Innovating and change making in Cairns

From the outback to Australia Zoo, Cairns innovator Sara Brown has built a career around building community – and her new role with CQUniversity is set to make new connections across regional Queensland. Sara is Social Innovation Program Manager at CQU. Sara has lived in Cairns for six years, and previously worked with local Indigenous social enterprise The Maraway. She’s also worked across Queensland, the Northern Territory and internationally, in social impact roles for community-based health, youth justice, parenting education, green city initiatives and even at the Irwin family’s Australia Zoo.

Read on for our change maker interview with Sara!

Describe your career trajectory and how you got to your current position.

My career started in corporate public relations in Sydney, and I quickly realised maybe that industry wasn’t my one true love! I moved in-house to do communications for not-for-profits, and was lucky enough to work for incredible organisations with huge impacts like The National Centre of Indigenous Excellence, The Fred Hollows Foundation in the Indigenous Australia Program, and an Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation in Cairns. I found myself doing much more than just comms in these roles, and realised my heart belonged to community development, community empowerment and working on solutions to local problems using co-design. 

I transitioned into direct community services, program design and delivery, and advocacy in my FNQ community. I felt I was really hitting my stride in this role, when I took a break to have a baby, and sadly our small social enterprise closed and I lost my job. Being unintentionally unemployed was not what I expected from maternity leave, but it gave me quality time learning to become a parent, and figuring out where I wanted to be. 

The role at CQUniversity offered a chance to work on across really varied social change projects across Queensland, and grow my passion for community empowerment – I jumped at the chance! 

What does this role mean to you?

This role and the ways we work in the Office of Social Innovation align so closely with my values, working with communities to uncover the answers to their issues is such rewarding work, and through the co-design process you really see people getting inspired and excited about driving change.

Take us through a typical day of work for you.

My favourite aspect of this role is no two days look the same – there are themes though. Lots of creative design work with my amazing team, working with partner organisations to understand their needs and their communities, facilitating workshops, coming up with new ideas for projects, and a continuous process of reading, watching and learning from trailblazers in co-design work.

Today, I’ve been recruiting participants for our Q-SEED project in Townsville – it’s all about creating maintainable, sustainable and supportive job opportunities for young people, by co-designing with young people directly and employers who want more young people on their teams. So I get to talk to a lot of excited people – it’s a great perk of the job!   

As you can probably tell, most of the work is project-driven. But because CQU is Australia’s only social enterprise university (certified by Social Traders), and an Ashoka U Changemaker University, there is a really powerful thread that connects and informs all the work. CQU is about accessible and empowering education, training, research and engagement that changes lives. So we’re creating impact at a really local level, but also nationally and globally.  

What is the biggest challenge you’ve encountered in your career, and how did you overcome it?

I think the transition from communications to program design and delivery was a real challenge. I had a decade or so of communications experience behind me, and a desire for change, but no idea how to get there. 

I think one of my skills is identifying amazing people and working my hardest to keep them in my life – it was through these relationships that I was able to transition my career, and have the support to fail fast and fall forward. Without those amazing women who are still excellent mentors (and cheerleaders) I don’t think I would have had the courage to try something new. 

If you could go back in time, what piece of advice would you give yourself as you first embarked on your career? 

Such a great question! I think I would encourage myself to have a very broad definition of success. I think watching my peers climb the corporate PR ladder while I was driving a troopy in outback NT to deliver workshops on eye health, there were moments where I wondered if I was on the right track. Now I know I 100 per cent was – that work made me happy and had impact I was proud of, and it’s helped grow the career I love. 

How do you stay motivated to work in this field?

Given the diversity of the projects we work on, I think it’s pretty easy to stay motivated. Just this week I have worked on projects tackling loneliness and social isolation, youth unemployment, social procurement, and diverse employment best practice for social enterprises. Also, I have a great team both within the Office of Social Innovation and across CQU, and in our various project partners like ArcBlue, Smart Precinct NQ, Queensland Social Enterprise Council, and social enterprises across Queensland. Getting to work with smart, creative, fun people on tackling big issues together absolutely helps with motivation! 

How do you unwind after work?

I am so lucky to live in Cairns where the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree are right on my doorstep – so swimming and hiking are right up there! I love taking my dog, my son and my awesome partner on rainforest adventures, and am always trying to carve out more time for yoga either in one of the great studios here or in my backyard with aforementioned dog and son keen to get involved too – sometimes in a less than helpful way!

What was the last thing you: Watched, Read, & Listened to?

I just finished reading Holly Ringland’s book The House that Joy Built – the pleasure and power of giving ourselves permission to create.

I am always listening to good storytelling and interview-based podcasts. I love the way Anna Sale of Death, Sex and Money can talk about such heavy topics with the perfect balance of lightness, laughter and deep care for the people she is interviewing, without shying away from asking tough questions. 

My watch list is pretty sad these days, with a young baby in the house, by the time evenings roll around and there might be some opportunity for a good binge watch, I am usually watching the inside of my eyelids!