My mother, who was a science teacher, raised me as a feminist with a keen awareness of environmental and social issues. My Dad was a computer programmer back in the 70s & 80s. He tried to teach me to code when I was 10 and got me online before the internet was mainstream. I joined my first online community in the mid-90s. Around the same time, in my teens, I fell in love with music and would go onto work in the music industry, with Rolling Stone approaching me to start a magazine for them at age 22 (it still lives on).

This pairing of technology + nerdery, combined with a strong sense of social & environmental justice, underpinned by a love of punk rock and alternative perspectives, would eventually lead me to found Quiip in 2010. Our mission is to use online communities and social media to connect, protect and support people online. In 2018 Quiip we certified as a B Corp and my deep dive in the B Corp movement begun. In 2020 my alma mater Charles Sturt University would award me alumni of the year, titling me an “ethical business activist”.

In 2022 I started to explore using capital from my company to help fund solutions to the climate crisis, whilst deeply aware that our current economic system is responsible for delivering us to this point. I am also implementing an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) to redistribute a percentage of profits to employee owners, as I see wealth distribution is an antidote to the issue of wealth concentration.

As thinkers like Nate Hagens propose, we are moving out of the “carbon pulse” and into a period of contraction he calls the ‘great simplification’. I’m curious about learning, understanding and preparing for a radically changed and uncertain future. But to paraphrase Dr Jean Renouf of local organisation Safer Future, I come at this from a place of deep peace. Not one of fear or ‘doomsday prepping’. The change we need to embrace is a return to living within our means, in harmony with nature and each other. The current economic society we live in one causes so much pain and suffering, I hope that climate change will be the catalyst to usher in a much more simple, calm, connected and empathetic way of living.