Prior to NatureBoss, Matt Co-Founded Vollie, an online marketplace that is unlocking a new style of skills-based remote volunteering. In 5 years of operation, Vollie has seen 5,000+ social impact projects completed to date, through 300,000+ skilled volunteering hours, generating over $5.7 million of savings to the current 1,200+ non-profits using the service. Prior to Vollie, Matt has 10 years experience in a Marketing, Operations and Business development, and have been responsible for running projects that have contributed close to $10 million for NFP organisations.

 

Hello Everyone and welcome to another episode of the On Meaningful work podcast. In this episode I speak with Dr. Armida Fernandez. Dr. Fernandez started her career working with Mumbai’s urban poor in one of the biggest public hospitals there. Within that labyrinthine system Dr. Fernandez was able to implement real change in how medicine and care were to be administered with a real focus on women and newborn health. When she noticed that the problem of women/newborn health was too multifaceted to be solved within the confines of a public hospital she founded SNEHA a not-for-profit that focused on the health of women and children in Dharavi (Mumbai’s biggest slum) - SNEHA has now grown to 490+ staff working across various communities. Throughout her career Dr Ferandez has worked in extremely challenging circumstances, but she has tackled problems with an entrepreneurial zeal. She has demonstrated enormous confidence in her vision and has backed that up with an ability to articulate that vision and bring people along.  It was a pleasure speaking with her

 

About Dr. Fernandez

 

Dr. Armida Fernandez is the retired dean of Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital in Mumbai where she was Head of the Dept of Neonatology. She is also retired as the Medical Director of the Holy Family Hospital, Mumbai. She is the founding trustee at SNEHA, an NGO working on health, nutrition and violence in Mumbai's urban slums. She is also the founder of the Romilla palliative care centre. . Her key areas of expertise and interest are promotion of breastfeeding and the care of new born babies especially among the urban poor of Mumbai.  She started the first Human Milk Bank in Asia and has developed many low cost techniques for survival of new born babies. She was named an Ashoka Fellow in 2004 and is the past president of the National Neonatology Forum.

Hello all and welcome come to another episode of the On Meaningful Work podcast. 

 

This is a special episode as I get to chat with my friend for about 25 years Dr. Hayden Richards. We chat about Hayden’s childhood on the Gold Coast in Australia, dealing with being a deep introvert as a young person, the decision to become a doctor, the meaning of success and his road to entrepreneurship. I had a blast with this one!!

 

About Dr. Hayden Richards

 

Hayden is an emergency physician and co-founder of Critical Conversations, a company focused on taking the lessons learned from difficult conversations in the emergency room and bringing them to the broader community. His main focus is on the development and delivery of experiential workshops where participants are supported to build their skills in challenging communication, and emotional intelligence. He has worked with hundreds of professionals in this capacity, both in healthcare and a variety of other industries. He also has a Youtube channel called Comms Lab, where he packages his learnings into delicious, bite-sized video treats. He works on the premise that the process of acquiring these skills can be fun and intrinsically rewarding, AND the most valuable investment anyone could make. As someone who struggled with communication when he was younger, he sees himself as living proof of that.

 

His website: haydenrichards.com.au

Welcome to another episode of the On Meaningful Work podcast. In this episode we chat with social entrepreneur and founder of I=change Jeremy Meltzer. 

 

I=change is a retail tech platform that makes it easier for businesses to donate to charity.  i=Change has partnered with global brands, who give back from every sale and uniquely empower their customers to choose where it goes. The company has positively impacted the lives of over 90,000 people in 14 countries.

 

About Jeremy

 

Jeremy is a social entrepreneur and inspiring voice for women’s rights globally. He created i=Change to help accelerate the impact of extraordinary development projects, focused on empowering women and girls.

As a young man, Jeremy was moved to action while living in Cuba. He was shocked at how violence against women seemed accepted and was even considered 'normal' across Latin America. This left him with a burning question... Why is such abuse so common in some communities while abhorrent in others?

Over the last ten years in an attempt to understand this issue, Jeremy's met with NGO's and communities in many countries around the world.

Jeremy believes the solution lies in engaging men, challenging the dominant versions of masculinity, modeling respectful relationships to children, and funding best-practice NGOs.

Jeremy is passionate about the enormous potential, that often won't be realised, in women and girls around the world. What would they build if they could? How could i=Change be part of the solution?

 

Hello all and welcome to another episode of the On Meaningful Work podcast. 

In this episode, I chat with Trent and Joseph, the co-founder of the VR/Mixed reality company Phoria. We chat about how Trent and Joseph along with their other cofounders grew their high school friendship into a successful partnership. We talk about how being exposed to the natural world set the foundation for the business they want to build and the projects they want to tackle (eg their REWILD project with Netflix). We discuss the potential of V.R for being a true for good in the world, and of course, this being a VR company, we touched on what our future in the Metaverse might look like. Hope you Enjoy!

