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What I've Learnt - Christina Hobbs · WHAT I'VE LEARNT

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Christina Holt is a woman with purpose.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: She's worked as a humanitarian and financial inclusion expert for the United Nations for over a decade.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: She's also a former Deloitte management consultant and experienced board member in the superannuation industry.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Verse Superannuation is Australia's first ethical superannuation fund specifically designed by women for women.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a welcome disruptor in the industry.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Since superannuation was introduced in the early 90s, successive national governments have made little progress on retirement equality for women.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Australian women today are still retiring with roughly 40% less super than their male counterparts.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: On top of that, women over 55 years of age are the fastest growing group experiencing homelessness.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: She says there's no security without economic security.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: There's no space to pursue dreams, no ability to live safely and independently, and no opportunity to achieve potential.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Women face significant structural challenges in building financial security over their lifetime.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why it's so important that we support each other and fight for fairer economic policies.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: But to me, economic equality is about so much more than security alone.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's more than equal pay and bank balances.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd like to welcome Christina Hobbes to the What I've Learnt podcast.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for having me on.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Absolute pleasure.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And as somebody who's very much in that age group, that age bracket that you referred to in that quote, it is relatively confronting to see.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've been seeing a lot of articles in the paper about the new homelessness sector, which is the, you know, women in midlife suddenly find themselves divorced, financially bereft, and uh really with nowhere to go.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: So tell me a little bit about your history, your background.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, let's start with the United Nations.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: What did you do there and how did you end up there?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that was a bit of a crazy career turn.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: But um I've been working, so I've been working in Sydney and what was my graduate job with Deloitte, one of the big four, and sort of been doing that for about two years.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: And one day I just had this moment of, you know, getting on the bus at Bondi, and I was crammed into this bus and then getting onto the train at Bondi Junction and being crammed on, and then, you know, flowing out into Martin Place with all these other people in their power suits and getting into a crammed elevator and like walking, getting up the lift and just sort of had this like, what am I doing with my life sort of moment.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, it was a wonderful company to work for, but I think I just realized that two years of sort of dedicating all my energy and efforts and and um flow towards what was essentially working with large corporations to help them make more money, um, just wasn't sort of inspiring my passion.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: So decided to take a year off, um, joined a great government-funded program at the time, and got a great opportunity to live in Kathmandu, Nepal for a year and work for the UN.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time, the use sounded like a really long time, but it ended up being about 15 years before I came back.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: So um worked as an economist there and but really joined um, I guess, the humanitarian world at this interesting time when everything was shifting from giving people stuff in emergencies, like giving people food or giving people blankets, um, to hang on, if there's markets that are functioning locally, let's just give people cash and trust that they can actually sort things out themselves and they'll know what how to spend the money in the best way to meet their own needs.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I joined what was what UN the UN agency that was called the the World Food Program, and it's the largest humanitarian organization in the world.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was really heavily male-dominated at the time, and they were all like largely logisticians, so incredible at getting sort of trucks across um, you know, broken bridges and exactly across sort of 10 different conflict lines in a in a in a um conflict setting, um, but not so good at sort of setting up financial systems to um to transfer funds and and to support local um local markets and economies.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah, I sort of came in, they saw I had this finance background, even though it was quite unrelated, and said, okay, why don't you start trying to set these projects up?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: And that was sort of the beginning of what ended up being a very long and um a career that definitely took me in directions I'd never imagined.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: So this epiphany that you had on a crammed uh train um heading into the sort of Sydney City really was transformative.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and really interestingly, you you backed yourself at a reasonably young age, which is the time to do it.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And um really the the fear of going into you could never have anticipated where you'd end up, but it sounds like it was extraordinarily rewarding.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: But there must have been some pretty personal uh conquests that you needed to confront in terms of your fear of going into these places that you really didn't know how you were going to land.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: How did you navigate that?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was really crazy.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think also when people sort of hear about the UN, you picture these, a lot of people just picture people walking in suits in New York.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, I, you know, I started in Kathmandu Nepal, which was very soft landing, but of course I ended up working in um Somalia during the famine then, um, and then spent for the last five years of my career working in Syria and around Syria.