Dilin Duwa Centre for Indigenous Business Leadership director Michelle Evans is visualising a "paradigm shift" in the global sector, and as the centre welcomes multi-million dollar support from one of the country's biggest businesses.
On Monday BHP announced a two-year, $20 million investment with Melbourne Business School to back major Indigenous initiatives.
There's an option to match that following the first term.
For Dilin Duwa, as MBS partner, it signals a "catapulting forward" in their work developing future Indigenous business leaders and research, Dr Evans said.
Melbourne Business School Dean Professor Jenny George said the MBS-BHP partnership, "to support a robust Indigenous business sector" aligns with historic the central vision of the school.
In a panel discussion its launch, Dr Evans said Dilin Duwa's foundations stemmed from a "call to action" from MBS's MURRA Indigenous Business Program graduates.
They will soon move past 260 people completing their programs, with additional engagement via their Regional Business Series and online since 2021.
Muru Office Supplies chief executive Mitchell Ross, Vet-turned-Telstra Health general manager and Dilin Duwa Indigenous Advisory Group member Dr Jennifer Beer, both MURRA graduates, and BHP head of Indigenous Engagement Allan James joined Dr Evans on the panel.
Mr Ross said his start with Indigenous-led education arms stemmed from wanting to develop his 'love' for business to knowledge on "how to do it better".
He recently reached a 12 month, $15 million turnover in revenue with his stationary comany.
Dr Beer credited the alignment with MBS and associated esteem to 'opening doors'.
She also forecast a greater representation of Indigenous Australians at the executive and board level, not to 'meet quota' but as a true reflection of success across the sector.
According to Dilin Duwa research, the 13,000-plus active Indigenous businesses generated $16.1 billion to the Australian economy, paying more than 116,000 employees $4.2 billion in wages.
Dr Evans told National Indigenous Times BHP's investment could materialise in Dilin Duwa moving from "incremental change over each year to actually catapulting forward and trying to build our programs, our research and our community engagement quicker, faster and more impactfully across Australia and internationally".
"In 10 years' time, I'm really hoping that we can see not just a shift incrementally in Indigenous business leaders being more prolific across the business sector and more Indigenous businesses, but a more transformative paradigm shift where indigenous ways of doing business. and Indigenous philosophies of relationality and holism are infused and impacted across the Australian business sector, and internationally."
BHP's Allan James sees an opportunity to "fast forward, encourage the success, promote the success" of current business leaders and into a snowball effect.
"(For) kids that are sitting in primary school or high school…Indigenous leaders now are the role models for the future," he said.
"We have an opportunity to actually profile them, to breed that success, to breed the environment and create the opportunity to nurture future indigenous entrepreneurs, and leadership across this country."
