So thank you Moira for joining me this afternoon and being interviewed for climbing lava – my blog. So, first of all, tell me a bit about yourself and chooks as well.

Thanks, Fiona appreciate the invitation and big shout out to Valli who brought us together. She’s a matchmaker.

So, I live in and it’s NAIDOC week this week. So I really want to acknowledge that I’m coming to you from Kuarna land. And I live in a little village called Willunga in South Australia on the Fleurieu peninsula, 50 kilometers south of the city, and Willunga means place of trees in the local language. So it’s a nice little village. People who are fanatics about cycling will know it’s one of the tour down under sites that you get to see on the big screens in January, they go up Willunga Hill and really just about expire.

I grew up mostly in South Australia. I’ve lived here all my life with a few little stints out of the out of South Australia, but as a child, not as an adult, so when I was little I lived in New Guinea for a couple of years and in the UK for a couple of years. By the time I was ready to start High School, we were back here in South Australia. So I’m kind of very much a local establishment and anyone who knows Adelaide knows that two degrees of separation is usually about half too many. And so we’re all connected one way or another. Which is, you know, I find that really fabulous. It’s not always great for everybody else. I raised a family here my kids are all well and truly grown up and left home long ago. And one lives here now, but the other ones in Mexico, ones in Melbourne and ones in Brisbane

and my oldest daughter is about to go live in Broome. So truly scattered like so many families having their next generation around, and I have one grandchild and he turned four last week. So that’s, that’s one of the joys of getting older, be the next generation explore and find out what the future holds. So I’ve spent most of my life doing change making I professionally as a social worker. And social work is all about systems change, either changing the system to help the person fit in or changing the person to help the system fit around one way or another and but I’ve mainly worked at that systems level in Policy and Planning. Essentially, I always say I have worked from the kitchen table to the cabinet table. So I’ve been a chief of staff for minister of government, I’ve been CEO for a number of small, medium sized, not for profits, including volunteering in South Australia and Northern Territory. Currently sit on a board, a director of an international project management and educational organization called Scott global it’s based here in Adelaide and we’ve got people all over the world.

And few years ago, I was getting concerned about the gap between investment for women, I’ve always had a very strong gender approach to life in applying a gender lens and all sorts of ways.

And, you know, doing some analysis around what the patriarchy is, or, you know, keeping people back and that sort of analysis and my husband was unwell at the time and was dying and I was sitting on the couch quite a lot to have a look at what some of those things again that I hadn’t looked at for a long time and became astonished, horrified and then activated to see what we could do to shift the gender investment gap.

So for example, venture capital, which is often a way for startups to get funding, less than 4% of that goes to female founders. 200 years if we’re waiting for the gender pay gap to close, so I don’t even want to do the calculations on the gender investment gap. And there’s quite a difference in the way. Funding happens and investment in capital working capitals raised for startups and for social enterprises. So a lot of social enterprises grow out of the not for profit sector, which has been very heavily dependent on government grants and philanthropic and startups seems to be you know, from more high risk takers in venture capital.

And in fact, there’s a lot of similarities and how those organizations how those investments get made, if you like, and, and women get treated quite differently in both systems. And so I said, Oh, well, that looks like that’s something that will in interest maybe like 10 other people who might be interested in it. I started a little Facebook group, a closed group because I thought nobody else would be interested. And there’s now two and a half thousand people involved in that. And we grow 10 to 20 people a week, I just can’t keep up. And that’s called Chooks SA. And predominantly, it’s women about 4% are men, and it’s really nice.

So I heard about chooks SA from Valli and we were actually having a SheEO catch up when she mentioned Chooks and it sounded fantastic. So I straight away, joined your newsletter and Facebook group. And as it’s happened to me this year, I found an amazing community of people who are doing fantastic things and supporting each other. So yeah, so what do you… What’s the main goal of Chooks?

