Hi, I’m Rachel

My Story.

In our hyper-connected world, 1 in 4 of us is lonely.

I remember how shocked I was when I first learned about the loneliness epidemic our world is facing. And it’s literally killing us. Researchers found that loneliness is just dangerous as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and the world economic forum has even listed it as 2019’s biggest economic crisis. I believe that community is the missing piece to solving this very real issue. In fact, community is integral to future proofing successful business, politics, environmental action, our general social wellbeing and personal growth. However, building community isn’t easy. Most people admit they don’t know where to start.

I was always driven to make a difference

Born and raised in Bristol, in the south-west of the UK I grew up in a family of social worker, politically active parents.  As a child I remember friends of the family talking life and world events around the big kitchen table. My parents always encouraged me to develop my own way of thinking about the world, that politics wasn't something just for politicians, but that impacted all of us.  In the 70s that was pretty obvious, even to a kid - with the miners strikes, power blackouts, protests over cuts in education.  I grew up digging veggies on the allotment, learning about recycling from my O.G. thrifty grandad, and cooking from scratch with my grandmother on a street where everybody knew your name. From a young age I knew it was important to play a part in your community and strive to make a difference.

I started to be known as the Head of Making Friends!

I’ve worked in community-based organisations internationally my whole career, from local government, to primary healthcare to education. I’ve held positions in service delivery, thorough to the board room and executive team, and now teach leadership on the top ranked Australian MBA program. So, I have 30 years’ experience working with a range of communities. And the questions I kept coming back to were, how can we help people create genuine personal connections? How can we support businesses in building meaningful community connections with customers and staff, and create shared value for everyone? What tools can we give people to create supportive, proactive professional networks that elevate their career impact?

I wanted to find some practical ways to bring community building to more people

I looked at the research from the fields of psychology, sociology and leadership and saw how I could build a model that could bring together the science and theory into a practical program. Then I went out into the real world and interviewed the likely and the not so likely experts about how they build their communities. I wanted to figure out what works, what community builders had in common and most importantly, what we can all learn about growing effective community. And what I gathered together formed the basis of the Belonging is Better program.

How I stay connected with community

My family visit the same campsite every year where we’ve been brought into the fold of a group of families who congregate to catch up over the camp fire in amongst the kangaroos. The gym I sweat it out in has community as one of their main missions, and have created an amazing team spirit. My family helps out with local bush conservation regeneration working bees, and we are part of a veggie box collective in the neighbourhood. On top of all that I have brilliant network of professionals, educators, business owners and all round brilliant people who I feel supported by and learn from every day. From the local coffee brewers to your workplace, these are the connections that enrich our community lives each day.

My values

It’s important that my business helps tackle the biggest challenges that our world community is facing today and so working with me means that you help my business support three key community movements.