This month marked my business's first anniversary!
It’s an exciting milestone as a founder and I’m thrilled to be here thanks to the wonderful clients who’ve worked with me at Bridgeway Global during the past 12 months.
It’s made me reflect on my journey from working on-the-ground in community health to moving into senior policy and advocacy leadership roles.
It’s a long way from my early career as a dietitian working in community health but that is where I really began to see the importance of creating an environment that helps people have healthier lives.
I consistently saw the same issues day after day on the ground where I learned the importance of “making the healthy choice the easiest choice”.
Later, working with remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in the Pilbara, Western Australia was life-changing.
Moving from a big city to a remote part of Australia where I knew no one was a chance to grow personally and professionally. It was a privilege to work alongside a local aboriginal health worker and develop relationships with advocacy groups. I saw how issues such as overcrowding and inadequate housing had flow-on effects to people’s health from rheumatic fever to eye and ear issues.
Working with state-based advocacy groups to influence systems level change as much as I could inspired me to do my Masters of Public Policy and Management.
Today, I’m continuing to put what I learned in community health into practice and helping organisations to deliver results that create real change in people’s lives.
I’ve held senior advocacy and policy leadership roles in NGOs and charities over the past 20 years. And around this time last year I took the leap and created my own business, Bridgeway Global.
The idea was to fill a gap with policy and advocacy services to build the influence of organisations that serve and improve the wellbeing of communities.
I wanted to use my experience to target pain points I saw at every level of the sector to help organisations from start-ups to mature NGOs take action and realise their mission.
Some of the key challenges I’ve been tackling have included:
- Recruitment: how do you support staff with limited experience in policy and advocacy?
- Staff: do they understand the culture and sector?
- Advocacy: it’s in the plan but where’s the capacity to deliver?
- Representation: organisations are diverse so how do you advocate on behalf of everyone?
- Resources: during periods of heavy consultation or engagement with government where do you find extra capacity?
It’s been incredibly rewarding to jump in and help my clients get results.
Highlights for Bridgeway (and me personally!) over the past 12 months have included:
- An extensive stakeholder consultation and an environmental scan to inform advocacy priorities for a finance focused member-based organisation.
- A 100-page report for a global NGO, presenting evidence-based recommendations and urgent calls to action for the New Zealand Government on key health priorities.
- Coaching policy professionals and supporting them to deliver strategies that result in direct action.
- High impact policy submission in response to the Australian Governments National Nursing Workforce Strategy consultation.
It can take time to enact real change and advocacy is a long game, but grappling with the challenges and seeing the results when the work pays off makes it all worthwhile.