No sleep in Seattle for Adelaide entrepreneur
Local
Early in May, Roxane Foulser-Piggott and her business partner Tega Nukie will board a plane from Adelaide for a much anticipated business trip to America’s west coast.
Once they arrive at the AWS Skill Center in downtown Seattle, they will take part in the AWS Amazon Web Services and Deloitte Social Entrepreneur Accelerator (SEA), a prominent social impact program focused on supporting startups that leverage technology to drive global change.
Roxane’s Adelaide based social enterprise FreddyMatch – which she founded six years ago – is the only company from Australia selected to take part in the accelerator program which is designed to help drive impact across the global health, education and environmental sectors.
The SEA aims to foster innovative leadership, spark collaboration and strengthen our global social impact ecosystem with the three-day event bringing together innovative companies from around the world.
Much of the program will focus on workshops looking at the better use of AI, how to clarify strategic and operational priorities, accelerating cloud adoption and bridging mission and market for scalable, sustainable impact and much more.
“No, I didn’t expect we’d be selected for the program,” said Roxane. “No other company from Australia will be attending and it’s a huge learning opportunity for us.”
Despite this, the SEA bio which profiles Roxane, undersells her.
‘Dr Roxane Foulser-Piggott is founder and CEO of FreddyMatch, a platform connecting 50,000 plus volunteers with opportunities matched to their skills, interests, availability and location,’ it reads.
‘FreddyMatch is her mission made real. A former Deloitte Director of Analytics and AI, Westpac Social Change Fellow, and PhD graduate of Imperial College London, Roxane brings world-class data expertise to driving social impact across Australia.’
The Southern Cross profiled Roxane, who lives in the Adelaide Hills where her eldest child, Samuel, attends St Catherine’s School in Stirling, in October last year.
Her is an extraordinary story. That she has a PhD in seismic risk in earthquakes from Imperial College (London) and undertook doctoral research at Cambridge University, doesn’t even scratch the surface.
The genesis for FreddyMatch a web based charity that matches volunteer vacancies with actual volunteers across Australia, came through the loss of her first child Freddy, who lived for just 16 days after he was born in May 2017.
Wanting to make the most of her background and abilities, Roxane found there was no easy vehicle for volunteers to find good and rewarding work.
“I just wanted to know how to use my skills and find a role for me. I wanted a way I could match volunteers with roles,” she said.
And so, FreddyMatch began.
Little and large openings are catered for equally while schools and corporates are the two big target markets for FreddyMatch. Ridding volunteering of age old stigmas is a must, said Roxane. “We need to build a compelling narrative.”
Seattle known for its hi-tech and TV shows Grey’s Anatomy and Frasier as well as bucketfuls of rain – will hopefully provide another step on the ladder to do just that.
