A kid from a coal town.

Picture this. It's 2018, you're in a football clubroom in Perth, there are big sheets over the fridges hiding the beer, and there are 65 young people in the room. That was the first Youth Leadership Academy Australia event. I was 15 and in Year 11.

I didn't start YLAA because I had a plan. I started it because I'd been to a leadership summit the year before, paid for by my local community bank, and I came home to Collie wondering why the kids at my school never got anything like it. Regional young people were missing out. So I registered an ABN with $80 and asked four schools to send some students.

Two years later the Year 12 results arrived. Empty envelope. No ATAR. My principal had already told me the chance of going to university was very slim. At the same time, YLAA was reaching thousands of students around the country.

That gap, between what the paperwork said about me and what I was actually doing, is the whole reason I speak. Every room I walk into has someone in it who is being judged on the paperwork.

What YLAA became

Today YLAA runs ten events a year across five capital cities, in venues like ICC Sydney and Brisbane City Hall, plus school programs and council partnerships from Broome to Hay. It has reached 65,000+ young people from 1,500+ schools. It is for-youth, by-youth: the facilitators are young people who have walked the same path as the students in the room.

In 2024 YLAA joined The Youth Impact Foundation, a national charity consolidating youth organisations under one roof so more of the money reaches young people. I became General Manager, running YLAA and the Magic Moments Youth Leadership and Business Summit, the same summit that sent me on this path in 2016.

The MBA, and why it matters less than you'd think

Less than a year after leaving school without an ATAR, I enrolled in an MBA. I thought I had bitten off more than I could chew. Thousands of hours of YouTube videos and conversations later, I graduated at 21. No gown or hat in the mail, but I graduated.

I mention it because people like the arc. But the point is not that I got the qualification eventually. The point is that the organisation came first, and the credentials followed. Most systems, schools, workplaces, governments, are built the other way around.

What I believe

Young people lead now, not tomorrow. Leadership is a core skill and should be treated like literacy. Decisions about young people should be made with them, not for them. And the education system is full of people trying their best, so I work with it, not against it.

I also believe schools must embrace AI now. That one gets pushback. I'm fine with that.

Your age does not determine your ability to achieve extraordinary things.

Off stage

I live in Sydney, travel constantly, and have a soft spot for regional and rural Australia. Adventure is a top value: the photo of me on a volcano in Guatemala is not a stock image. I co-host Podclass, a podcast for teachers and educators, and I say "we" when I talk about young people because I am one.