Dr. Jessica Gallagher On Nurturing Youth Entrepreneurs Through Impact-Focused Tertiary Education

Dr Jessica Gallagher is the Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Global Engagement and Entrepreneurship, at The University of Queensland (UQ) where she is responsible for the continued development and implementation of the University’s Global Strategy and Partner Engagement Framework.

She leads a number of key institutional partnership activities, strategic engagement events, business development opportunities and a wide range of programs designed to create change in global communities and to extend the University’s reputation and reach.

Dr Gallagher also leads the ongoing development of UQ’s Entrepreneurship Strategy. Encompassing high-level oversight of UQ Ventures – the umbrella brand for the University’s suite of entrepreneurial activities and programs – her leadership is expanding links with local, national and international entrepreneurship ecosystems.

Jessica is an Adjunct Senior Lecturer in UQ’s School of Languages and Cultures. She holds a PhD in Comparative Cultural Studies from UQ and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Dr Gallagher is also a Director on the board of the Kokoda Track Foundation (KTF) where she provides expertise and supports the Foundation to improve the lives and futures of Papua New Guineans.

Jessica discusses the potential for universities to educate and enable Diverse and upcoming entrepreneurs to generate positive social change.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Tom Allen] - Jess, it's a pleasure to have you here, thank you for joining us.

[Dr Jessica Gallagher] - Thank you Tom, I really appreciate the opportunity to have a chat.

To start things off, could you please share a little bit about your background and what it was that led to your passion in entrepreneurship and global engagement?

I hold a PhD in Comparative Cultural Studies. I've always been really interested in the way that different groups come together, with a particular focus on the way that minority cultures have to engage with mainstream society. While completing my research studies, it became clear that I wanted to build a career in higher education

, and I've been really fortunate to have had an opportunity to work across both the academic and professional streams of the university. In fact, I'm one of those really fortunate people that's able to keep my toes in both sides of the business.

I really thoroughly enjoy working with students, but equally I love building global partnerships and taking Australian research and talent to the world. I've been working in the international space now for about seven years, and in 2018, UQ's entrepreneurship programs were added to my portfolio.

I didn't have a background in entrepreneurship, so I had to learn really fast, but I found that the energy and ideas from the team were so contagious. I have to say now that we have a really entrepreneurial team in terms of the tools and mindsets that really feed into our approach to planning, delivery and evaluation. We are very much looking at how we can support the communities with which we engage.

Fantastic. It's certainly a great team that you've got at UQ, and there is some really high energy within UQ Ventures and their broader entrepreneurial activities. As Pro Vice Chancellor then, can you please tell us a little bit more about UQ's focus and the purpose of the educational and entrepreneurship opportunities that you're involved in Jess?

Absolutely.

I think if COVID-19 has taught us anything, it's that knowledge itself won't suffice in an increasingly interconnected world.

We really believe that it's the application of knowledge and the capabilities that support it that will really equip our graduates to be in a position to chart their own paths and to drive innovation across a diverse range of industries and sectors.

In March 2019, we launched a new entrepreneurship strategy for the university that was focused on creating a hub for innovators, leaders, and entrepreneurial minds to challenge and accelerate ideas to deliver economic, social, cultural and environmental impacts. Our understanding of entrepreneurship is very inclusive, and we have a strong focus on social entrepreneurship ensuring diversity across our programs and encouraging female founders.

Within our entrepreneurship strategy, we're really looking at how we can inspire a venturing spirit, support our community with building an entrepreneurial mindset, empowering our venture creators and fostering enterprising partnerships.

In support of all of these objectives, we've created and expanded a suite of programs under the broad banner of UQ Ventures, which provides opportunities for our students or current future staff alumni as well as other external stakeholders to engage in training and workshop programs that are from early ideation. [The programs are mainly for] just getting a general understanding about what entrepreneurship means, how you might be able to utilise tools, understanding where your idea might have a market, and then an accelerator program as well about supporting start-ups to take that next step.

2020 Ventures Annual Showcase – presenting the Ventures Industry Challenge (in collaboration with WaterStart) winners (Team SOL ) with $10,000 for their startup idea.

But I should say that entrepreneurship for UQ isn't just about start-ups, and it's not just about founders. We also really are supporting those around 'intrapreneurship'; so building a mindset which will enable them to become positive disruptors irrespective of the industries that they're looking to move into.

It's a really important piece as well. One thing that I've certainly observed from the outside Jess is that you have a really strong passion for supporting women in entrepreneurship. In August of 2020, you wrote a piece for SmartCompany which outlined the under-representation of women, particularly within the start-up ecosystem. I'm really keen to hear a little bit more about some of the research that you've highlighted and where you see opportunities to improve diversity and equality within this ecosystem.

