Anja Christoffersen On Advocating For The Needs Of Entrepreneurs Living With Disability

Anja is an award-winning disability advocate, named one of the International Day of People with Disability Ambassadors for 2023, international model, author and social entrepreneur.

At 22 years old, Anja founded Champion Health Agency - a world-first 'talent agency for lived experience', representing people with disabilities, chronic illness and carers to drive positive change. Anja has recently founded the Women with Disabilities Entrepreneur Network (WDEN) to foster a sustainable ecosystem that supports connected growth in entrepreneurial opportunities for her peers.

Anja has spoken and modelled internationally, authored an autobiography Behind the Smile and received the QLD Young Achiever of the Year Leadership Award and Women in Technology Consumer Strength Champion Award. Combining an MBA (Health Services Management & Entrepreneurship) and her lived experience, Anja has consulted, co-led and engaged in projects across health, government, research, corporate and not-for-profit sectors.

Anja discusses the experiences which have led her to becoming an advocate for entrepreneurs living with disability and how her team is proactively driving positive social change.

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

[Sarah Ripper] - To start off, could you please share a bit about your background and what led you to where you are today?

[Anja Christoffersen] - I like to take a lived experience approach to answering this question, even though I have a bio full of so much other stuff. I like to start off with my disability, I was born with a condition called VACTERL Association which was picked up during my mother's pregnancy. It's a rare condition that affects all the internal organs of your body. At five hours old, I had to have extensive reconstructive surgeries, which meant the first five years of my life were spent in and out of hospital.

I thought this was a disability which you grow out of, I didn't think at the time it was lifelong. I think when we reflect on the medical model of disability, conditions are something you get fixed, not something you live with.

I went on with my life, had a few touch points with the medical system, and managed a lot of it at home with my parents, but at 15 I became unwell again. I had a dream I would become a doctor and that's how I would change the world, because I had such a deep understanding of what it was like to be a patient and how I wanted to be cared for in the medical system. I couldn't see another way to use my experience to create change at that point in my life. Unfortunately, becoming so sick again in my teens, I couldn’t continue with high school. I ended up needing to drop out and pursue a different educational pathway. What that ended up happening was that I did the equivalent of Year 11 and 12 at Griffith College, and while I was doing that, I landed in modelling.

I wanted to do it but was told I couldn't because of my scars. That gave me a bit of a fire in my belly to want to do it even more. Within a year of signing with an agency in Brisbane, I was over in Europe, where I did fashion week the day before my 18th birthday. That was so exciting, but I'm steaming past retelling that because it was full of many barriers. That all led me into advocacy and starting to accept and acknowledge my disability, because I realised, I was very unwell, and my life looked very different from my peers. This wasn't something I could just push through, but instead something I was going to manage for the rest of my life. When I tried to join the workforce, I was still in and out of hospital and that's when I think everything evolved into the work I'm doing now.

What was the next step in you creating the Champion Health Agency and now the Women and Disabilities Entrepreneur Network?

After I came back from my modelling career, I had had the experience of being represented by an agent. They found work for me, advocated for my needs, and made sure I was safe in the workplace. This isn't necessarily how you would think of a modelling agency, but it was my experience of a modelling agency. I went into real estate for just over 6 months before I ended up having to leave because I had 3 abdominal surgeries within 8 months. That was also my turning point in realising I was so unwell I couldn’t engage in a full-time or part-time job. From that experience with modelling and real estate agencies, I ended up in my family business, which was an international education agency. I managed that for a few years & then COVID hit, and so we couldn't get any international students into the country. I finally had the opportunity to do something for myself, and in parallel to that, I had written a book, travelled over to the U.S. and Pakistan to share my story, and engaged with different not for profits. Essentially, I’d started my own advocacy career. I saw the opportunity for myself to grow in this space, and I was looking for an agent to manage my career so I could use my lived experience to create change. I understood how an agent works as the middleman between the talent and the clients, but there was no agency in my space. I thought there should be an agent for lived experience, because I'm not looking for modelling agents for someone with a disability, a speaking agent, or a writer's agent. Instead, I was looking for someone spanning all this work, and that's what Champion Health Agency became. I went seeking this from Australia and other countries, and I just couldn't find anything like it. That's where that evolved and where that opportunity fell for me.

What have been your key learnings in developing these organisations?

I was trying to reflect on this because I've obviously learned so much. Especially at the beginning, I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I expected it to be like a modelling agency and how that works, but obviously health and disability is very different. Right at the beginning, it was very important to pick my side, which sounds silly. But there are a lot of peak bodies in this space who work with health services, consumers or in disability, and they're funded by government departments or large organisations.

This means they must align with different people, but for me, we weren't funded by anyone, we were fully independent. That allowed me to be able to always pick my side, and that side was always going to be with the people I represented, never the clients we were having to service.

