Humans of Purpose

My guest this week is Meghal Shah — CEO of Action on Poverty, an Australian international development organisation focused on tackling global poverty through innovative, scalable solutions.

Meghal brings an unusual perspective to the social sector. Originally trained as a chartered accountant, he began his career in the corporate world at PwC and Commonwealth Bank before making a bold pivot into purpose-driven work. His hypothesis was simple but powerful: the non-profit sector often struggles to scale impact because it lacks the commercial thinking needed to build sustainable funding models.

That belief led Meghal to take a major risk early in his social sector career, stepping in as interim CEO of a struggling disability services organisation during the rollout of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. By focusing on financial sustainability and strategic growth, he helped turn the organisation around and secure an acquisition that expanded the entity by 150%.

Today at Action on Poverty, Meghal applies venture capital principles to global development challenges through a model known as venture philanthropy,  identifying high-potential solutions, supporting them through stages of growth, and ultimately helping them become self-sustaining systems that continue delivering impact long after philanthropic funding ends.

In this episode of Humans of Purpose, we explore:

Meghal’s journey from corporate finance to international development

why commerciality is essential for lasting social impact

how venture philanthropy helps scale solutions to global poverty

and the powerful stories behind initiatives tackling issues from clubfoot treatment in Bangladesh to dengue prevention through the World Mosquito Program.

This conversation is a thoughtful look at how bold ideas, strategic funding, and local leadership can come together to create solutions that don’t just help people today but transform systems for the future.

🔗 Explore more from Meghal’s work here:
https://actiononpoverty.org/

Growing Your Business and Impact
Talk to us today about how we can grow your capacity to level up your business and impact with our fully trained and managed outsourced marketing solutions — delivered by our digital heroes armed with good strategy, the latest tech and big smiles.

Learn more at humansofpurpose.com

Promotional Partnerships
Like what we are serving up on Humans of Purpose? Our promotional campaigns have delivered great marketing and sales outcomes and ROI for our partners to date.

Whether you're seeking a 1-month, 2-month or season sponsorship, follow the flow below to become a partner before we run out of our remaining promotional slots.

Click Here to learn more about collaborating on a custom campaign package. Ready to partner? Just complete this short Partner Enquiry Form and we'll be in touch.

Gold Membership
Want a premium listening experience that directly supports us to keep making the podcast?

Join current members Michael, Pravati, Noel, Kathy, Andrew 1, Andrew 2, Chris, Nikki, Margaret, Ben, Misha, Sarah and Geoff and enjoy our range of member benefits:

Premium dedicated podcast feed
Removal of all three ads per episode
Early access to all episodes
Full transcripts of all episodes
Brokered intros to all podcast guests
Ask me anything page access

To take up this great offer, just head to our Gold Member page today.

CREDITS
Music intro and outro on this podcast was written and performed by Keyo Rhodes, with Harrison McGregor on drums and percussion.
Sound engineering and mastering by Lachlan McGregor.

My guest this week is Bruce Maynard — a leading voice in regenerative agriculture and landscape restoration in Australia, known for pushing beyond “doing less harm” and into farming systems that actively rebuild nature while still producing food.

Bruce shares how his journey into regenerative practice wasn’t just an idealistic shift, it was forged through pressure. In the late 1980s, severe economic hardship and changing seasonal reliability made one thing clear: conventional farming often drives further displacement of natural systems, and it’s farmers (and communities) who carry the cost.

Best known for his work on regenerative grazing, animal behaviour, and the controversial innovation of no-kill cropping  producing broadacre grains in grassland without external chemical inputs, Bruce makes the case that the future of agriculture depends on creative, practical pathways that deliver results across a triple bottom line: social, environmental, and business outcomes.

In this episode of Humans of Purpose, we explore:

what “regenerative” really means (and how it’s evolved from conservation and sustainability)

why progress can’t be measured by economics alone

how animal distribution shapes landscape health and what happens when animals choose where they spend time

the human side of farming: wellbeing, leadership, and staying connected to country

why no-kill cropping challenges everything we think we know about growing grain

and what a “desirable and plentiful” future could look like if we stop treating nature and productivity as an either/or.

