‘Mentoring stopped me trying to eat the whole cake in one sitting': How this entrepreneur overcame fear and feeling overwhelmed

Have you ever seen a wrong that needed to be righted and thought somebody ought to do something? And have you ever thought that 'somebody' might be you?

But getting from this first spark of an idea to delivering your brainchild to the world can be overwhelming. This was what Ashleigh Streeter-Jones experienced when she founded Raise Our Voice Australia, a social enterprise that aims to get more young women and gender-diverse people into politics and policy.

Linda Lacina, Digital Editor at the World Economic Forum, spoke to Streeter-Jones for the Meet The Leader podcast, discussing her experiences as social start-up founder and the importance of not going it alone but drawing on the value of mentors along the way.

Streeter-Jones had her lightbulb moment after many years of working with young people in political campaigning and a career in public service and foreign affairs.

"In doing this work, I looked around and saw who was in the room. And to be honest, I didn't see many people looking like me," she says. "We still don't have many public decision-makers, be it politicians or high-ranking public officials, that reflect young people, and particularly they don't reflect young women and young gender-diverse people. Young people are, generally speaking, politically marginalized."

She continues: “After a fair amount of time doing that reflection, I decided that I was uniquely best-placed to solve this problem by actually sharing some of my knowledge, sharing my network, sharing my contacts. And we all know the importance of networks in helping people get where they want to go.”

Streeter-Jones’ idea was to train young people interested in becoming politically active – those who wanted to understand better how the political system works and learn relevant tactical skills such as community building.

“Raise Our Voice Australia is the combination of my background experience and my passion for gender equality to help support young women and gender-diverse people to be involved in active conversations around their futures and their livelihoods,” she says.

Yet, despite her experience and motivation, she was struggling to bring her idea to life in more practical terms.

“I felt overwhelmed by the enormity of what I was trying to do,” Streeter-Jones admits.

“The actual turning point was my fabulous mentor, Ritu Clementi, sitting me down and saying: Look, you've been talking about this for a couple of months now. I get the sense that you've got this great idea, and you're not actually sure how to translate it into practice.”

So she offered to meet Streeter-Jones regularly to help her bring the concept she had envisaged to life.

“Although I’d studied politics and international relations at university, it was the operationalizing and localizing of that [knowledge] that felt quite overwhelming,” says Streeter-Jones.

“I was tied up in my own perfectionism and I needed somebody to help me untangle my thoughts and really break that down into bite-sized steps.”

Instead of “eating the whole cake in one sitting”, which Streeter-Jones said she had been trying to do at first, her mentor helped divide up the problem into smaller steps that she could complete and then move on. Regular meetings helped her stay on track and get support along the way.

“That consistency, that accountability and that compassion and patience were so central to the process as they allowed me to learn and make mistakes and try different things, by breaking it down into something tangible and implementable.”

Since then, Raise Our Voice Australia has been going from strength to strength. The pilot training programme in 2020 received around 100 applications from people who wanted to learn about civic engagement and participation. A follow-on course in 2021 saw the number of participants considering a career in politics and policy increase by over 100%.

Some people who had not previously engaged with politics ended up standing for office as a result of attending the course. Streeter-Jones mentions a colleague who joined a political party directly after the course and recently got preselected to run as a regional election candidate.

“It's just incredibly humbling that these ideas sitting in your head that you work away on at your kitchen table really translate into action.”

Streeter-Jones admits that, even now, she still gets overwhelmed and overengineers how she approaches things.

“I think as a change-maker, I can feel quite paralyzed by the enormity of the issues that we're trying to solve – and trying to solve in the best way possible.

“Sometimes you've just got to close your eyes, make a decision and start somewhere,” she adds. “I do find that still a bit challenging. I always want to hold myself to a higher standard and make sure that I really am lifting the floor, not just smashing the ceiling.”

However, the value of mentoring for successfully setting up Raise Our Voice Australia has stuck with her. Today, she has a virtual “board of advisers” to draw on, both for her personal and her professional life.

“I'm constantly being mentored and hopefully mentoring back. I turn to my mentors, both professional and collegiate, for so many things,” Streeter-Jones points out.

This includes practical challenges such as setting a positive organizational culture and keeping volunteers on board, as well as aspects of her self-development, such as demonstrating good leadership.

“I very much enjoy sitting in a place of self-reflection. I like talking through issues with people, but I often find myself deferring to the incredible community that I sit in, particularly for these more technical questions of ‘How do you move forward?’ and ‘What does good change look like?’

“But actually, most of what I learn comes from my peers, and I'm really lucky to be part of a community like the Global Shapers, where there are many young leaders doing similar work to this.”

The World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Annual Summit, which takes place on 16-18 June, will bring together young leaders to address many of the issues they face in developing the courage, commitment and solutions to lead positive change in their communities and beyond.

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