That was a huge strength for me, because it meant the talent I represented always knew I had their back one hundred percent. That was a huge learning which built a lot of strength, trust, and rapport in the agency. Especially being disability led, knowing people could trust me and I could trust them was a big strength. At the beginning, trying to find work was a challenge, and we were trying to make partnerships with people. We expected that because we are disability led, run, and we represent people with incredible stories everyone would want to partner with us. Obviously, we were a bit delusional, because people didn't care about social impact as much as we thought they would or should (which was sad).

I remember in this one meeting we had, someone said to us, "wow you guys really care so much about this," and I thought of course we do. They told us it's rare to find people who care this much about disability, and I just walked away from that meeting surprised someone would say that, because I thought everyone in this industry cares so much. But the more I've worked in it, the more I've realised so many people are in it for the wrong reasons. That is another thing which sets us apart. What I found at the beginning was we were writing so many proposals and spending so much time trying to get partnerships, for almost every one of those to be rejected. We changed our approach after six to twelve months and stopped going out and seeking partnerships with people. Whether they seem aligned in the industry or not, we just sat back and waited for people to come to us. This is a luxury, I understand, but we ended up attracting the right work and the right people, whether it be through people applying to the agency to be represented, people who are partnering with us now, or the work we get for our champions. It's just led to more impact, revenue, work, and people being represented by us, just by attracting the right people rather than going out and chasing the wrong people. I always feel like I'm giving the wrong advice here because you must go out, find clients, and work hard. But when I was doing that intensely, it was not working. The more I just sit back, let it come and let it flow, the more it’s worked.

As Founder of the Women's Disability Entrepreneur Network (WDEN), can you tell us a little bit more about this organisation?

We have just started our soft launch, but this came about because I've been doing Champion for two and a half years now. At the beginning of this year, I had a good conversation with an investor looking at how we can invest in disability led and owned product-based businesses. It was at a point in time where I've been working hard with Champion, despite sitting back and attracting clients as I said before! The challenge is I still do have a disability; I still see about 10 specialist teams at the hospital and am quite unwell a lot of the time. Having a sustainable income and multiple income streams is hard, not only for me but for a lot of the people I represent and beyond that. Running a service-based business always relies on the person running that business and delivering that service. Running a product-based business is not as reliant on that person.

With WDEN, what we're able to do is support people running every business with a disability, but we're also supporting people to start product-based businesses by providing that investment and business continuity support.

If someone starts a business but they are sick, I can come and help do some of their work until they get better. Furthermore, other people running other product-based businesses can step in and assist them, and we have good mentors. We've already got seven mentors on boarded, and we also connect to supply chains and different sales channels. It is very exciting, and we've got two of our WDEN businesses set to launch at the end of 2023 if we can make it in time. Otherwise, they will launch at the beginning of 2024. One of them is a one hundred percent recycled FSC certified toilet paper and compostable, biodegradable, certified flushable wipes made by a brand called Shit Happens. I love the name of this (I came up with it myself)!

We've got that company I'm leading, but then we've also got a coffee company called Against The Grain Coffee, which is co-led by myself and Tiffany who's based in Melbourne. These organisations are both disabilities owned, led and founded, and Against The Grain Coffee has a female led supply chain from the farm to Australia, where we're roasting the beans. We're very excited about both, and they form the blueprint of how we are running and commercialising WDEN. We are very excited, so we've got a few different things happening there. Then we're developing a disability led and disability owned certification for other businesses to maximise the disability procurement processes beginning to come out a lot from government and large organisations.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently creating a positive social change?

One I came across recently I'd like to highlight is this platform called meetmagic. What they do is match up key executives and leaders to different entrepreneurs at different stages in their business and wanting key mentoring. The entrepreneur can pay this executive money to meet with them, then they get matched to them. That money is donated to a charity of the executive's choice. I think that is cool and exciting, and they've donated over one million dollars to the Starlight Foundation. It's a good way to solve some of those challenges for charity sustainability, because it's very difficult for charities to start to make money sustainably, for executives to be able to donate money without it coming out of their pockets directly, and for people to get something in return for their donation.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?

One I was a bit involved in [so I'm very biased] is Metro North Health developed a co-design framework. Dr. Adrienne Young and I co-led the development of this framework.

It was for the co-design of health services, but I think it’s useful for the co-design of anything. I'd encourage people to look at that if they're developing a product, service, or anything, so you can look at how you can do that with your end user or person with lived experience in mind.

Then, also a book that just touched my heart and changed my perspective (which is again health related) is Zero by Jeremy Hunt. It's about reducing preventable deaths, and I think that it's just very insightful. Even if you're not into health, it just gives a good insight into how a health system runs, but it can be a little bit triggering. It's a very intense book, I listened to it as an audio book, but I would highly recommend it. It's a book that's changed my perspective on everything.