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: So in Iraq, Syria, um, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so some really volatile situations and just in this crazy sort of workplace that I still am kind of processing um at the moment because it's really just full of people that have spent, you know, large um numbers of years in those kind of settings and where things are really normalized.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we had one, for example, one counselor, one staff counselor for the whole of the Middle East at the time.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: So if you just ignore the fact that you've got sort of hundreds of international people working in conflict areas, we also had thousands of um, you know, national staff.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we had Syrians who were working that had, you know, family members were going missing, houses were getting destroyed.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and there was one staff counselor.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you know, I think it was this really, really sort of crazy um, you know, kind of rogue in a way, work environment.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I think um, you know, part of that rogueness was also, you know, having people from all these different cultures working together and um, you know, with really different workplace cultures to Australia in terms of professionalism and even include in terms of things like sexual harassment, you know, just really different cultures coming together and working in this system.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: So it was definitely a real shock and a really steep learning curve.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm assuming that you found some like-minded souls that resonated and helped you on that journey, but internally you would have had to actually tap into some pretty core elements within yourself to continue on that path.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you clearly stayed there for what was it, 15 years in that arena.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, were you ever afraid for your safety?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if so, how did you, what, what resources did you access in order to protect yourself?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was it was a really um, you know, there was lots of situations that that were, you know, I think quite nerve-wracking, I would say.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but again, it's sounds like this culture where things are just normalized.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: So um my my last precinct before coming back to Australia, I was in um Baghdad.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it was we were, I was in a on a military base because the UN base was full.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I was, you know, living basically with about you know a thousand peacekeepers.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: We were right next to the US Army base.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that that US base is sort of a constant target for missiles or anything that people want to lob sort of into the green zone.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it was just completely normalized that um, you know, we were living in these bunkers um and that, you know, we're traveling around only in armored vehicles and that at any time these things could sort of fly in and not even sort of when when there were incidences, people sort of not being super shocked.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I think similarly, you know, I was in a um a camp for displaced people from Syria on the Syrian-Turkish border, um, which ended up getting, it wasn't under direct fire, but ended up um getting waterfly into that camp um while I was there.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember sort of telling our security officer about this, and and you know, his sort of response was like, but you weren't under direct attack, right?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they weren't targeting you and it was sort of like it's almost like a dystopian surreality where you know, and um, and then you know, these stories like you're trying to sort of debrief with someone and they're always sort of like instead of sort of listening at always sort of the rhetorics like, you know, when I was in Afghanistan and you know, the 1970s or the 1980s.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um so so did you do you think so?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: What did you learn from that experience in terms of your own um strength, resources, and ability to um, I suppose, navigate some pretty challenging um uh environments.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: It must have been quite and you was you were young and clearly you'd gone on your own and and but there must have been something feeding your soul there because it clearly um resonated with you enough for you to stay.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Something so so tell me a little bit about what you did learn from that experience, about yourself, probably, as a first port of call.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I learned I learn a lot.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think um part of it's also the living environment because you're um when you are in more challenging situations, you're sort of often working three weeks on, one week off, or four weeks on, one week off.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're completely detached from your friends, your family.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so not only are you working sort of what can be really extreme hours in a really extreme context, um, but then you sort of don't have your support networks around you.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I think um I built up a lot of like personal resilience and ability to sort of self-calm, self-soothe.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then also obviously sort of, you know, really learnt that I had to reach out to loved ones and I had to talk to people.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that was a big, you know, I had to kind of externalize um, you know, my emotions where I was probably someone who used to sort of internally process things a lot.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, then I think in terms of what I got out of it and what I really loved in the end was actually working with people from cultures all around the world, just learning really different, you know, really learning and understanding how different people think.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then just, you know, I think having a really strong purpose and mission every day was something that kind of did get me out of bed and did sustain me.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think, you know, realizing that that is really, really important.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I think just learning to back yourself because I ended up sort of being um, so I actually led an operation in Turkey, which was the largest ever at the time humanitarian operation.