I came to this job in 2019 as an outsider. Seven years ago this month.
It followed a very corporate start to working life, a shift to running a family business, and a few swings at entrepreneurship. Joining B Lab, I quickly realised I’d stumbled into something different: a community driven by passion — for business, and for change.
We were at the bottom of a big climb. Sustainability was becoming a driver across the global economy, consensus on climate change was emerging, the pressure for action building. B Lab was held together by some key funding partnerships, and I joined a team of five who had recently moved into Bluerock‘s offices in the city — after a long stint at the White House in St Kilda.
Three-for-one cheese deals at the Vic Market sustained us, and our team steadily grew as the B Corp community did.
The seven years since have seen us scale together.
We passed 10,000 global B Corps last year — a million people employed. In Australia and Aotearoa, almost 800 B Corps employ more than 50,000 people and turn over more than $31 billion annually. Large businesses have joined the community of founder-led small enterprises who made this idea possible, then successful, and in time a global benchmark. Awareness of the B Corp brand has grown significantly, and last year the Better Business campaign — Fat Cats — was a moment I was proud to be part of. All of it carried forward by the same spirit of interdependence that moved Bart, Jay and Andrew to do something twenty years ago that has become a global movement, and brings us together today.
Image: Elin Bandmann
With such a diverse B Corp community, it’s easier than ever to live and wear your values. When I attended the 20th anniversary event in Melbourne this month, my suit was made from merino wool grown at a carbon-negative, B Corp-certified sheep station — in the hills above Lake Hawea in Aotearoa. That wool is woven into fabric by Italian B Corp Reda, and tailored by Matt Jensen’s M.J. Bale in Sydney. Three B Corps. One suit.
You’ll have to take my word for it, but I was also in my Underwear for Humanity. A B Corp started by the indomitable Kelly Barrett. Buy-one-give-one, 100% recycled and circular, paying rent to Aboriginal community projects.
Glasses are from Jason at Seekers in Fitzroy — who proudly displayed the largest shop-window B Corp logo I’ve ever seen.
And to finish it off: boots by Bared. Anna Baird is relentless in chasing down a better way to make shoes — spending more on glue than I ever thought possible, solving wicked problems with a passion for great footwear and treading lightly on the planet.
I still carry the Bellroy wallet I bought the week before I started at B Lab.
I’ve been lucky enough to stand in the mud with Geoff at Lake Hawea Station, and engage with boards from First Sentier, to Kathmandu and Synlait. I’ve shared B Corp stories with Dane’s Patagonia team in Torquay, and cheered on Shashta as she wrestled Rip Curl into the fold with KMD Brands. I’ve been challenged to do better by Abi in KeepCup‘s warehouse, by Robert and Shane at Beyond Bank, by John and Maria at Australian Ethical. I’ve campaigned alongside Simon and the team at Future Super.
I’ve seen Williams Logistics‘ DC robots manage returns, marvelled at UPPAREL’s fabric-eating machine, enjoyed Melissa’s BBQ at Red Gum, and learned to never give up from Ben Shewry at Attica. I’ve argued systems theory with Simon from Portable over lunch, learned about community from Ally at Quiip, and watched Matt turn Nation Partners into a teal business with humility and grace. I’ve witnessed Darrell and Manch’s vision for Intrepid take shape — rising after Covid to become one of the businesses reshaping global travel for the better.
I watched Laura and Sarah open their new Clothing the Gaps store on Sydney Road, and I continue to be inspired by their commitment to campaigning for change and for Aboriginal-led business. Until they succeed, none of us fully have.
I’ve shared a drink with the fabulous Chia Sisters — Flo and Chloe — who make good drinks and do good along the way. I’ve watched the Business for Good programme in Aotearoa shape over 160 businesses to access world markets, leading with their sustainability stories. I’ve joined a pōwhiri at a marae, and learned how the Māori economy thinks and acts in generations.
I’ve seen our B Council form and shape our direction.
I’ve been fortunate to work with global colleagues from every continent — gathering with them and B Corps in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, São Paulo, Monterrey, Amsterdam, London, Rome, Barcelona, and Singapore. Always in good company.
Images: Elin Bandmann
As a community, we’ve found room to breathe, and to imagine. From pub meet-ups to the stage at SXSW, from LinkedIn and WhatsApp groups to national media — it’s all built on people who believe there should be a better way. People asking themselves fundamental ethical questions:
On what basis do I get to take from future generations’ ability to thrive?
And then, where the real opportunity lies:
How do I build a business that makes that future world a better place?
With thanks
These opportunities came to me because of the team at B Lab. It has been a privilege to work alongside so many energised, passionate people who have brought genuine joy to the sometimes hard work of driving change — in a business context where there is often little space for challenging the long-established norms of profiting at the expense of people, planet, and communities.