I think that the challenges and the barriers to female founders and leaders is really well-documented and unfortunately it is systemic. There are some great recent pieces that have been released by the Australian Government in terms of boosting female founders’ initiatives. The Australian Academy of Science launched a piece around the impact of COVID-19 on women in the STEM workforce, the Harvard Business Review talks a lot about the lack of diversity on boards, the challenges for female founders in the start-up ecosystem, as well as the importance of the female economy and questioning why businesses aren't taking this [issue] more seriously. There's also, as I indicated in my SmartCompany article, the Wade Institute of Entrepreneurship, which reports a lot about the themes of under-representation of women in entrepreneurship, unconscious gender biases, low confidence, and under-representation in high growth industries.

The issues are there, the research is there, it's not that this is a surprise to anybody. I think that the challenge is knowing how to address it.

This is where I see that the higher education sector really plays an important role in supporting the Australian start-up ecosystem with not only generating new ideas, innovation and entrepreneurial thinking, but addressing those gender imbalances and the lack of diversity in the ecosystem. We have been really focused on supporting female founders and future leaders, and we introduced a program in 2018 which is called LeadHers, and it's a program that brings together entrepreneurship skills and training, but also with a number of activities that are around building networks, building confidence and providing opportunities for participants to talk through some of these challenges and collectively come up with ideas and solutions.

But of course, diversity for us doesn't just mean what gender you are. For us, diversity is also where you come from, and we found unfortunately that a lot of the accelerator programs that universities have are dominated by males from European Caucasian backgrounds. [This is also] quite exclusively within engineering, IT or business fields, and so we're really focused on looking at not only how we can increase diversity through encouraging our international students [to participate] and ensuring that we're getting more females into our programs, but we are also really looking at ways that we can expand in terms of disciplines.

Entrepreneurship is not just the domain of business students and engineering students; it really does apply to all sectors. [We are] engaging students whether they're from humanities and social sciences or they are pursuing careers in health sciences, as well as some of the more traditional pathways into entrepreneurship.

That's something that we're really focusing on. We find that mentoring is a really good component of that, because when we talk to some of our students in inquires to know why they haven't necessarily engaged with events and programs, a lot of it is that they just don't know that they can. Also, there's a sense of self-doubt, and the need to be able to see others and see yourself in most programs. It's being able to have tangible examples of people just like you, and so you have those footprints to follow.

Great insights there Jess, and I can absolutely see how that entrepreneurship piece really does belong university wide. You spoke a little earlier about what universities can learn from an entrepreneurial approach, and this year particularly has seen tertiary institutions responding to this huge COVID-19 challenge and having to rapidly adapt business models to survive. What are your observations then and your experience working within this tertiary education sector in Australia right now when it comes to the key shifts that you've seen particularly around entrepreneurship and business?

I think from crisis comes all kinds of opportunities and innovation, and I think that certainly COVID has demonstrated that entrepreneurship and business will be essential in ensuring that we can create jobs that are going to benefit our future.

Being able to look beyond maybe some of the traditional pathways and traditional sectors to actually focus on new industries and opportunities.

I think that this is where entrepreneurship programs within higher education are so valuable, because there's been a lot of conversation in the media around 'job ready graduates'.

I personally don't love the notion of being 'job' ready. I prefer career ready or even future ready, because the fact of the matter is that we all know the jobs of today aren't necessarily going to be the jobs of tomorrow.

But more importantly, I think that there needs to be a focus also on not only being job ready, but more job creating graduates. The extent to which we can feed into the ecosystem and to the current environment, individuals who are not only able to create businesses and goals for themselves but have the potential then to provide opportunities for other people.

There's quite a lot of research to support this in so far as The Foundation for Young Australians research indicated that enterprise skills can increase speed to full-time work. CSIRO Data61 talked about credit thinking and entrepreneurship as being essential to sustaining future workforces. We know that where there's been exposure to entrepreneurship, [it] can lead to broader interests and practical skills that are likely to improve individual success. Entrepreneurship is essentially a team sport. We don't really look at this as from the individuals. There are then opportunities to work together to tackle challenges that sit across disciplinary areas, and to really come up with some amazing new solutions that will benefit society.

My hope is that we're seeing the need for people to come together from all different sectors to innovate and to find solutions, and that requires global partnerships, different attitudes, and certainly really strong encouragement for entrepreneurship and innovation.

Absolutely, some great points Jess. To the university students or academics that may be listening right now, what advice would you give to those who are really keen to pursue an idea and turn that into a reality?

The first thing that I would say is get involved. I mean with universities, their current students and academics clearly believe that there is no better environment to learn and to gain these skills, because universities by their nature are built on a culture of discovery. They bring together people from around the world, so you get this amazing diversity of perspective. They also provide a really safe environment for testing ideas. My advice would be to look to see what's out there.

