Courage, empathy, grit and the ability to adapt to employees' needs are what co-founder of Killara Services Jasmine Newman attributes to their success.

Killara Services is Australia's largest Aboriginal cleaning company. Established in 2017 by Jasmine and her husband Max Newman, their first job, after winning a tender, was just five days after the birth of their daughter.

Now they have almost 600 people employed across Australia, 48 per cent of whom identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.

The couple met while working at another start-up cleaning company where Max was general manager and hired Jasmine as the national Indigenous engagement manager.

Over the next four years, they helped grow the company to $14m in revenue.

When that business was sold, the duo left because they felt the company's values no longer aligned with their own.

To get Killara off the ground, Jasmine presented a joint venture opportunity to one of Australia's largest cleaning companies, GJK Services.

"The owner, George Stamas, understood and backed our business dream, allowing us the flexibility to make every decision ourselves, to make it a culturally appropriate Indigenous business," Jasmine says.

"Two weeks into our joint venture, we were sued for $100,000 and restrained from operating for three months – we had a non-compete clause in our previous employment contract."

They have since repaid the original capital investment from GJK Services, and the interest-free loan for the legal claim. "The advantage of starting as a joint venture was that I could borrow systems and processes that worked, as well as enact my own, for example, HR processes in a

non-Indigenous organisation don't fit a black fella business."

Growing up on Dharug country in Western Sydney with five siblings, Jasmine recalls a childhood marked by instability.

"We were 'houso kids', brought up in housing commissions, we moved around a lot – I went to 12 schools before year 7," she says.

"It builds resilience, and it made me ensure that my kids didn't grow up that way," the mother-of-four says.

After completing Year 12 in Liverpool, Jasmine's first job was in employment services with a disability support agency.

She then moved into Aboriginal employment strategy, general recruitment and then group training, supporting host employers with challenges and barriers they may have had with school-based trainees.

"If trainees were turning up to work late, or their behaviour was not right from a workplace perspective, or if school dropped off, it was my job to offer holistic support to help get them back on track," she says.

"I found it really fulfilling in Indigenous recruitment, because I was helping to make a real change in someone's life."

That same holistic approach is applied in her own business.

"I feel a responsibility as an Indigenous business owner," Jasmine explains.

She describes how she has supported domestic violence applications, helped women plan to leave and go to emergency housing or temporary accommodation at the expense of Killara, as well as supplying food vouchers and Opal (public transport) cards.

"We employed an incredible lady on a Defence cleaning contract, a grandmother, and her kid, the primary care giver to her grandchildren, got locked up, so we approached the client and shifted her roster so she could pick up her grandchildren after school.

"This has a domino effect – the kids see Nan going to work, they see the positives that can happen because of work.

"It means so much to be able to help and retain staff who wouldn't or couldn't work in a corporate organisation."

It's clear that the extra support given to employees is rewarded with loyalty and a growing positive reputation.

"Word got around and a shift happened, we became an employer of choice for mob – we have mob wanting to work for us and that was an 'oh wow' moment in our journey," Jasmine says.

"The more Aboriginal people we hire, the greater the positive impact on communities.

"We've been able to fix the barriers of employment, identify people into career pathways, into our business or our clients' businesses and we've been able to secure some amazing opportunities."

The foundation of Killara Services is based on three principles, engage, employ and empower.

Its corporate client list includes some of the biggest organisations in the country including Coles, CBRE, Honeywell and Canva along with NSW government departments such as Education, Communities and Justice, and Family and Community Services and the Australian Federal Police.

"I started the businesses to continue my great-grandfather's legacy – Bert Groves who was an Aboriginal activist in the '60s and '70s and played a crucial role in the 1967 referendum," she says.

"Pop advocated the rights for our people and, for me, it's about creating the opportunity for our people that Pop was fighting for."

Killara means "always there" in Dhurag language, a fitting name for a business that goes beyond the job.