Australia’s Indigenous business sector has experienced significant growth in recent years, yet many First Nations entrepreneurs still encounter big challenges in starting a successful business, including a lack of financial capital and social connections. Within workplaces themselves, enhancing diversity and inclusion improves outcomes for First Nations peoples—yet gaps in cultural intelligence persist.
This is what inspired Yawuru and Bunuba woman Adele Peek and her sister, Cara, to launch The Cultural Intelligence Project, a platform that helps established and emerging organisations boost diversity, equity and inclusion with conscious business solutions.
“The Cultural Intelligence Project shifts mindsets to empower people to create positive change through education and best-practice techniques,” Peek explains. “Whether it’s within the entrepreneurship space or helping people develop the cultural intelligence of their business, we are dedicated to advancing First Nations peoples.”
The Peek sisters started The Cultural Intelligence Project 10 years ago, but the seed for the idea was planted during their childhood years growing up in Dandenong, in south-east Melbourne.
Adele Peek says she was in Year 10 when she realised that education was a pathway to a different type of life. She applied for one of the first Indigenous scholarships offered by the prestigious Methodist Ladies’ College and discovered a passion for art.
A partnership between the school and the University of Melbourne opened the door to tertiary education, where Peek graduated with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in art history. It was then that she decided to return to Yawuru country and her extended family in Broome.
She landed a job as an assistant art director, followed by stints in youth work and with a local land council. “That job was my first introduction and connection to allies and accomplices and Indigenous people from all walks of life coming together for a common purpose: human rights and country,” Peek says.
Next came a gig with Rio Tinto in Perth managing an education portfolio and Aboriginal scholarship program. Eventually, she returned to her country in a community liaison role with Shell.
It wasn’t until Peek became general manager for The Foundation for Young Australians—a role where she learned to fully appreciate the impact women of colour can have as “superheroes” in leadership positions—and a new mother, that she had the ability to take The Cultural Intelligence Project from a side hustle to a full-time business.
Peek says The Cultural Intelligence Project aims to redefine the role of First Nations culture in the workplace and bring Indigenous empowerment to the forefront. “Our business comes from the First Nations perspective and lens because of it being innate within us; we are descendants of the first entrepreneurs,” she says.
The ‘mothership brand’ directs a series of initiatives and services that work towards these goals, including a creative agency, e-learning platform and capability development programs for First Nations advancement.
One of the newest additions is Make It Happen, a Broome-based innovation hub providing mentorship, funding and services for First Nations entrepreneurs in the start-up and scale-up stages. Peek says it has so far supported 34 First Nations entrepreneurs and 15 businesses.
Initiatives such as this are critical agents of change, Peek explains, especially given First Nations peoples are disproportionately excluded from opportunities in the workplace.
“The more we cater to the most disadvantaged in society, the better we cater for all. When Indigenous peoples can determine their own futures through entrepreneurship, they can build sustainable businesses and opportunities,” Peek says.
Unsurprisingly given her ambition, Peek has big goals for the future. “At The Cultural Intelligence Project, we want to be a global leader in cultural intelligence. We want to take our work and the way that we do it to a higher level,” she says.
But like many business owners aspiring to social change, her ultimate objective is redundancy. “I want to support others so they become successful in a way that means we’re no longer needed.”