There has been enormous growth across the higher education sector for entrepreneurship programs, and as I said, starting from very early on, you don't necessarily even have to have an idea. You just have to be curious and be in a position to look and to see what might be out there.

Find out what is available and get involved. My other suggestion would be to talk to founders. Again, within the university sector, we've got these amazing researchers who will commercialise their research and we've got students who have founded their own businesses, some of them even as early as in their high school days. By talking to other founders and innovators, you'll be able to get a sense of what that journey looks like, and maybe how to avoid some of the pitfalls. [You can also] build a really strong network of people that you can go to and ask when times get tough, when you need a bit of help, or there's a bit of data, experiments or assumptions that aren't quite what you thought they were going to be.

I found that the ecosystem is incredibly generous. People are really willing to help those that are coming up, and so I [recommend] get out and ask for help, and also be prepared to give of course.

Then finally, because I just hear it all the time [particularly when we talk to some of our female students] just apply and get involved.

We often find that people, when they are looking at considering accelerators or other programs, because they don't feel that they can tick every single box, they wait. They do the extra training and go to the workshops, but because they haven't necessarily nailed down everything, they don't submit the application. I can tell you that you don't have to be perfect, the idea doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have to know exactly what you're going to do in a year's time, or five years' time, or in ten years’ time.

If you've got an idea and you've got a passion and you feel like there's a problem there that you can solve, just get involved, submit an application, talk to somebody, and just opt in.

I think that we can be our own worst enemy, especially that little voice in the back of your mind that says you can't win when really you can. I found certainly working with my team members that this ecosystem is incredibly generous and willing to open up to everybody with a good idea.

That's good advice Jess. You've talked about a number of different founders, and I know there's been a number of great success stories that have come out of UQ. What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently which you believe are creating some really positive social change?

Look, how much time do we have, there's just so many examples that I can give! I'm going to talk a little bit about both the University of Queensland's activities as well as what I've seen on the global stage. One example is the success of one of our alumni, Ashley Baxter, who was actually part of our 2019 ilab Accelerator Program. She has a social enterprise start-up called Monty, which is a compost monitoring device helping people to compost, but also to save the planet from excess methane gas that organic materials in landfill will put out.

She was a sole founder that just had a crazy idea, but she wanted to make a difference and she is really passionate about environmental sustainability, and so she wanted to take small steps. I've been incredibly inspired by Ashley.

One of the things I'm really proud about at UQ is our LeadHers’ program, which as I said has been really supporting our female founders and it's grown considerably from 160 participants in 2018 to more than 360 this year. We know that there's a demand and that we're helping to make a difference, and there's so much more that we can do. We had absolutely amazing women in our entrepreneurship day event yesterday, an amazing panel of founders, alumni and investors talking about some of the challenges and providing really practical advice as to how we might collaboratively overcome challenges from a global perspective. I've been an activator in SheEO, and so I would like to talk a little bit about this organisation. It started in Canada, and is now active across North America, the UK, New Zealand and Australia.

It's been really about looking at how we support women through generosity, mentoring and basically supporting the next generation of female leaders wanting to work on the world’s to do list.

2019 ilab Accelerator Pitch Night – ilab founders, and (L-R) then ilab Director Bernie Woodcroft, Qld Chief Entrepreneur Leanne Kemp, Jess, Ventures Entrepreneur in Residence Ran Heimann. Ashley Baxter (winner) in shot.

There's been some amazing examples of founders that have been supported through this particular initiative with SheEO, like Indigital by Mikaela Jade, which was Australia's first Indigenous tech company.

I think that it's organisations like this that are looking at how we can change structures and systems, and how collectively we can put our efforts into tackling everything from disability, diversity and inclusion issues, to environmental sustainability difficulties and our healthcare systems.

Even just doing work better or creating stronger and more inclusive organisations. There's lots to be optimistic about, I think you don't have to look very far to find inspiration in this space.

That’s absolutely right Jess. To finish off, what books would you recommend to our listeners?

Tom, that's a really good question! I think that in the entrepreneurship space, there's always the kind of 'Bibles'. The Lean Start-up by Eric Ries and Zero to One by Peter Thiel. But something that I've read just recently was Women and Leadership, by Julia Gillard and her other colleagues. I found that really inspiring in so far as understanding different paths and challenges that some of our female leaders have had around the world. Another great suggestion which a colleague actually just put me onto is a book with the title Good Is The New Cool by Afdhel Aziz and Bobby Jones. I really liked that it's a different way of viewing business. Happy to share those with you, but again, there's so much out there at the moment that can support you if you are interested in leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Jess, thank you so much again for being generous with your insights and time today, and we'll certainly look forward to tracking your journey and the broader work that's happening.