About Trent

Trent has an insatiable appetite for technology and immersive experiences. As Co-founder and CEO at PHORIA, his mission is to create software and content that can transport you places. He believes that through the power of immersive media, we now have the tools to experience the world at our fingertips. He has been deeply immersed in the worlds of Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality for the last three years

About Joseph

Joseph Purdam is an award-winning XR Producer / Director using our ever evolving mediums of storytelling to share the narrative of our planet and its inhabitants. Joseph's aim is to expand our understanding and empathy through immersive content and experiences, enabling a deeper connection to our planet, its wildlife and our people. The overarching goal, to show us all as we are, one.

Thank you for listening. If you are enjoying the podcast please support us by sharing it with a friend and leaving a review on apple podcasts/soptify or youtube. Thanks!

Hello all and welcome to another episode of the On Meaningful Work podcast. We are back after a bit of a hiatus (thank you lockdown 6.0). Hope you all are keeping well and safe

In this episode, I chat with Gordon Young, professional ethicist and principal at Ethilogical Consulting. He also serves as a specialist educator of ethics at Victoria Police. We chat about Gordon's upbringing in Melbourne and those formative experiences that eventually led to a career in ethics. We chat about how his earlier jobs with a slightly dodgy businessman and in politics led him to pick a Masters in professional ethics that changed the course of his professional life. And of course, we talk about ethics and how he applies those frameworks in his current day job

About Gordon

Gordon Young is the Principal of Ethilogical Consulting, offering training, governance, and strategic investigation and redevelopment to organisations of all sizes and sectors. He is the author of Power and the Professional, published by McFarland Books, and serves as an Associate of The Ethics Centre. He is also the Senior Specialist Educator in Ethics at Victoria Police. He is based in Melbourne, Australia.


Thank you for listening. If you are enjoying the podcast please support us by sharing it with a friend and leaving a review on apple podcasts. Thanks!

Hi all and Welcome to another episode of the ‘On Meaningful Work’ podcast

 

In this episode, I chat with Kunal Kalro, serial entrepreneur and currently the founder of EugeneLabs. We chat about his upbringing in Dubai, what drove his early choices in education and about his primary career path. We chat about the lure of entrepreneurship, what people get wrong about entrepreneurship and what he had learnt from his failures. We conclude by exploring how a personal tragedy led to an inquiry into the real lack of diversity in the genetic data used for most medical research and how that has led to the founding of his latest venture

 

 

About Kunal

 

Kunal is an experienced entrepreneur & product designer that loves to build products that take something confusing (like genetics) and makes it easy to approach and understand. He has lived and worked in Australia, US, Latin America, Middle East & India, speaks 4 languages and is a bit obsessed with Burning Man.

 

He cofounded Eugene because unequal health outcomes for people generally due to the lack of diversity in genetic data, is something that he could no longer stand by.

Welcome to another episode of the On Meaningful Work Podcast. In this episode, we are thrilled to chat with Dr Elise Bialylew, the founder of Mindful in May

 

Elise Bialylew is the author of the bestselling book, The Happiness Plan, and founder of Mindful in May, the world’s largest online global mindfulness fundraising campaign.

A doctor trained in psychiatry, turned social entrepreneur and mindfulness expert, she’s passionate about supporting individuals and organisations to develop inner tools for greater wellbeing and flourishing, and offers workshops and training at The Mind Life Project.

Her work has been featured in the Huffington Post, New York Times and on Australian Television. She was recently recognised by the Australian Financial Review as a 2019 AFR Women of Influence

This episode of the On Meaningful Work podcast features Luke Mitchell, Co-Founder of Yuki Threads, a premium snowboarding/skiing clothing brand

 

Luke Mitchell or ‘Mitch’ as he is known is the founder and owner of Yuki Threads. A country kid that somehow stumbled his way into the ‘fashion’ industry. A mechanic by trade and a snowbum by heart, what started as an excuse to keep snowboarding has turned into much more. Absorbing the experiences and lessons presented along the way Luke has evolved the vision for Yuki Threads to be much bigger than the products it makes and hopes that this vision can be shared and inspire the community

 

We talk about Luke’s upbringing in Melbourne. His first job as a mechanic but finding his tribe among the snowboarders and skiers on the mountains. We delve into the origin story of Yuki Threads and and then as the business progressed, how his aims shifted to the ‘why’ rather than the ‘what’. How sustainability, fair-trade and making sure the business is fuelled by an ethical supply chain came to the fore.

 

Luke has an incredible story to share. Thanks for listening

This episode of the podcast features Kizzi. Kizzi is the owner of Kenneth Geofferys, a barbershop in Collingwood Melbourne. I first got to know Kizzi,  in the barber's chair chatting with her while she trimmed my beard. After listening to her story, I felt I need to have her on the podcast..so here we are.

Her story exemplifies making the best of the hand that you were dealt with. For Kizzi, barbering wasn't a calling, but she made it one. Coming from a troubled background, being kicked out of school, not making it in various other jobs, it looked like a lost cause for a brief second. Until a mentor (and her own grit) helped her focus and build a career as a barber. Cut to today and she is the owner and proprietor of a thriving business.

I learned a lot from Kizzi and I really enjoyed speaking with her. And I hope you enjoy this conversation.

Thank you for listening

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