MELBOURNE FREE EVENT: World Sustainability Day Gathering, Wed Oct 29th

Hi! I’ve been producing a number of really great written builder profiles of late (well, I think so at least) but every now and again I’ll lean into something I’ve been doing for many years now: Creating an event out of nothing (often free), and seek to create an excuse to get the people attending.

With World Sustainability Day a globally recognised day on the calendar for October 29th, I got to thinking about what a good event, for Melbourne, might look like. My usual motivations for creating a bespoke GROUP GROUP event out of vapour are usually the same:

A challenge. A challenge to see whether an excuse is created to get like-minded people gathering - niche communities if you will - and take on a bit of risk to get people into the room.

An independently curated, ‘for-the-people’ exercise, that will make people glad they took the time out of their schedules to attend something a little more unusual than your standard stuffy panel discussion.

So, it is with that that next Wednesday Oct 29th I’ve partnered with Sanders Place - an award-winning, architecturally designed hub for businesses and individuals driving social and environmental impact, to run a breakfast gathering with 3 speakers delivering micro-talks, inviting people working in a similar climate-meets-sustainability space, to gather together.

So far so good, people are happy to see this on the calendar it seems.

You’re invited. And please do tell a friend, the more the merrier 👋 

EVENT: CHALLENGERS - WORLD SUSTAINABILITY DAY GATHERING, OCT 29

In curating this event, I was fixated on putting 3 people in the spotlight, with a very particular emphasis on 3 areas of expertise: Capital, Deep Technology, and Research Megatrends.

I think I’ve created a pretty great blend her personally, with these 3 experts knowing their respective fields extremely well, and having the runs on the board to back up the big visions.

Each have been at this game for a long while. Not as often speaking publicly about their respective businesses (mostly busy head-down building). And extremely passionate about what they do. Which can only bode well for attendees to peek under the hood, and get a very live, very forthright summary, of the state of play in climate & sustainability focused capital deployment, research outcomes, and technology creation.

​Included in the mornings activity is guided tours of Sanders Place (winner of numerous sustainability-focused architecture awards) plus a free day of coworking on offer for attendees. ​*Breakfast Provided

Here’s the speakers. Love to have you in the room.

Judy Anderson-Firth is Group CEO of Euphemia, the family office of renowned Australian entrepreneur and technologist Dom Pym (Up Bank) and the co-founder of Triple Bubble Fintech Fund.

​Euphemia’s mission is Go Big and Grow Home - focused on investing in tomorrow’s startup scene, nurturing a diverse, progressive, intelligent, ambitious community. The former CEO of Startup Victoria, Judy is an influential mentor, advisor, and advocate for women in the Australian startup ecosystem.  Judy also serves on the boards of The Startup Network, Birchal, Buildkite and LUNA.

Euphemia have deployed a significant amount of cheques into the Australian ecosystem, across Seed to Series A, as well as in VC and private equity funds, traditional asset classes and Euphemia Foundation, predominantly focused on Climate Tech, Fintech, Women-led and Startup Infrastructure.

​Raj Bagri is an experienced founder with over 15 years of entrepreneurial success, driven by a strong commitment to tackling climate change. As a diverse female leader in the climate tech sector, she is dedicated to transforming how diesel emissions are managed, empowering industries to make a real, measurable impact in reducing carbon emissions while leveraging existing infrastructure.

​The Melbourne-based climate tech company Kapture retrofits diesel generators to capture carbon dioxide and convert it into a material that can replace some of the cement in concrete, cutting emissions with no green premium. Having completed a successful pilot with Western Australia’s regional energy provider Horizon Power and signed a supply deal with WA precaster PERMAcast, Bagri is now closing a seed round to scale deployments across mining, construction and remote power.

​Raj was recently named in The Australian's Top 100 Innovators List, and Kapture was a Winner in the Global Construction Startup Competition 2025!

Tim Clover is the founder of Glow Group, a research technology suite of brands. Included as part of Glow Group are Catalyst - an open-source research and insights program about the major social and environmental issues that we face - and the Social Responsibility Score (SRS), a diagnostic and tracker measuring consumer perception of brands' social and environmental (ESG) performance.

A global company, creating research tech solutions for 12+ years now, Tim will present research findings, to demonstrate sustainability as the next mega-trend in value creation and a predictive driver of differentiated brand performance.

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