Karyn Baylis puts corporates to work on indigenous projects

It’s never too late to develop a social conscience, says Karyn Baylis, head of a non-profit working with indigenous people.

Karen Baylis, CEO of Jawun, is recognised as a Member of the Order (AM).

Although Karyn Baylis heads a non-profit working with indigenous Australians, she didn’t develop a real social conscience until she was in her 40s.

Her social conscience started to be awakened when she had the opportunity to be mentored by the late James Strong, the businessman and philanthropist whose career ranged from top roles at Qantas, IAG and Woolworths to roles as chair of the Australia Council for the Arts and part of the ICC Cricket World Cup organising committee.

Today her work has been recognised after being named as a Member of the Order of Australia.

“It’s never too late to learn, or to develop a social conscience,” Ms Baylis told The Australian. “Today young people come out of uni and they’ve already got that social conscience. So they’re demanding a lot more from corporate Australia, which I think is fantastic.”

After senior positions at Optus, IAG and Qantas, Ms Baylis had an opportunity to trade corporate life for the non-profit group Jawun, which sends corporate employees on secondment to work with indigenous communities.

Bankers, lawyers, consultants or government staff spend six weeks to a year working on projects that indigenous organisations have requested help with.

As chief executive of Jawun since 2009, she has seen how corporate Australia can help build capacity and capability over the longer term.

At the individual level, a lot of skills transfer takes place, while at the organisational level she sees improvements to governance, financial systems, strategic thinking and risk assessment — and the broader community benefits too.

“Long-term outcomes for this sort of connection are seen in employment, economic opportunity, addressing some of the issues in community,” she said.

“With regions that we’ve been working in for a long time like Cape York — we started working with an organisation there that had three people and that organisation now employs 170 people and 70 of those are indigenous people.”

Ms Baylis is proud of her record of being able to drive change, relaunch major brands and improve customer experiences at large corporates. Now, she can see the power of the “cross-sector fertilisation” that happens after connecting corporate or government and indigenous Australia.

Although her parents were interested in indigenous affairs, she took on the role at Jawun not because of a longstanding interest, but because she knew there was “potential to do good by connecting different parts of Australia”.

“Now, nine years on, my passion is absolutely around our first peoples,” she said. She cites reconciliation with the past as a key issue facing the nation. “Whether I’m an indigenous Australian, a migrant, or I sit in the corporate offices or corporate Australia, I just think if we can reconcile with our past, celebrate it and build on that cultural history, we are going to be a much better nation for that,” she said.