Natalie Walker wanted to lead the change she wanted to see, and knew she had to go all the way to the top to make it happen.
So at 22 she found herself at the United Nations as a delegate to the UN’s Working Group on Indigenous Populations.
Later, her NFP start-up Supply Nation helped see Australian organisations award more than $50 million worth of business to Indigenous suppliers.
Today, 12 years later, she’s the founder and managing director of Inside Policy and an Indigenous Advisory Board Member at NAB. She’s a passionate advocate for the full participation of Indigenous Australians in our economy.
Earlier today at Macquarie University’s Women Management Work conference Walker explained the three things she believes helped get her to the UN.
1. Being tuned into who she is, understanding it and embracing it. Walker was always an advocate for change, and embraced it as core to who she is. She recounted stories of instituting change early on. She set up sporting teams for the girls in school, ordered that the family had ‘shorter showers’ for conservation purposes and says she could always see ‘things that needed to be better, so she’d find a way to make it happen.’
2. Having a coalition of people who supported her no matter what. This includes individuals who were mentors and sponsors – those who are the opposite of ‘dream squashers’. Walker says she experienced ‘frustrating’ experiences early on in her career when she was regularly told the things she wanted to change were impossible. She found supporters – at one point, she told a significant leader that she wanted to go to the UN. Two weeks later, she was invited to go – it so happened the person she told was responsible for determining the Australian delegation.
3. Having the courage. Walker says having courage and not being afraid to fail has been the biggest personal challenge she’s had to overcome over the last couple of years. But she make it happen by knowing who she is, and having supporters around to help. She also regularly challenges herself — even attending a two-week silent meditation in Sri Lanka, an opportunity that terrified her but led her to where she is today. “I now have pulled together this narrative of who I am, the people who supported me and the courage to know that I need to be the change I want to see.”
“What I’d say to those who are starting out is to think about what change you want to see: think about it, dream it, visualize it and then share that dream, You never know who you’ll be sharing it with,” added Walker.
And for those women who’ve been around the block and have the ability to help? “Don’t be dream squashers, be dream enablers.”