Chooks is really a Facebook community, and it’s really just a place where people can get support, get information. So I really try and give a lot of information from all around the world as well as just helping raise consciousness about what the issues are. But as it’s grown you know people are connecting with each other collaborating with one another finding new customers finding ways to join together it’s quite phenomenal every day Oh, my goodness, you know, I don’t look at it for two hours and it’s taken off.

So it’s, it really was designed from my point of view and the way I curate it is to build community and build connection and to continue to keep a gender lens over whatever it is we’re seeing and doing so that it drives the agenda forward, which is to close the gender investment gap.

Okay, and what about the co op that you’ve got going as well?

So exciting.

Sorry,

So chalks is a is a closed Facebook community with a bit of an online and it’ll always be free and it will always be there for community purposes. So it’s you know, it is your village green if you like. However, every village needs a few shops as well to help the economy go around. And so we’ve established what we’re calling the hen house, the hen house Co Op, and the hen house and people will join the co-op and become members of it. And that way, they can be more active in actually some of the processes and things we want to change. So in the co-op itself, so you pay an annual membership fee, and then you buy a share like, which will be $1.

So we’re still waiting for the very last piece of the puzzle to come in from the partner from Co Op registrations.

As tech company government authorities

taking my money given me the name

And still haven’t given me the certificate. So there any minute now.

And then we can officially say we are the henhouse co-op.

And when when we when we say that people will be able to pay their annual fee, get their $1 subscription, share, and then they’ll participate. Every Co Op, co-ops have to be activity centric. you have to do one thing. So if you’re a farmer, for example, your one thing might be that you’re selling your grain to the co op. Or if you you know, a

lawn mowing franchise that you mow each other’s lawns once a year. So for our co-op, the henhouse. The activity test is that you will do one thing a year to help close the agenda investment gap. And you’ll make that public. And so that thing could be it might be a grandma who decides she’s going to give equal amounts of Christmas holiday money to her grandchildren, boys and girls equally. It might be that you’re the head of Telstra you want to make sure that you bring a gender lens and train everyone from unconscious bias and selection. It might be that you are a regular goer to your local newsagent. And you really don’t like seeing all the business magazines under the men’s magazine section.

For example, they are some examples. So you all publicly say that’s the one thing I’m going to do. And will will bring all of you together once a year, to give you some advice about how to turn the curve on the things that you’ve already nominated. So that will give us an opportunity to do some education, and some practical campaigning around those things. And that program is called ‘give a cluck.’

I love it. I love the names.

The incubator program which is being funded by philanthropy, and that’s a co-op incubator. So we’re bringing women who are, for whatever reason, disadvantaged, so they might be women, survivors of domestic violence, in prison, they might have English not as their first language, there might be women who live in the regions who are coming together in groups of five or more to because five, the minimum number for a co op to

incubate their business and, and create a business out of it. So a lot of the business incubator. So, Muru-D for example, what Julie runs in {}, and in Telstra, you know, has it has a different focus different sorts of women, we’ve got lots of incubators where people pay, you know, $10,000 a month for six months to start their business. So this doesn’t cost the women who participate, anything, we’re raising funds for that so they can participate. So we’re really hoping we’re not only just filling a gap in the incubator market, but we’re actually filling a gap in the

business market as well and obviously changing the lives of those women who are stepping up so we’re in our pilot for that at the moment and we call the groups that are coming (you’ll love this by the way) we call them clutches. And that’s so that’s to a play on words one is that you know that’s what a little group of little chicks is called, but also the idea of changing gear and you know you needing to put your foot on the clutch to get moving. So we’ve got

into week four of our incubator,  the incubator is a 100 hour program, 10 hours a week for 10 weeks that people have to contribute to it. It’s not face to face a little some of it is face to face but predominantly, it’s online and you know, we coach over zoom and all that kind of thing. And, and I’ve got, there is three coaches in that program, I’m one of them.