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: We supported over a million Syrians in Turkey.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I was only in my early 30s, and you know, I was this young blonde.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: This young blonde, you know, in the in the uh in an in a pretty extreme and you would have in the Middle East, you know, like I stood out in the Middle East, and um, but I think that you know that was an incredible experience because you know, I was given that opportunity because for whatever reason I was able to build, you know, really good relationships with um, you know, whether it was government actors from um those regions or um, you know, not-for-profit actors, um, and also with um sort of the leaders in the of the beneficiaries that we were actually supporting.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, I think over time I just learnt to, you know, I might I might stand out a bit here, but you know, I'll back myself to kind of get the job done.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Did you ever feel as if your safety was genuinely threatened?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: And if so, how did you manage that?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's a number of occasions, and it's really hard to explain it to people that haven't been in active conflict because you can actually sort of have like a line of um conflict where there's sort of direct battling going on.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: You can then sort of like, you know, several blocks down the road have an opening market where there's people shopping.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really, it's this crazy kind of setting.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, I think some of the some of the riskiest moments were probably when you didn't feel like there was something really direct happening.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: So um I remember the an apartment block that I lived in on the on the Syrian border in Turkey, for instance.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um they discovered while I was there that it was actually an ISS cell, sort of two um just two doors down in an apartment block that had been there for sort of six months.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that was sort of, you know, I would have walked past that every single day.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um and um, you know, that sort of all came crashing down one night when I think about 20 um armed Turkish police raided that that building, which of course you can imagine the middle of the night sounded like it was in our building and like we were under attack.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um extraordinary that are, you know, that do really test your test your nerves.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: But I think, yeah, I think it's always really hard to tell.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think the important thing as well that I always like to reiterate is that um ultimately it's it's national staff in those settings that are the ones that are truly under danger.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: So when, you know, we as as internationals, as targets, we pull ourselves out really early from entering those areas um and putting, you know, our like other national staff at risk as well.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it ends up, you know, it's local people ultimately that really have their lives online.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the organization I worked for, we had, you know, even while I was working there in operations I worked in, we had people that were kidnapped, that were killed, um, and they were all national staff that you don't tend to hear about so much.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think the probably the challenge would also be to focus you're focused on the humanitarian um outcome, but clearly you'd be affected by the politics and and the complexity around that.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: So how do you sort of, if you like, stay neutral in a in a context like that when you get very close and very invested in the locals and the and what's going on, and yet you're aware of a greater political agenda on a global stage.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Is that challenging for you to not buy into some of the uh, I'm sure, very complex global issues?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it can be incredibly, yeah, incredibly challenging.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think Syria was a really good example of that because um we were providing support to um, I guess, people on both sides of that conflict and um coming under quite heavy, you know, and and obviously if you think about that, what that means is it means that in areas that were controlled by the opposition, we were working with um uh actors from the opposition forces, where in areas that were controlled by the government, we're obviously working with, you know, government staff.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so, you know, that was there was a lot of media articles actually at the time, and some of my friends who worked for global advocacy groups, um, you know, the groups they were working for were actually advocating against us, saying, you know, how could how can the UN be working with um the current Syrian government given what they're doing?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: How can they be supporting, you know, because obviously we're working with them, we're providing emergency assistance, the government gets to deliver that, or you know, not necessarily the government, but um not-for-profit actors working for the government.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, we came under really heavy criticism for that.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it's it is really, really difficult.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, I think I think that's something that, you know, I've personally reflected on a lot and kind of came to the conclusion that that neutrality is actually really, really essential.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it is actually at the heart of humanitarian work that you know we're not we're not political.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um we shouldn't be political.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so as much as it sort of did pain you at times, um, and as much as I think the other part is that often you want to, you kind of can get really easily sucked into other people's conflicts as well, because you do you do get to know them, you do really feel for them.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, I I really reflected on neutrality and and decided personally that I feel like it's such an important principle.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Probably not dissimilar to Doctors Without Borders or Medicine Sofference.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, at the end of the day, they have to go into war zones.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a dissimilar situation where you have to, in order to do your job, be neutral.