Christine Mudavanhu and Luz Restrepo On Networking Entrepreneurial Migrant Women To Influence Systemic Change
Christine's journey began in Zimbabwe, and saw her transition through New Zealand before finally settling in Queensland, Australia.
A resolute advocate for migrant women of colour, Christine has unceasingly championed the cause of integrating cultural diversity and gender equity into organisations.
As the Founding Partner and Director for Queensland at Migrant Women in Business, Christine plays an instrumental role in the celebrated social enterprise, championing the economic growth of migrant women across Australia through encouraging entrepreneurship and business development. Christine also hosts the inspiring podcast Sisters in Colour, which challenges traditional stereotypes of leadership and opens up new possibilities by showcasing the diversity of women in leadership roles.
Luz Restrepo came to Australia in 2010 seeking political asylum. With little English, no connections, and little money, she reinvented herself as a leader and entrepreneur establishing SisterWorks, a charity supporting thousands of migrant women. Her model attracted the attention of UNWomen, now working with SisterWorks.
As CEO, Luz evolved the organisation from functioning on a zero-income, volunteer basis to one thriving with 20 employees and a $1.4M annual turnover by May 2020. In June 2020, Luz came together with Corinne Kemp & Christine Mudavanhu to create Migrant Women in Business.
Christine and Luz discuss how they are building sustainable frameworks for entrepreneurial migrant women to connect, share knowledge and form a movement towards Equality of Outcomes in Australia.
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?
[Luz Restrepo] - I have been in Australia for 14 years. I came for political asylum with no English, money, or connections, but I was a businesswoman back in my home country. In my search for a job, I experienced this problem all of us migrants have, where we want to be given a job because we know how to work. However, you encounter the barrier where nobody is going to give you a job because they don't know who you are. Therefore, if people are not going to give us a job, we need to create our own jobs. Migrant Women in Business is my second venture in Australia, I have already started a charity working with the United Nations to help women. This organisation has 40 employees and has supported 2,000 women along their journey who've found themselves in Australia and then realised the charity system is broken. We needed to find empowered tools people can pay the bills with.
They are given all the possibilities we can create, but we are not a pity people. We are an investment in this country, and we need to find tools to empower female migrant business owners.
Three years ago, I met with Christine and Corinne in the middle of the pandemic during the first lockdown. We decided to develop Migrant Women in Business PTD LTY, with the aim to support migrant women business owners. These are women who already have something to offer to the market, a product, or a service, and we start this journey working together and finding the correct tool for migrant women business owners.
[Christine Mudavanhu] - I moved to the lovely Sunshine State of Queensland in 2010. Prior to that I was living in New Zealand, in the very windy Wellington which is different from here. When I moved over here, what astounded me was the limited diversity in leadership and business development. There were no women who looked like me. I started on this journey a long time ago trying to answer the question why are there so few women in leadership? The women I knew were leaders of economics and business owners, yet they were not being reflected in business or their professions more broadly. I was working in government at that time, (I am also a Kiwi, so I had moved here as a New Zealand citizen). As I started to progress my journey, I realised there are a lot of systemic barriers for women from multicultural backgrounds. Part of it was the skills assessment framework, which basically meant a lot of women came here with skills, but they couldn't use them in the workplace for whatever reason. Maybe they were not the skills that Australia was looking for at that time. I attended an event called the Queensland Migrant Women in Business Summit. It was a few years ago now, I think 2017-18. There was a report done by Deloitte which looked at the opportunity cost of migrants not working in their profession and what your average migrant looked like. You'll be surprised to know it's a 35-year-old commerce student who has a degree in business and an MBA, not the stereotype. Yes, English was a challenge, but only for about 2% of those surveyed. Most of the women were proficient in the English language so that they could be employed in business. What I quickly realised was business is the way to support women to realise their economic potential.
I developed a culturally supportive small business program, which I've been running now for over five years. It was supported initially by the Scanlon Foundation; they funded the pilot in conjunction with the Islamic Women of Australia Association. We were initially looking at how we can get more Muslim women into business? That was initially what we were looking at, and so that pilot was quickly transformed into a three-year program. We quickly extended because we realised the issues, we were dealing with in the Muslim community applied more broadly to multicultural women. We moved from our pilots to be more inclusive of women. That program we’ve now been running consistently for the last five years. During that time, three years ago, Luz and I met, and she was starting her journey with migrant women in business trying to answer the same questions was. Serendipitously our paths aligned, and we decided we should come together and create something nationally rather than working separately. As Luz always says, we are stronger together, and we wanted to create something that would drive impact. That's how the Migrant Women in Business network was born.
Can you tell us a little bit about what has happened since you've combined forces? What does that look like and what impacts are you creating together?