So that’s coming together and mainly being bootstrapped and underwritten by all my other

paid work to make that happen and what we do have some philanthropic funds to kick that off. And we’re beginning to build our digital platform around that as well. So people from Chooks, for example, will start to be able to start volunteering to be mentors in that program as as businesses start to end. So that’ll be a piece of the mentor matching will also begin a an online shop so that those people who have come through the incubator program have an external facing purchasing platform. And

if you’re in the co op itself, if you’re a member of the henhouse will also be a listing your business and so that people can say, you know, this is a female first business in that spot, you want to invest in it. And then the third program under the hen house will be called hatched. And that is for those little, those businesses that have come through the incubator programs that now want a bit more support they have been run their own business, but need a bit more

infrastructure and support around them. Because quite often a lot of the better programs once they’re over you know, then that’s it, everyone waves goodbye and you’re on your own.

And we don’t want that to happen. We want them to be successful. We are considering possibly enabling other businesses to come in at hatched.

They will be co ops like they’re going to be very neutral and act completely agnostic actually, about what businesses people women run. But we are not agnostic about the kind of

business model or business model but the governance structure. So the governance will always be a co op. Okay. So we’re really wanting to foster that economic model. And we believe that it’s very female friendly, we it’s got all the things that we believe are important in it. It’s a distribution of equality and equity in the share.

And also co-ops were the first places

women could vote and participate in so under under British law, as it was in those days, women couldn’t vote, they could vote in CO ops when they first started […] teams set them up originally. So we really they’ve got a really strong history in women’s economic empowerment and have fallen by the wayside for that purpose over the years. There’s still lots and lots of CO ops out there. Yeah. But the the feminine energy and as a actual economic model to support women has kind of fallen away. So in South Australia, the biggest female founded co-op was the hairdressers co-op and it went really well for 100 years and then gradually as the as the business and the industry change that started to change as well. And they set it up originally for as like a buyers Co Op so that they could get the large group purchase and yet

fantastic. I love, I knew, about some of those

things under Chooks, but I didn’t know all of them. So thank you for that Moira. That’s really awesome. The next thing I was going to ask you about was the fact that you’re a member of the Order of Australia

I even put my little badge on. Awesome.

I’ve got lots of big badges as well, but that’s a small one.

Tell me a bit about that. How did that come about? And how does it feel?

Congratulations.

Thank you. Yeah. Well, apparently (laughter) apparently I have friends

some of them decided to write a little letter to Government House to the Governor General. So um, so I received it in January. It was in the this years Australia Day Honours. Yeah. And

I was

I got a call in October last year. From

Governor General’s office. I thought it was a joke. And

very serious young man.

And I,

Was like ‘whose voice is that , whose voice is that?

Oh, yeah, right. Uh huh.’

Tell me, tell me your name. What’s your name away from again? And, and he obviously detected that I didn’t think it was real. I was and he said, Would you like me to give you the number and you can ring back and I was like oh God this must be serious.

They wouldn’t say that.

He rang just to tell me I’ve been nominated. If I got through the process, would I be willing to receive the award? Answer? Oh, yes, sure.

I better honor those people to put all the work in

Like that happened, so it was more out of other oh my gosh, I wonder who’s done that, you know, you’re sworn to secrecy. And then, in the beginning of December, I got another call saying that I had been accepted and it would happen and to expect media and you know, lalalala, and all of that. And you know, and don’t tell anybody.

I didn’t tell a soul. I kept it to myself, because I still didn’t quite believe, you know, I thought it was probably true, but you know, nothing like seeing things in writing to know it’s true. And then on the there was going to be a public announcement at 10 o’clock on the eve of Australia Day and about, I don’t know, five seconds past 10 o’clock my phone started beeping.

I was actually reading a book and I thought God is it tonight? Not that I’d forgotten, I was very conscious of it, but it like OMG it’s really here now. And I said, Right, okay. Oh, I haven’t told my mom.

And I haven’t told my brother and I haven’t told my kids. And so what am I going to do? And it’s a bit late. So I texted all the kids and sent them messages. And my brother was at a Phil Collins concert was on in Adelaide.