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's something you clearly um must have absorbed reasonably effectively, otherwise you wouldn't have stayed there that long and been involved in so many countries and helping so many people.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Fascinating, really interesting story.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me clearly when you were across these different um uh countries, you saw the power of um equipping these communities with financial independence.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm assuming, I'm assuming microloans and things like that were put in place, which I think is a very, very effective resource.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me a little bit about that and how you know the financial lens was something that you applied effectively and what you learnt from that.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I started, my work sort of started being very much this emergency cash assistance, um, which was really about the logistics of getting money or cash or mobile money to people that needed it.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um but then I had the opportunity to work in um contexts that were more stable.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, after the UN, I worked with some really small NGOs doing this.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: So, for instance, I worked in um in Gaza and Palestinian territories with local farmers there, um, and worked in a number of other places with much smaller NGOs that was really about looking at how do we support finance for small business owners essentially, um, and particularly women who had much harder problems accessing finance.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I just fell in love with it.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: I completely um I just completely felt and still feel like there's just so much opportunity.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, I think what I found really remarkable was when you look at microfinance, micro lending, and supporting people to access capital, is that it's often just really small amounts of money that can make a huge difference.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: So in really low-income countries, sometimes it's a few hundred dollars, is what people need to purchase their own piece of equipment to do something on their own instead of working for someone else.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, in middle-income countries, or you know, it's it's sometimes only you know a few thousand dollars that can help somebody open a shop or or really start a business or grow a business.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so yeah, I really fell in love with that, with that kind of work.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: And um I think it you know really felt about um supporting people to really reach their potential by just being able to access financing.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: So some of the work I did in Palestine, for instance, was you know, women that were growing certain products, but then they weren't able to do anything with those products because they didn't have the money to um turn them into actual food source, so into like a jam or a um a processed food source.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it was just small thousands of dollars of loans.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, women were then able to not just grow products, but then actually um refine them and sell them into much higher value produce when previously they'd have been having to sell it either outside of the country or to sort of these larger, much larger middlemen.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um I thought it was a really exciting space.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so logistically, um, and I have I have seen quite a lot of research on this, but logistically, you basically you're in a community, you have access to loan funds that you can then distribute to those business owners.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: They go through, I'm assuming, a simple application process with you so that you get to know them reasonably intimately, is that right?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that you can then make an assessment and help them develop that specific project or business.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Is that is that how it works?
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think when it's done, when it's done well, um, what happens is that an NGO will come in and provide a whole kind of wrapping of support around it that's often um, you know, that's often not part of the actual loan.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: So they might provide business skills classes, actual business people to support people in their journey.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I think when it's done well, it's a loan, but it's a wrapping of support around that person to really give them every chance of of success.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so you then moved, obviously, that gave you a real insight, even though that was in sort of somewhat extreme circumstances.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you've then come back to Australia and applied not a dissimilar lens to a really uh somewhat uh veiled problem, because I think um much of what I've read is that you can see, and we know for a fact, that uh women are often left uh high and dry and not equipped financially moving forward, not because they're not capable, not because they're not resourceful, but because of circumstances.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: Talk to me a little bit about how Verve supercantiled.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it was really sort of just a stewing of ideas for many, many years, and then sort of suddenly one day waking up and being like, I need to start a super innovation bug, which I never thought I would do.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I think it was sort of, yeah, this mulling of things going on.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: So one was coming back to Australia, and obviously, um, you know, I think at an age as well where what was happening.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Was that a lot of my friends who were getting married, having babies, and suddenly with this sort of burden of having to work, plus become taking on the burden of caring, and um, you know, a lot of the household decision making um had sort of started outsourcing kind of financial management to their husbands because it was sort of like an easy thing to do and it was like the thing that they could quickly kind of palm off.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and there was like this sort of natural tension.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of my friends sort of were saying, you know, we don't know how to do these basic things, like we don't know how to think about investment decisions.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Or my husband wants to put all that super into a self-managed super fund.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what does that mean?
