Leading impact advisory, brand storytelling and events firm ImpactInstitute has announced a strategic restructure to accelerate its purpose of enabling clients to amplify their impact.
The restructure will see Co-founder Mark Jones transitions from CEO to Chief Storyteller, where he’ll continue to drive impact storytelling initiatives, while pursuing his passion for professional speaking.
Paula Cowan takes on the role of Managing Director following 10 years at the organisation where she drove its successful B Corp accreditation. Paula leads a growing and integrated team working with clients to create meaningful and measurable change in our communities.
This week I spoke to Paula Cowan on her appointment to the role and what ImpactInstitute looks like under her leadership.
Paula has a background in education and health and brings to the role experience working across government, corporate and social sectors — seeing firsthand the power of partnerships and cross sector collaboration.
She is looking to facilitate more of this at ImpactInstitute, considering where can government policy converge with business, and with the social sector who have the practical expertise and the really understand communities and people.
“What we understand, and through the work that we’ve done with organisations, is that very rarely do initiatives from one sector affect meaningful societal change. We see the power of cross sector collaboration, especially where three sectors converge,” Paula said.
Social Impact Summit
Impact Institute is bringing those sectors together through its Social Impact Summit, the third of which will take place in July next year. Paula highlighted that the Summit addresses some similar themes as OnImpact and Impact Asia Pacific’s Impact Investment Summit, to do with the funding of initiatives.
It looks at where to find resources and long term capital for social initiatives, and what sort of return on investment is there for people funding these initiatives.
Paula says the conversations around securing capital are becoming more and more frank each year, while the challenge is how to move beyond just a transaction of funds to genuinely building value together. “We are finding that on both sides — people investing and the organisations who are receiving investment — there is a focus on impact measurement and outcomes reporting.
“For the organisation, there’s a challenge of how do I measure the impact of what I’m doing? Often these are intangible things. Should they have a dollar figure attached? Or should there be another outcome, a form of outcome that’s equally as valuable?
“For investors, the same thing. Get impact literate. Really understand the outcomes that you’re looking for. Some of those will be financial. Some of those will be economic. But some of those will be wellbeing outcomes that have a longer line to draw to a monetary outcome. Often that’s an avoidance of a cost rather than an immediate return.”
Disability employment initiatives
ImpactInstitute has been running its large-scale My Future, My Choice Disability Expos since 2014 with multiple events held each year up and down the east coast of Australia.
Adding to those events, this year it is launching WorkAbility Expos, which are funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services to connect employers and people with disability.
These expos will have both exhibition space for government organisations, advocacy, support services, training and other organisations that support people with disability as well as inclusive employers who are actively looking to employ people with disability.
Paula explained that after the Royal Commission into the way people with disability were treated, they’ve really seen people keen to be economically empowered to make their own decisions.
“It had become clear that the whole disability community had been entirely segregated from very early on — taken out of mainstream society, through schooling, through employment, through housing and almost this parallel universe.
“We looked at how could we expand our expos into a way for employers to better understand how to employ people with disability. But also for people with disability to understand pathways to employment, and especially into mainstream employment.”
The first WorkAbility Expo will take place in Brisbane next month and has a number of mainstream employers on board ready to talk to people with disabilities with quite high support needs, about how to get jobs in their organisation.
“It’s incredibly exciting to see this come to life, because again, this is an investment that solves a multitude of issues both for government, in terms of funding; people, in terms of their own determination; and businesses, in terms of needing workforce shortages in areas where they really can’t get people.”
Senior leadership additions
In addition to Paula’s appointment, ImpactInstitute’s senior leadership team includes Royden Howie (Co-founder and Head of Advisory) and Kathryn Carey (Head of Events) and has now appointed a further three new members.
The new-look team includes Niall Hughes as Head of Brand Storytelling, Lorrae Collins FCA as Head of Finance, and Rian Newman as Head of Brand Experience. Additionally, Kate Elks Zadel steps into the role of Head of Client Engagement after more than 10 years at ImpactInstitute.
“I think I’ve worked really hard to assemble a team that reflects diversity across a number of areas — gender orientation, ethnicity, levels of experience, age. We’re a really diverse team, and I think it makes us incredibly strong with that representation, and I value the strength of that bench and the insights and questions they bring,” said Paula.
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ImpactInstitute is the organiser of the My Future My Choice Disability Expos, WorkAbility Expos and Social Impact Summit. It also produces the award-winning podcast The CMO Show.