[Luz] - The first thing we found is a lack of representation of migrant women business owners. We found that from the 2.5 million businesses Australia has, 2.1 million are micro businesses. Micro businesses have less than four employees, and usually it's the founder working by him or herself to pay the bills. We found these people do not have any business support. There is no government support and there is a lack of knowledge about what a micro business is and what makes it different to a small business. A small business has between 5 to 20 employees, and they are invoicing more than half a million dollars. Without supporting micro business, 35 percent of the economy has no support. Migrant women represent 10% of society in Australia, and 3-5% percent of businesswomen. This was the first finding, that usually migrant women are voiceless. If they get a job and they become long term employees, they are not going to complain to their boss. We have found that businesswomen don't have a problem speaking their mind, because it's the way we sell our products and services. We have found two amazing opportunities to support micro businesses to drive and grow. First, by helping them find commercial opportunities, they have beautiful products and services but don't know where to sell them. We’ve started to explore and develop an online marketplace that will be a competitor to Etsy called Made by Many Hands. Women through this platform can have an online presence, set up their own store and sell their products and services as they would like. We just take 15% commission for Made by Many Hands. We’ve also found we can’t just have a digital presence; we also need to find other commercial opportunities. We’ve started to do corporate gifting, by connecting women to collaborate with each other, make hampers and go to market together. We’ve started the process of wholesale together. Made by Many Hands becomes a multi-vendor, multi sale channels platform where the women are learning how to sell and explore different targets together.
We’ve also found that with micro businesses, the owners are in the business, not on the business. They do not have time for a business plan, financial projections, and mentoring, because they are so busy trying to pay their bills.
Made by Many Minds will connect micro businesses with micro business experts who will help with hands on practical support. They will answer questions like where can I find an accountant or a lawyer with fair payment schemes? They can aid with building websites, social media channels, or finding human resources. They can teach how to write a memorandum of understanding or purchase insurance; things people take for granted. We’ve also discovered the power of putting businesswomen together to pitch to different stakeholders or to one another’s business, so they start to support each other instead. We put women together, and one knows how to open a market, and another knows how to take professional photos, so they start to develop a circular economy to support each other.
[Christine Mudavanhu] - Luz has articulated this well. We built our ecosystem with the intention for it to become peer-to-peer learning. Migrant Women in Business forms the backbone of this community we are creating. We are about empowering women, because a lot of the messaging given to migrant women is from a charity subservience viewpoint.
This is why we’ve entered the impact investing market, because we want people to understand the economic impact a small investment has in changing the trajectory not just of these women's lives, but also their impact on the economy. We're bringing products and services to the Australian economy that would otherwise not be brought to the fore.
For example, if you look at our website, there's a whole range of products and services. If I talk a little bit about the products, you'll find there are a broad range such as food-based products, homewares, and gifts. Many of them are handmade (not all of them), but a lot of them are imported from the countries the women come from and are curated for an Australian audience. Regarding presentation, if you look on the website the packaging is professional. That takes the products and services from being things bought at a street corner shop front to things that you can put a premium pricing on in a corporate gifting catalogue. You can take these products to the Australian gifting and hosting fair you can see in the Australia Post! In terms of creating these commercial opportunities, the network is about working and looking at where we can open opportunities for the women to come in with their products. We don't do the business for them; the women own their own businesses. Luz and I don't produce things, we work and manage the network. We're about creating commercial opportunities, linkages and working with industry partners to bring this collective group of women (which is growing) to the market.
We have over 150 women in our network, mostly in Victoria, and we're looking at how we can bring these businesses across Australia. We did initially receive seed funding from the Victorian Government, and that helped to establish the backbone in terms of funding the core resources we needed, but the impact investing we're now looking at getting into will also look at how we can take ourselves to next level and make our business model more sustainable.
What have been your key learnings from developing Migrant Women in Business?
[Luz Restrepo] - The first is we need to change the narrative. Migrant women are an investment; we know what to do and how to do it. We just need the opportunities to learn how to navigate society. A big part of the problem is a lack of commercial support. This is the first learning; the second learning is there are amazing women with products and services that never knock on the doors of the charity system. They are working alone because they are investing their own money, their partner's money or whatever they can into their business. We need to engage them with us. We can potentially grow their business if they know where to go and who to ask. These connections are crucial, and we are learning from them. It's not that they're learning from us, we just are connecting knowledge. The other thing is we need to find sustainable ways to keep the association alive. This isn’t around writing grants or lobbying with government money; we need to start offering services which people pay for. The other learning is a lack of digital technology development for people with different levels of English, business, and digital literacy. We need to be more digital friendly for people who have no access to and are not fully digital and business savvy. This is why our platforms need web development, which has a lot of potential. The power of women working together is incredible, connecting and learning from each other is when we will start to find these opportunities. But we need to be better with the broader community so they can learn about what a micro business is and needs beyond business plans and mentoring. It's investment, and this is probably why we are here looking for investors.
