Former hospitality worker Jamie Bucirde is proof of the power of grassroots activism.

Fed up with the perverse open secret of sexual assault and harassment in the hospitality industry, Bucirde launched an Instagram account, Not So Hospitable, in 2022 to encourage people to share their experiences working in restaurants, bars and clubs in Adelaide.

“Pure drive and anger” is what started it, she says. “And it got so big, so quick.”

After receiving nearly 400 testimonies in a month, the account rippled across state lines, sparking a nationwide reckoning and bringing a systemic, largely sidelined issue to the surface.

This year, Bucirde consolidated her findings in an academic report with the University of Melbourne, which she’s using to galvanise the movement into meaningful change.

‘The media plays a huge role in how people perceive these issues and if they think they’re important or not.’

Jamie Bucirde

It’s why Bucirde was this week named the inaugural Cultural Change Champion at The Age Good Food Guide 2025 Awards. The new award is a way to highlight operators, organisations, not-for-profits and networks trying to transform the industry by cultivating better practices – and ultimately making conditions safer for workers.

“It’s awesome to have recognition in a space that’s been silenced for so long,” Bucirde says of the nomination.

“It gives me a platform to be able to talk about it more. And the more awareness that there is, the more likely this kind of change is implemented.

“The media plays a huge role in how people perceive these issues and if they think they’re important or not. And the media puts direct pressure on government.”

Bucirde’s report played a part in South Australia announcing plans to make bystander intervention education part of compulsory Responsible Service of Alcohol training.

But while the legislative change is yet to happen, Bucirde’s mission is ongoing: “What I’m interested in is continuously pushing this momentum to actually push them to enforce the things they said were going to … And I want see it mandated federally.”

Education is a key part of what she does. And she’s taken it one step further, kickstarting On the Cusp, a business that delivers workshops on sexual violence awareness to hospitality businesses nationwide, including several in Victoria.