Indigenous Women’s Entrepreneurship

Indigenous issues continue to be one of the key leadership challenges for Australia.

In addition, there is growing international acknowledgement of the importance of building platforms focused on women’s economic empowerment to support these women to help themselves, support their families and communities, connect to markets and access financial services.

The Maganda Makers Business Club has been developed through a collaboration between Kimberley Birds, Good Return and Menzies Foundation. ’Maganda Makers’ is a new initiative working with Indigenous women in the Kimberley to support economic development, financial literacy and entrepreneurship. Maganda is a Jaru word meaning ‘Tomorrow’.

The Foundation is delighted to announce the appointment of Maree Cutler-Naroba to Project Coordinator for Kimberley Jiyigas Projects and Program Manager for Maganda Makers.

We welcome you to learn more about this grassroots initiative nurturing, championing and supporting Kimberley Indigenous Women in Business (aspiring, emerging, established and growing).   

Supporting our work within the Indigenous Women Entrepreneur space and the Maganda Makers Business Club, this research will build a collaborative design process to identify new vehicles which provide sustainable financing to indigenous women entrepreneurs in rural and remote Australia.

The Menzies Foundation is delighted to announce a new collaboration between Trust Waikato (New Zealand), and Criterion Institute to explore blended capital models to support indigenous women’s enterprising and entrepreneurship. 

Working with diverse partners across sectors and geographies, Criterion has developed a framework for analysing power in investments. The framework supports investors in understanding how to disrupt harmful power dynamics in their investment design and decision-making processes to achieve more transformative impact. Learn more.

As an additional support and to compliment the initiative the Foundation is delighted to have accepted an invitation to join Swinburne University as an industry partner to support Cindy Mitchell, to undertake a PhD focused on women’s empowerment, entrepreneurship, and indigenous leadership. Recently, Liz Gillies sat down with Cindy and explored leadership from her perspective – Listen now!