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think because I did have a finance background, I was often the person that my friends were coming to to sort of ask these questions.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I think my awareness was raising that that most women just don't have a good person they want to they want to access to to answer these questions.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a whole lot of research that shows that men would rather um when it comes to learning about financial management, talk to their friends and read books and make decisions based on that, then women would actually like a professional to support them, but then are far less likely to access it because they don't trust them, they don't know who to go to, etc.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: So true, so true.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: So there was sort of this smelling, and then I think it was um, you know, a lot of the um, you know, statistics around superannuation and older women, and um, you know, I think at heart I'm an activist, and um, you know, I felt like, you know, I was it really felt like that a lot of the women activists I've known had kind of gone into the climate movement, and I was like, where are all the women like advocating on these issues?
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so I think it was a bit of that, and then it was one day um after much insistence from my mum who'd been receiving all these letters from my multiple superannuation accounts for years and years, um it sort of sat me down and was like, consolidate these.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: And um, it was in that process of trying to work through my own super that I realized that my own money had been invested in like not only fossil fuels and tobacco and gambling, but actual weapons.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and actually trace back that I'd actually been invested in some of the weapon companies that were being used in some of the conflicts I'd worked in.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, not confronting that is exactly a really insane situation and something that most people wouldn't know.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was just that you happened to go through and see you, obviously, did the investigation to find that out.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's not so easy to see that.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: No, and I mean super funds do a good job of keeping it from you, and it was only because when I called one of the funds and I was talking to about investment options, they mentioned some kind of responsible options, and I was like, okay, but what's in all these other options?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that sort of started this journey.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, I think at the same time I was really passionate about like, well, hang on, like I also sort of at this point realised that women in Australia hold over a trillion dollars in super.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I know all this amazing stuff you can do with money, like around investing in microfinance and investing in renewable technology.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it just I think all these things kind of melted together.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, you know what, it's time for women to actually start their own financial services company.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: It was the first Superfund or bank in Australia to be started by women and also specifically tailored for women.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, okay, let's go, let's try to build some advocacy for the issues, let's try to provide additional support for women.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: And um, let's also, you know, think about how we can use this huge pool of superannuation capital, not just to build the wealth of our members, but how can we put that money to use as well?
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: And how hard was it to get traction on this concept and to get the support you needed to get this up and running?
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because it sounds, you know, it's it's quite challenging to sometimes.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, some of the stats, you know, in Australia, men make up 93% of the leaders in the finance sector that you you refer to.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, I mean, that that's pretty that's a very potent number.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: Excuse the reference, but I'm like, what is going on?
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, um, and you've you know, Australian women hold over a trillion in super.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um why are we so disempowered and how's it got so far?
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and all my girlfriends work really, they're all professionals, or they own retail stores, or so, but yet there's very little discussion around money and finance, even though many are lawyers, many are doctors, many are uh very successful business people.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it's interesting because it's also about a culture, isn't it?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: A cultural shift.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a huge cultural shift.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: And um there's this great, there's this great research about, you know, pocket money that young boys get more pocket money than young girls.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's great research that parents are more likely to talk to their sons about managing money than their daughters.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: So it is a it is a cultural issue.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think if you think about where we've come from as well, you know, it wasn't that long ago.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, a lot of these women who are today living in poverty, you know, as we know, literally under the law at the time had to give up their jobs when they got married or had children.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so we're not we're not super far away from those days.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I think it was only in the 90s that the last kind of laws got repealed around requiring women to have a male guarantor husband as a guarantor on their home loans.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we're not, you know, where we're coming, we're moving quickly in a way, but it feels like we're moving very slowly.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, I think we're on this journey as women where we've we've you know, we we've won the right to um to equal pay, we've won the right to actually work, um, we've now it was a while back, but we you know I'm like, well, all these other things.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, after let's just say it, uh, after we lost the rights as well, we can keep going again to when we used to have them.