ORIGIN STORY
In 2012, as young university students, we met while volunteering at Oaktree (a youth-led international development agency).
Hi! We’re Taz and Em, and this is our story!
In between wrangling our volunteer teams, coordinating state-wide political campaigns and raising funds to implement Millennium Development Goal projects, we learnt two things:
Despite being complete opposites, we are platonic soul-mates and best friends (and, a damn good team!)
When people have the opportunity to work on projects they are passionate about, they can do incredible things
These two learnings inspired us to begin thinking about the incredible projects we could work on together to create our dream business. In the early days this meant misadventures with bowties, polymer clay jewellery and cute printable planning tools that we sold at any market that would have us…
As we graduated uni and moved on to grown-up ‘adult jobs’, we sadly left our market days behind us - Taz started her own social enterprise consultancy and facilitation business while Em became a commercial specialist in the Department of Defence.
However, our dream of working together never faded.
Maintaining a long-distance best-friendship meant we spent hours in cafes all over Australia, huddled over notebooks and butcher’s paper while we crafted new business ideas and plans.
2020 changed everyone’s lives, including ours.
Just before COVID…
Em found herself back in her hometown, nursing a broken heart. Taz faced uncertainty as the beloved role she had been working in came to an end.
Feeling lost and unsure, we returned to our butcher’s paper to plan and dream. After some angsty beach walks for good measure, we decided to just do it! We started our dream business, created our own jobs and committed to try and do something meaningful for regional Australia.
Futures Isle was born.
Futures Isle has now been operating for 2 years.
We are so honoured to work with incredibly supportive and awesome partners like the ABC, the Department of Education, Skills and Employment, Sally Foundation, the University of Tasmania and many more.
During this time, we have worked with thousands of individuals to build skills in and connect to self-employment, meaningful pathways, social impact, storytelling and confidence.
We have worn out tyres and spent countless hours in airports travelling Tasmania, the mainland and even Internationally.
And we are just getting started.
Find out more about our dream team here and what they each bring to the table.
As a team, we don’t always have the answers (who does?), but we bring energy, enthusiasm and a fresh perspective to everything we do. Our super power is knowing how to ask the right questions to find the information in the people we are working with.
And, as young entrepreneurs ourselves, we know that curiosity, a willingness to collaborate and relentless passion can see you through just about any situation (especially if there is coffee involved).
We are so excited for what the future holds.