So I texted him saying, Hope you’re enjoying Phil Have a great night? Lots of love Moira Were AM. And he said to his wife. AM what’s AM. Cassie is very sensible. Worked it out andtexted me back and said, Are you in the Australia Honours?. I go. Yeah, that’s what happened. So then I thought, well, mum could sleep. I’ll ring her early in the morning. So because I didn’t want them to read it in the paper first. Yeah, so I rang her, she hadn’t seen it. Thank goodness.

Well, she told me she

and and so that’s what happened. So what was all very lovely and then I thought who would have done this like this a lot of work. Anyway, I just thought about it and I said, I bet I know who started this. So I contacted her and I said was that you?

And, she said yes that was me.

and she she’s got a lot of time and resources so I knew that because it takes a lot.

The all these people came out of the woodwork. Oh, I did a reference for you too.

And it was actually two years from the time it got put in to the time I got through.

Wow. So that was all before Chooks. So it had nothing to do with the Chook stuff. It all had to do with my community service over you know, forty years in primarily in the in the community sector and volunteering. So you know, being on boards and committees in the church and domestic violence and

and in my international work, I’ve worked with a lot of community organizations there as well. So it was, it was a reflection, I guess of, you know what I have done in voluntary capacity. But also there was recognition of leadership and in that as well. And I, I’ve got a really good friend I said to her, just this, this feels really weird, you know? She said, No, it’s the community giving you a big hug back. And I’d love that was so beautiful. And since then, I felt that all because I wasn’t wearing the medals or anything. And I thought I have got to get practice and so I’m having practice of wearing it.

I think you should. I think it’s awesome. I love that concept. That’s a hug back from the community. That’s beautiful, isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

So Moira I’ve got, I’m going to ask actually, I’m going to go off my own script now because, as you said that I remember something else I wanted to ask you about. One of the things that Valli talked to me about when she introduced Chooks and you to me was about your work with where our super gets invested. And I’d love to hear more about that if that’s something you are able to talk about. Sure. So I am a sit on the social impact investment network, South Australia.

And after my husband died, and he left a lot of debt that I didn’t know he had accumulated that really put a very big surprise in my life.

And I thought, I’ve really got to get a lot more control of my own set of circumstances. And at [], we were looking at strategy strategies generally about how we can improve the [] and conversation around social impact investment. And so just totally on my own, I went off and found a you know, a

What are they called like a wealth management person and sat down with them and looked at my own portfolio because I gathered up all the bits like typically women you know that we’ve got super in 500 places to put it all together. And I said that I what I wanted to do was actually just look at what they’ve done and where the investments are and my super and run a gender lens over it. So what I did, that’s what I did. So then they put got all the portfolio back for me and had it all beautifully done. And I literally went through one by one each of the businesses and in the company’s. If they didn’t have any women on the board. I said, No, I don’t want them. I don’t want to invest in them. And if they didn’t have some policies around gender, I wasn’t interested in and I did all that research myself. Just literally I went through at night after night. I just chose one and every I just did like, just doing the knitting three stitches at a time. And then I went back to them and said, Okay, this is what I’ve done. And this is what I think you need to do.

They said, Oh, that’s really interesting. You’re not the only person who’s doing this. And we’re getting a lot of people, particularly women who are coming to us and saying, you know, we want to invest in renewables. We want to know that they’re having, we’re bringing different lenses to our life. And you will know from the SheEO world Fiona that you know, the largest transfer of wealth in history, we’re on the precipice of because women live longer than men. So we will be in a position where we’ll be inheriting some considerable funds, and we can use that in a really positive way and hopefully, end some of these problems so

I then took that idea to [] and said, this is what I’ve been doing in my spare time, a little idea I’ve got and we then have then been socializing that around town and getting people’s interest up about it. And I’m just encouraging people because most of us don’t even know where our super goes and we get an annual report. We just put it in the big, saying that looks good, it was up 1% or no, that was a bad year. And, but it is something we can have some control over. And I think improving literacy around those things is important. And it’s something that I’ve done often. So when I see your voluntary aside, you know, we didn’t have some money in lack of foundation long term investments. We did some work around that thing, making sure it was going to the right places. And a lot of ethical investment isn’t really that ethical. It’s what was so you’ve really got to do some homework around it. Yep. Years and years ago, I did a piece of work for the women’s information switchboard, which was part of our women’s services in state government here. They were my clients and

they were concerned that a lot of women were turning up on the phone that was a telephone support service, and discovering that as they are about to leave because of domestic violence.