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: But um but you know, it's um we so I think the point, the the part of the journey we're at now is that we're we're we're building wealth and and we're about to see a huge intergenerational wealth transfer as well, which is gonna really um bolster women.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: So um I don't think it's crazy that that we have a culture where women aren't used to talking about investing because we're actually not used to most women having huge amounts of money to invest or to think about building up wealth.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think it's an exciting, I think it's an exciting phase, and and I'm really encouraged by how many women are really interested in in this now.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's I think it's a really exciting time.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: I agree with you.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, you know, I have a young 21-year-old daughter, and she is right on it.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: She listens to the, you know, she's on the money podcast, she's really into understanding her income.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: She's she's very savvy.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm at 21, I don't think we were in, it was just not even an something that was discussed when we were young.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, whereas I think this, you're right, this next generation is uh a lot more informed.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think social media has facilitated that as well.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um and hopefully they'll be a little more equipped to uh not feel and be as vulnerable as a lot of this generation of 50 plus, some of whom, as you say and referred to, we referred to in the intro, um, are facing homelessness.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: So can you talk to me a little bit about that crisis and and and what you see in terms of how we can change that circumstance or support that that uh that group of women?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think it's really interesting reflecting on that cohort of women and then thinking about younger women as well, because I think there's also a bit of a collision course that younger women are on today, where um, you know, even my generation, I was brought up being told a man's on a financial plan, you know, you need to be financially independent.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: I was, you know, and I think most of my peers were as well.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but then of course, you hit the now I'm taking time out of my workforce to have children.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you hit potential divorce and separation, where we know that in the long run, women typically end up worse out of out of those arrangements.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you hit all the kind of barriers that we have in Australia that impacts workforce participation amongst women.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, not to mention the underpayment of um industries or women in industries that are heavily dominated by women.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's um it's it's it is this kind of collision course because even young women today, um, we know that that unless there's major policy changes, most young women today will probably still end up in their retirement dependent on their husbands or some form of old age pension unless the system is fundamentally shifted.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um when we look at older women today, you know, I think I think it's just a tragedy that really reflects um ultimately how little we value women's work.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: That um, you know, when I speak to, and I speak to so many older women about this because as soon as people hear I'm in super, um, you know, they they start talking to me about this.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, the the the vast majority of women who I speak to who have tiny balances or no balances, they've worked their entire lives.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um they've they've probably worked on average more than the average Australian if you take into account all of their unpaid work as well.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, you know, and I think the other part of that is that um, you know, the way that we kind of mask this in Australia is that, you know, when I speak to a lot of older women, there's this shame, there's this guilt, there's this feeling that somehow they've never got it together.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but if you actually sit down and look at, you know, you know, someone's life and the challenges they faced um in accessing well-paid employment or just the years they took out caring for someone, um, you know, often those women have actually achieved an extraordinary amount.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: They're often generally amazing money managers and have managed these tight budgets for you know decades and decades.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we don't have a system that has supported them to live comfortably in retirement.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's just such a shame.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, I mean, beyond a shame, it's just not tragedy.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's a tragedy, actually.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: And there's so many in that position.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, I listened to you and I, you know, it's it's really, it resonates very much.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think, I think the other interesting aspect of what you're saying is um the shame and the fear and the embarrassment that somehow they're, you know, they're idiots or they're ill-equipped, or that somehow, why didn't I do this?
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: Or I could have done that.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: But as you pointed out very rightly, that many of many of the challenges were, well, first of all, a lot of it's not financially paid, you know, the running of the home or the whatever it is that they're doing.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's not always financially, it's not always remunerated.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but even if it is, it's often just um put into the pool and absorbed into the general running of the of the family or or the business.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it's actually not a reflection of women's inability.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's more that they are just so busy trying to juggle and manage.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I know lots of people in that position.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting too, because you're and and we discussed this, you're 36 weeks pregnant, is that right?