Thank you to our Board and B Council — people who have stepped up to volunteer their time and do so much vital work behind the scenes. To Mele-Ane Havea, our Board Chair since B Lab AANZ was founded in 2012: your quiet determination to see us succeed deserves a speech all of its own. To Alex, Phil, and Tiarne. To Fotini Kypraios as Chair of the B Council, and to all my colleagues across the global B Lab network.
And of course, to Danny Almagor, Berry Liberman and the Small Giants team — for bringing B Lab to this part of the world in the first place.
Thank you to the tireless boosters who do the quiet work in every movement of change — uplifting others, often without recognition. People like Skye Tipler and John Elliot, Tim Loftus in Aotearoa, Jennie McLaughlin, Terence Jeyaretnam, Corin Millais, and Andrea Spencer-Cooke. There are many more. But your support always arrives when it’s needed most, and never comes with conditions.
Thank you to former Executive Directors Alicia Darvall and Andrea Del Almeida, whose shoulders must ache, along with all our B Lab alumni.
And I extend this gratitude to everyone working to drive change from inside business. You are the ones charged — whether by moral imperative or business strategy, and ideally both — to push back against the financial gravity that presses down around you. The pressure that drives short-term, transactional thinking. Your persistence is at the heart of the wider change we seek.
On systems change
There’s a line that’s been in my head throughout this work. It’s variously attributed to Gramsci and Žižek — perhaps both, perhaps neither — but it goes: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
It has stayed with me — not as a warning, but as a kind of orientation — because systems change rarely offers you a moment of victory. But there are signals in the noise, and everything around us indicates a new economic system coming into being.
I learned a great deal about my job some four years into it, while undertaking the Social Impact Leadership Australia programme. A key lever in systems thinking is hearts and minds: understanding, galvanising, and shifting attitudes, beliefs, values, and fears. Who has something to gain. Who has something to fear. Who has something to lose. Here we see our success — but we also see our monsters more clearly. We must reflect on those who respond to change with fear or rejection. As progressives, we too often lead with righteousness when what’s needed is dialogue.
Images: Elin Bandmann
Stakeholder governance is in many ways the new norm. Questions now focus more on the how than the why. And yet on any given day, the challenges business leaders face are ever growing — all of us still subject to the gravitational force of a financial system hardwired to prioritise self-interest over the collective.
It is no wonder people are drawn to an approach where profit is defined only by accounting standards, where compliance with the law is not just adequate but good business. Business leaders face complexity every day — rising costs, an evolving market — and to ask them to take on more responsibility merely because we believe it’s right places a burden on those already weighed down.
And yet, amongst the noise, there are still signals.
I recently hosted a conversation on leadership in the age of AI. To prepare, I asked Claude for a definition of ethical business. The answer stopped me:
Ethical leadership in business today means leading in a way that is honest about trade-offs, not just virtuous in rhetoric.
The current moment has specific texture that matters. We’re living through a convergence of pressures — climate disruption, AI transformation, geopolitical fragmentation, eroding institutional trust, and growing inequality — that makes leadership genuinely harder. It’s easier to be ethical when times are good and values are cheap to hold. The test is now.
Take a bow, Claude.
But as Amantha Imber has taught me through her work at Inventium: AI is a probabilistic engine, not a deterministic truth teller. And so Claude tells us something about where we are — it reflects back what the work of so many has reshaped: what people believe our system is, and what the solutions might be.
Alongside this, there is compelling evidence that actively designing for accountability makes for stronger stakeholder relationships, more resilient business models, and in the long run, greater returns. The stories we know must be supplemented with the research and policy that helps show wider audiences the potential of a stakeholder-first approach — along with its virtues.
Following SILA, I was fortunate to complete the ethical leadership programme through the Vincent Fairfax Fellowship, which offered a deeper understanding of this work through another lens entirely.
There I encountered the writings of Alasdair MacIntyre — his idea that life can only be made sense of, and actions and moral virtues only understood, within the narratives we are part of. My own understanding of the mission B Lab strives for is grounded in the stories of this community, in the businesses that have built a global movement. They are more than evidence and data — they make sense of the values that bind us. We don’t yet have a name for the new doctrine to replace our old friend Milton Friedman. But we know what it looks like. And that is real progress.
So what next?
Our new standards represent a new call to action — a blueprint for the next twenty years. The B Corp community has evolved, in its composition and its ambition. Community in business can be hard to define, and therefore hard to find. But it is always there in times of need. Our focus will sharpen in the years ahead, as collective action is needed to prosecute the case for change.
Images: Elin Bandmann
I’ve come to appreciate that community is also a creature of moments. It’s different each time it comes together — whether in a coffee catch-up, an online town hall, or in a sun-baked field on Darkinjung Country.
I believe the change we seek is here, and visible. And I believe the work of ushering in the new world remains very much in front of us.
As our stories intersect, and as you return to the challenges of your day, my ask is simple: take a moment to recognise your own contribution to our collective mission. That moment is well deserved — and it is best shared.
I wish you every success in your own search for what it means to thrive, to flourish, to do business and to live well in an interdependent world.