They had nothing like they didn’t even have, they won’t even co- signatures. This is like 30 years ago, on check accounts, that’s how long ago – people had check accounts. And,

you know, that didn’t have access to anything. And so they, we erected a project with them at the time called more than pin money. So I like that because when pins were first coming in, you know, the code, yeah, and, and getting people to just have their own money. And so it was a terrible shock to me to realize that I’d missed some of that myself as well. And, and I’m smart and capable, and, you know, so it can happen to anyone. And the idea of sexually transmitted debt is a real thing, particularly for women who are in DV situations, or for whatever reasons, I’m caring for someone for long periods of time, whether they’re or that, you know, mom out of the workforce, so become dependent on others. And we really need to do better about that. So that’s kind of all

intertwined in the way I see the world that our economic

independence is probably our greatest way of being able to shape the kind of world we want to live in. So we’ve got some control over whatever that is. That’s useful.

Yeah, I actually interviewed someone for my blog

maybe a month or two ago, who is very passionate about women having more control over their finances and exactly what you said then is that where the money goes is what actually gets bigger, you know, so the more we have a say in where the money goes, the more those industries and those areas will grow. So

yeah, really important and not something I’ve been aware of for way too long.

Yeah, we we’re good at things like fair trade and all of that. So we just have to just keep adding our thinking to it. And, and as consumers, even if we don’t have very much money, we can make some pretty big decisions about where we spend. Yeah, and nearly all of us have got super so we can make decisions about that. I think that’s awesome.

So Moira, at this stage, I’m going to ask you about a time when you have stepped out of your comfort zone.

I’m guessing it probably happens very often.

Yeah, I’m, I am. I’m fairly fearless like it. I don’t I’m, that I’m terrified if that makes sense. It

does actually. That old adage, you know, feel the fear and do it anyway.

So I’m certainly, that’s certainly true for me. When I was a chief of staff working in politics. I mean, that was just terrifying and out of my comfort zone every single day. And going to this was actually wasn’t in politics at the time. This was after going to this estate dinner, where there were some duke and duchess going and I had the high heels on there about this high, which was about that much higher than I normally wear, and I was terrified I was really out of my comfort zone. And one of my boys came with me he was my date for the night.

And the two of us were in hysterics because it was like, you know, he was dressed up, like

I’m never this dressed up, this feels so uncomfortable. I don’t like this.

And so here we are that the kind of things you can be surprised about how uncomfortable you know, I can get up and talk in front of 500 people and wouldn’t bat an eyelid that sort of wearing high heels in front of a room full of people at a big fancy dinner. That’s very just uncomfortable for me.

And I think too, when I am you know, in the in a political context when you’re having to deal with a lot of risk because you know, you can bring a government down by making a mistake when you’re in minority government, which was the case when I was a chief of staff and

It’s really, you know, you, you’re on edge all the time and constantly thinking, Oh, is this going to work? Or am I going to cause the fall of the government? They that can be quite scary. And yeah, but I, you know, I think that on the whole you know, what is the comfort zone is really about also, how do you manage yourself in

unusual or confusing or anxious provoking

situation and I tend to

think if I notice I’m really anxious then I’ll just think I’m really anxious to check a few breaths

and, and on you, you know, it’s that old idea of big push yourself forward through the pain barrier, or do you just give yourself a break and don’t do it? And I think as I’ve got older, I’m less likely to push myself through the barriers, I think, well, I don’t have to do that. And I’ll help I’ll push others.