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: And which is very exciting.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um and but the reality is, as you've uh pointed out to me, is biologically, well, you've had a little, you've been unwell for a period of that pregnancy, which straight away just physiologically removes you from the work environment.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot possibly, during that period, you need to rest and and heal and get better.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's because you're caring child, you know, and you're you're nurturing something very important.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: But that is time out of your system.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: And if I've had three children, so you can imagine times it by three or four or whatever it is that that women choose to do, it definitely impacts your life and will have a financial, potential financial impact.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't matter how much you can juggle, the reality is that that's just a fact, not something that we regret or or resent, but it's just a fact.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I think your reference to women being impacted by the world around them, their biology, their physicality.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: Talk to me a little bit about how you think we can make that shift to accommodate women during that time.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's a great question, and definitely being pregnant myself now because I've talked about, I feel like I've especially the last few years spent a lot of time talking about these issues.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: I remember actually when I was um, when I worked for Droid, I was when I was much younger, I actually wrote um, I was asked to write a chapter in a book by young Australians, and my chapter was on gender equality.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually remember at the time, like really trying to rattle my brains because I was like, you know, I worked for this great company, everything seems very equal.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, you know, I've really, and I relied so much on statistics because I hadn't really experienced anything that felt like inequality at that time.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then of course, you know, you get older and you get to this stage and you're just like, you know, a ball of rage.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, I think, you know, I think the the thing that I like to like the the way I like to really turn the conversation is that, you know, so many people sort of say to me, like, oh, of course women have less super because um they take time out of the workforce to care, you know, like like a duh, like I hadn't thought of this, you know, like like of course we shouldn't have the same amount.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, which, you know, I think is really the wrong way of looking at it because um, you know, if you look at other countries and how, you know, other wealthy nations and how they structure um, you know, how they structure things, um, it's really not the care work in itself that leaves women behind.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's the fact that in Australia we have all these policies that ultimately um encourage women to take more time off than their partners.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, really simple Nordic examples that many of us have heard of where um they've got use it or lose it shared parental leave.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: So the husband doesn't take um, you know, equal time off to his, to the to the um, or the the non-primary caregiver, I should say, doesn't take equal time off to the primary caregiver.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they actually lose some of their overall benefits.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we see in other countries, um, you know, free childcare, free early childhood education to encourage mothers who do want to go back to work to be able to go back to work.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got, you know, in Australia, we have some of the worst rates of workforce participation once women have children.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's only two countries in the whole OECD that have worse rates as single mums.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're a single mum, Australia and in is one of the worst kind of wealthy countries to be living in in terms of actually helping you get back into work.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then if you just look at retirement and superannuation benefits, I think there's one sort of statistic or number that you know tends to paint the picture and shock people a bit, and that is that the government spends$42 billion every year on our superannuation system in um um through tax um benefits to people.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and two-thirds of that goes to men.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you have a system that the sole purpose of the system, when it was initially designed, was to support every Australian retire in comfort.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't to support people who are really, really wealthy, retire with ridiculous amounts of wealth.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: It was a system that should be designed to take pressure off the pension for everyone to retire in comfort.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yet we now know that the majority of the money spent on that system is going to wealthier Australians and overwhelmingly men, um, even though we know that women are the ones that have much lower balances.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: So um without going into every single kind of policy way that you could tweak the system to level that out, um, I think that's really important.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, let's looking at um, you know, even the pension and ensuring um a basic livable pension wage.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: But we do know that there's so many women living on that pension who are legally required to quit their jobs.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think the other aspect is you know, really how we value care in our society, and um, you know, just one of those superannuation policies as an example is that there's no superannuation benefit um paid to people who are on carers leave.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're a parent on carers leave, if you're a woman who's taking time out to look for look after elderly parents, if you're looking after a disabled um family member, while you may be entitled to other government benefits, um there's no retirement benefit paid.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: So there's sort of an assumption that, you know, okay, the society or our government can support you with some kind of minimal benefit now, um, but that later on in life you're not going to need it.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, there's some there's some really clear policies that that create this divide or don't support it to be closed.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: And and so, you know, it's it's not the fact that women have babies that's the problem, it's the fact that the way we've structured things um leads to inequality when that when that happens.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that's absolutely and very enlightening.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I noticed that you've now got a partnership with the Victorian Women's Trust.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I know that you've partnered with various people and you've got some great funders and investors.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: So you're really, you know, building a really exciting um uh business model, but also uh a resource for women.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me a little bit about how those partnerships have fostered and facilitated this change in culture, or certainly trying to.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's been great.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, we have sort of formal arrangements but informal arrangements, and um I think organizations like the Victoria Women's Trust, even in the YWCA, um we've been able to do some great, sort of very quick practical work where, you know, here's communities of women who want support, and then you know, here's us that has the kind of financial knowledge, who've got the coaches.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so we've been able to partner with some of those women organizations to provide free, whether it's free financial coaching guidance to to large co-horts of women, which has been really exciting.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then of course, the role that we try to play, um, I guess, in the broader sort of advocacy community is really bringing a voice to some of the superannuation legislative changes that we need to see um in order to see greater um, you know, lifelong wealth building inequalities.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's interesting, but those partnerships are good because they facilitate that and and and lift you up and out into those other sectors, I'm assuming, which is great to hear because there's a lot of work to be done.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, in your opinion, so for argument's sake, um would you advise somebody who is in a situation, let's say somebody who is feeling anxious about their financial future, what would you advise them?