 

🔗 Explore more from Bruce’s work here:
https://soilsforlife.org.au/no-kill-cropping-restoring-grasslands/

Growing Your Business and Impact

Talk to us today about how we can grow your capacity to level up your business and impact with our fully trained and managed outsourced marketing solutions - delivered by our digital heroes armed with good strategy, the latest tech and big smiles.

Learn more at humansofpurpose.com

Promotional Partnerships

Like what we are serving up on Humans of Purpose? Our promotional campaigns have delivered great marketing and sales outcomes and ROI for our partners to date.

Whether you're seeking a 1-month, 2-month or season sponsorship, follow the flow below to become a partner before we run out of our remaining promotional slots.

Click Here to learn more about collaborating on a custom campaign package. Ready to partner? Just complete this short Partner Enquiry Form and we'll be in touch.

Gold Membership

Want a premium listening experience that directly supports us to keep making the podcast?

Join current members Michael, Pravati, Noel, Kathy, Andrew 1, Andrew 2, Chris, Nikki, Margaret, Ben, Misha, Sarah and Geoff and enjoy our range of member benefits:

Premium dedicated podcast feed
Removal of all three ads per episode
Early access to all episodes
Full transcripts of all episodes
Brokered intros to all podcast guests
Ask me anything page access

To take up this great offer, just head to our Gold Member page today.

CREDITS

Music intro and outro on this podcast was written and performed by Keyo Rhodes, with Harrison McGregor on drums and percussion. Sound engineering and mastering by Lachlan McGregor.

My guests this week are Professor Paul Lacaze and Jane Tiller - two leading voices shaping the future of public health genetics in Australia.

Professor Lacaze is a Professor of Genetics and part of the team behind DNA Screen, a major initiative exploring how preventive DNA testing could help identify people at high genetic risk of cancer and heart disease while they’re still young and healthy. Jane Tiller is a lawyer and genetic counsellor with deep expertise in the policy and ethical frameworks needed to make genomic screening safe, trusted, and accessible at scale.

Best known for their work on the DNA Screen pilot study, Paul and Jane are helping drive a shift from reactive healthcare, where genetic testing often happens after disease appears to anticipatory healthcare that uses genetics as a preventive screening tool, alongside existing public health programs like mammograms and bowel cancer screening.

In this episode of Humans of Purpose, we explore what preventive DNA screening could mean for Australia, including:

what the DNA Screen pilot found (including the number of young adults carrying high-risk, actionable genetic variants)

why early screening gives people time to make informed decisions about surveillance, prevention, and family planning

what “actionable” genes really means (and why lifestyle changes alone can’t remove certain risks

the importance of protecting Australians from genetic discrimination

and why data governance, privacy, transparency and participant choice are essential if a program like this is to earn public trust.

Tune in to hear how Paul and Jane are working to mainstream genomic risk management into the health system and what it could take to move from pilot to national scale.

🔗 Explore more from Paul and Jane’s work here:
https://dnascreen.monash.edu/our-team.html

 

Growing Your Business and Impact

Talk to us today about how we can grow your capacity to level up your business and impact with our fully trained and managed outsourced marketing solutions - delivered by our digital heroes armed with good strategy, the latest tech and big smiles.

Learn more at humansofpurpose.com 

 

CREDITS

Music intro and outro on this podcast was written and performed by Keyo Rhodes, with Harrison McGregor on drums and percussion. Sound engineering and mastering by Lachlan McGregor.

My guest this week is Elizabeth Tyler - co-founder and CEO of good.film, a visionary platform using film and television as a catalyst for connection, empathy, and meaningful conversation in an increasingly fragmented world. Through good.film, she works at the intersection of storytelling, social impact, and community-centred engagement, helping audiences discover movies and shows that resonate with their values and spark real-world dialogue.

Best known for her leadership in building good.film — a platform that curates ambitious stories from blockbusters to indie documentaries and fosters communities around the conversations those stories ignite — Elizabeth combines deep strategic insight with a profound belief in the power of narrative to rebuild social cohesion. Her work emphasises how shared stories can bring people together, open hearts, and invite curiosity in place of division.

Before founding good.film, Elizabeth built a diverse career across politics, advocacy, and creative impact work — including serving on successful election campaigns and leading strategic advocacy for major nonprofits — always with a focus on bringing people together around a vision of what’s possible. She holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson, where she was recognised for her entrepreneurial and social change leadership.