But I’ll also take risks that I can I know that no one else in the room can take. I’ll often put myself in that situation. And certainly having an AM is a really great way of doing that. Because particularly with younger ones, like I can say and do things that I just it would be just too dangerous literally for them to do that. No one’s gonna, you know, get mad at me. And little old lady with gray hair kind of I can use quite deceptively.

hilarious hilarious night the other night. I’ll admit that I felt very uncomfortable. Definitely outside of my comfort zone. It was an intimate dinner for about 20 people. There were three women all the rest were men for women.

And it was for was like, angel investors and funders and all that money and this 100 Million Dollar Man for [] was sitting next to me. And he was the guest speaker. And he wasn’t stopping talking. He just talk, talk, talk, talk. And at that, before that all started, we were all asked to introduce ourselves, according to, you know, say our name, and what was the business that we were disrupting? Because these are all that you know, this cool dude start up group.

And when it got to my turn I said Hello, my name is Moira and I’m disrupting patriarchy. Love it. It was hilarious. Okay.

Next,

None of the three younger women in that room could have got away with that. So I take that I’ve got a responsibility, in fact to do that. So now I’m asking can I make this discomfort, how can I make several males uncomfortable?

When the speaker finished goin on and on, and and telling the whole story about you know how to raise money, lost his money, made his money lost his money. Found the wife got rid of the wife.

The classic story. Yeah, I know what’s going to happen next.

And then he saw the light. He had his Damascus moment and it’s all about purpose now.

And I just

lovely guy.

I just tapped him on the shoulder,in the middle of him having his moment. I’ve seen the light. And I only got one thing to say to you.

Welcome.

We’ve all been doing that forever. And I made this big speech about white privileged men and which one it wasn’t a big speech but it was impactful. Three minutes of talking. And I just thought that’s, they would they had gone to that event in their comfort zone.

It was all familiar they were going to all be with their mates and they’re all going to be supporting each other, they’re all going to be talking about and honoring the hero. And it was all about the quest and who was going to be on the journey with them and blah, blah, blah, you know, we’re dealing with, you know, the Star Wars soundtrack with somewhere in the background, all of that. And I just thought, actually, no, I can disrupt this just as you know, I’m the one that came into the room really uncomfortable, but there was a lot of squirming going on when I was talking. And and some of the guys were fabulous after a sec. I think a lot we feel the same.

But they couldn’t say that, If they’d said that they would have looked like really pathetic in front of their hero. So it freaks everybody out sometimes. And that’s one of the things I’m learning about comfort and discomfort that sometimes I can if I’m uncomfortable chances are everyone else is as well.

Maybe I can turn up the discomfort factor on a few people.

I think that’s an awesome take on being out of your comfort zone. I love that because when How else do you disrupt the patriarchy? If you don’t make the patriarchy uncomfortable?

I agree. Yeah I hope I get invited back. You know, you could have had me as your speaker

I hope they do. It was hilarious. He was really fabulous. Absolutely fantastic. The organizer invited me out for a drink afterwards to debrief I think.

Hot chocolate.

whiskey on the rocks. He

was terrific. Now I really respect him a lot.

Awesome.

That is Yeah, that’s one of the best takes of stepping out of your comfort zone that I’ve had talks on Moira. That’s really good.

Is there anything else that you would like to share with the readers of my blog at this point?

Well, just that, you know, keep up the good work. I think don’t underestimate the little influences that you can have on the tiniest things every day. You know, when you’re noticing things around you and don’t keep that noticing to yourself. Now if you see someone who needs a bit of encouragement, you know, say it and, and open the door for people you know if you have a relationship or a link or something for someone else, and it’s really always appreciated. And we don’t always know how to say thank you when it is appreciated. Yeah, that’s fantastic. Well, thank you very much for spending time with us this evening. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. I can tell by I can tell Sharon has as well.

And I think the people who watch this afterwards will also enjoy it. So much.

Thank you. I’m going to stop recording now.