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: Would do you have, you say you've got coaches, you've got courses, you've got resources.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, so what would be your recommendation to some of our listeners who might go, oh, I really could do with a little guidance on this one.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: What would you suggest?
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we thought about this, I guess, at BERV from from the company level.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: So we were sort of like, what what is it that that people actually need or what could really support them?
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: So um we do do every month, we've got webinars and events who we're doing a lot of um in-person events for now their webinars.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: So anyone from the community can join those.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: So you can always pop on and that covers anything from you know debt to savings to learning how to invest.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think, you know, whether it's through us or through as other people, lots of other people providing these kind of things, services now.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, and then I think the other thing that we brought in was this one-on-one coaching.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, particularly thinking about, for instance, our divorce and separation coach, um, she's the woman who works with us is incredible.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: She's legally trained, but she's not a lawyer.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: So she works with um our members to support them, trying to keep them out of an expensive legal process while also ensuring that they get what they deserved in that process.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I think it's, you know, even for women who aren't part of our fund, you know, if you are in one of those pivotal moments, you know, seeking out a coach or seeking out someone that can assist you, even if it ends up costing a small amount of money, can often be really worthwhile in the long run.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I think it's really just about gradually building knowledge and skills.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, like anything you want to do, it takes a bit of time, but there's incredible books now, there's podcasts, there's um great articles online.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I think um really being not afraid to start that learning journey.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: And what I've really realized through you know, three years with BirdSuper is that one of the biggest barriers is often in a way that women don't care about money.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like they the, you know, so many women that I know just literally don't care about accumulating dollars in a bank, in a in a bank account.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the exciting way I think to sort of, or the way that really um brings women into this is when you start talking to them about their lives and the things they want for their lives.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: They want this for their children, they want, um, they want to be able to afford this when they're in retirement, they want to give back to their community in this way.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that if you can think about money as what is the life that I want to live, okay, and then what do I need financially to support that?
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then how do I go and build those skills to achieve that?
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it can be a much more motivating way to think about building wealth than I just want to build dollars in my bank account.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think that is just extremely, it's excellent advice, but also you're right, you're actually putting lifestyle choices.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about money, but it's about how you want to live, how you want to give, and and I suppose also protect yourself in the future from whatever challenges might emerge.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of our listeners will really appreciate that input.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: And certainly think that you have a very exciting and important role to play in ensuring that women are educated and that we learn from some of the, I won't say mistakes, because I don't think they were mistakes, but I think that we were blindsided and have been blindsided on a number of fronts.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm hoping that the next generation and that our generation as well is more equipped and more protected.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'd like to thank you so much for joining us on the What I've Learned podcast.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's been very enlightening.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: Lots to learn from you.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure we could have another three sessions easily because you're you're very um informative.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd like to wish you all the best with your living pregnancy and birth.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, very exciting, one of the best things you'll ever do, in my opinion.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's pretty special.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you just make sure you take care.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: The What I've Learned podcast will now be coming to you weekly, with new episodes released every Tuesday.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm blessed to have so many wonderful guests coming on the show.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: So check out my What I've Learned Instagram for updates.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, stay tuned, kind, and curious.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: Love dear.