[Christine Mudavanhu] – We have also learnt there is a lot of misinformation about what women need. When our network is talking about lived experience, we are talking directly from the mouths of the women. This is what they are saying they need; these are the tools they need. In terms of building the Made by Many Hands’ platform for example, we scoured the market for competitors, because somebody will ask us that if Etsy and eBay exist, why can't the women just use these platforms? We’ve not necessarily invented something new, but look at the rules, regulations and fees that govern those websites. Look at the complex terms, conditions, and what the women will get paid; all those websites are directed at foreign markets. Now, remember some of our cohort have low levels of English literacy. I must stress here, English is the key word, because the assumption is often that if English is your second or third language, you're illiterate. This is completely a misnomer we want to correct. You'll find with our platform; everything can be done from a mobile phone. The women get paid, there's one flat fee, they're aware of what the commission is, and they get paid instantly. The network takes care of GST and all of those elements, which then leaves the women free to pursue and focus on building their business. We took all those things that were not working for our women, and we created something that specifically works for them.
The first aspect is listening to the women and their needs; the second is the power of partnership and the empowerment of the women. It's about growing the network, because if you don't grow the network, it's then dependent on people popping in and popping out, so it doesn't become sustainable.
You want to create a model where the women are teaching each other and creating symbiotic relationships. If you look globally, the model we're putting together here is not a new one. If you look at the micro financing model, the way that model is, the impact those loans are having on small communities, and the demographic profiles of the women where they've hired the highest levels of success, you'll find it's a similar demographic to us. Yes, we're not talking about lending money, but I'm talking about the concept and the structure, which is creating an environment where you offer a commercial opportunity. It's giving that fishing rod for a woman to change her life, in her way, on her terms, with the support of a network that understands it's providing solutions which are culturally appropriate, sensitive, and driven by migrant women. Luz is from South America; I am from Zimbabwe; all of us collectively together have a common understanding as migrant women what our needs are. We have a common understanding around what culture means, its impact on us and how we can work collectively together using our lived experience of being migrants coming into this place. We want to find how we can economically thrive and take care of our families.
What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently creating a positive social change?
[Christine Mudavanhu] - Within Migrant Women in Business, what struck me has been the growth of a lot of the women. One of my favourite products is EcoVibes, which brings up this whole sustainability conversation. Our women are tackling world scale problems. There's a whole debate around climate change around the circular economy, and you would think Migrant Women in Business is just tackling a stereotypical set of problems. If you go on the website and have a look at one of our ladies whose brand is called EcoVibes, she is creating environmentally sustainable household products. She is merging into personal care products and thinking about the sustainable use of these everyday products. This is addressing big issues like climate change, but you wouldn't immediately attribute it to a network that's as tiny as ours. The fact that our women are getting involved in leading cutting-edge innovations is fantastic, and my favourite is Jada's Candles. They are gorgeous, go and have a look at the trajectory of where those women started when it was just ideas, concepts, or presenting their product. Add these ideas to something like the Australian Gifting and Hosting Fair in Melbourne, where they have their own stand in the artisanal lane and can converse with customers, look at orders and their growth. Opening them up to that opportunity has been inspiring, and what's also been inspiring as we move forward is how the conversation around diversity, equity, and inclusion has opened the market to looking at where we should be investing our money. If you look at the impact investing world and its footprint, it does not have a fair representation of women who look like Luz and I, it just doesn't. That's not a criticism, that's just a fact. The problems we are addressing are not problems the impact investing market is investing in, so it's an opportunity to be able to change that trajectory. Now is a really good time because of the conversations around diversity, equity, and inclusion. The world is opening and saying diversity does address different issues and challenges, so how do we bring all of this to the fore?
To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?
[Christine Mudavanhu] - One of the books I love is called The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. This book has a similar premise to Atomic Habits, it proposes the same concept and theories but applies them to the work we do with Migrant Women in Business. We're talking about small incremental consistent changes, and consistently going on an upward trajectory. Those are not new books on the market, but from my perspective they have had a great impact on how I look at business and the work we're doing. We're talking about small step by step changes and affecting habits over time. If big things happen, fantastic, we love those. But it's about what you do every single day, waking up on time, making your bed, getting up and going out for exercise that can matter. I went to the gym yesterday, and I didn't want to do that. In fact, I don't want to every single day! It’s about doing things you don't want to do to get to the place you do want to get to.
[Luz Restrepo] - I will answer the question in a different way. I suggest people should look at research in Google. Research what is a micro business, and see the differences between micro businesses, non-employing business, and small businesses. Educate yourself a little bit more about this topic.
The other thing is look at how many migrant women have a voice in this country. You can see a lack of representation throughout the stages of power in this country. There is a lack of representation of successful migrant women we need to highlight.
There are many of us, we have a voice, but there is lack of platforms to highlight the work we are doing. Just have a look and research this, because our urgent call to action is about giving us platforms to chat, talk and speak our voice.