Elizabeth is a passionate advocate for Impact Entertainment — the idea that films and shows can do more than entertain: they can deepen empathy, foster shared experiences, and help rebuild the social fabric by connecting head and heart in how we understand each other and the world.

🔗 Explore more from Elizabeth's work here: 

https://good.film/about-us

Growing Your Business and Impact

Talk to us today about how we can grow your capacity to level up your business and impact with our fully trained and managed outsourced marketing solutions - delivered by our digital heroes armed with good strategy, the latest tech and big smiles. 

Learn more at humansofpurpose.com

Promotional Partnerships

Like what we are serving up on Humans of Purpose? Our promotional campaigns have delivered great marketing and sales outcomes and ROI for our partners to date. 

Whether you're seeking a 1-month, 2-month or season sponsorship, follow the flow below to become a partner before we run out of our remaining promotional slots. 

Click Here to learn more about collaborating on a custom campaign package. Ready to partner? Just complete this short Partner Enquiry Form and we'll be in touch.

Gold Membership

Want a premium listening experience that directly supports us to keep making the podcast? 

Join current members Michael, Pravati, Noel, Kathy, Andrew 1, Andrew 2, Chris, Nikki, Margaret, Ben, Misha, Sarah and Geoff and enjoy our range of member benefits: 

Premium dedicated podcast feed

Removal of all three ads per episode

Early access to all episodes

Full transcripts of all episodes

Brokered intros to all podcast guests

Ask me anything page access

To take up this great offer, just head to our Gold Member page today.

CREDITS

Music intro and outro on this podcast was written and performed by Keyo Rhodes, with Harrison McGregor on drums and percussion. Sound engineering and mastering by Lachlan McGregor.

My guest this week is Jon Yeo - a highly respected speaker coach, communication expert, and founder of Brightstar Consulting & Coaching, where he works at the intersection of strategic communication, influence, and leadership development. Jon’s work focuses on helping individuals, leaders, and organisations craft messages that resonate, build trust, and foster deeper engagement in both in-person and virtual settings.

Best known for his expertise in executive communication, public speaking, and influence, Jon combines practical coaching experience with a deep understanding of human connection and audience engagement. As the Licensee and Curator of TEDxMelbourne, one of the largest and longest-running TEDx events globally, he has coached hundreds of speakers and leaders to deliver talks with clarity, impact, and presence. He’s also a past National President of Professional Speakers Australia.

Jon is a strong advocate for human-centred influence - the idea that effective leadership and communication are about connecting head and heart, not just delivering information. He challenges the belief that communication excellence is innate, showing instead how strategic practice, empathy, and thoughtful design can elevate how people lead and influence at every level.

🔗 Explore more from Jon's work here: 

https://www.brightstar.net.au/

Growing Your Business and Impact

Talk to us today about how we can grow your capacity to level up your business and impact with our fully trained and managed outsourced marketing solutions - delivered by our digital heroes armed with good strategy, the latest tech and big smiles. 

Learn more at humansofpurpose.com

Promotional Partnerships

Like what we are serving up on Humans of Purpose? Our promotional campaigns have delivered great marketing and sales outcomes and ROI for our partners to date. 

Whether you're seeking a 1-month, 2-month or season sponsorship, follow the flow below to become a partner before we run out of our remaining promotional slots. 

Click Here to learn more about collaborating on a custom campaign package. Ready to partner? Just complete this short Partner Enquiry Form and we'll be in touch.

Gold Membership

Want a premium listening experience that directly supports us to keep making the podcast? 

Join current members Michael, Pravati, Noel, Kathy, Andrew 1, Andrew 2, Chris, Nikki, Margaret, Ben, Misha, Sarah and Geoff and enjoy our range of member benefits: 

Premium dedicated podcast feed

Removal of all three ads per episode

Early access to all episodes

Full transcripts of all episodes

Brokered intros to all podcast guests

Ask me anything page access

To take up this great offer, just head to our Gold Member page today.

CREDITS

Music intro and outro on this podcast was written and performed by Keyo Rhodes, with Harrison McGregor on drums and percussion. Sound engineering and mastering by Lachlan McGregor.