¶ Intro / Opening
Welcome to the For Love and Money podcast, the show where business and social purpose meet to inspire a movement for positive change. Here's your host, Carolyn Butler-Madden.
¶ Introduction to Purpose and Impact
What does it mean to live a life of purpose so deeply that it shapes everything — your work, your relationships, your worldview, even the way you define love and money? My guest today is Sandy Blackburn, founder of Social Outcomes and Impact Culture Australia, and one of Australia's leading thinkers in social impact and organisational culture.
For 15 years, Sandy lived and worked in South Africa through the last years of apartheid and into the birth of democracy, immersing herself in township life, working alongside activists, marrying into a Black African family, and raising two children across cultures. It’s a story she captures beautifully in her autobiographical book, “Holding Up the Sky: An African Life.”
In our conversation, Sandy shares the powerful lessons those years taught her about community, belonging, and Ubuntu — the African philosophy that says, “I am because we are.” We talk about what Western culture has lost in its obsession with individual freedom, and what it might take to rediscover our shared humanity.
Sandy also reflects on how those experiences shaped her work today — from leading social innovation at Westpac to founding Social Outcomes, and now launching Impact Culture Australia, a bold new venture helping purpose-driven organisations embed impact into their culture and systems.
¶ Love’s Role in Business
Here’s my interview with Sandy Blackburn.
Sandy, welcome to the For Love and Money podcast. Thank you so much for joining us.
It's an absolute pleasure. We've been skirting around this conversation for a while, so it's going to be interesting to finally put it in one place.
Oh my God, I’m so electrically electrified about this conversation. I think it's going to be a little bit different. But let's kick off with the question everyone gets: in your view, is there a role for love in business?
Absolutely. Absolutely. Why else would you do it? At the end of the day, we think we do it for money. We think we create these careers so that we can be wealthy and financially stable and all of that. But if you achieve that, then what? If there is no love, then what have you done? Nothing. It has to be a means to an end — and the end has to be relationship. Whether that’s with your family, partner, friends, community, even your pets. Money is simply a way to buy yourself the space to love.
Buy yourself space to love people, but also to love what you do.
Exactly — on so many levels.
Thank you, Sandy. So I want to dive into your background and how it's shaped your identity and the work you do now. You were very generous and gave me a copy of your beautiful book, “Holding Up the Sky: An African Life,” which tracks your epic 15-year journey between 1988 and 2003, during some of the most tumultuous times in South Africa’s history.
It’s a story of a young Australian woman immersing herself in township life, witnessing deep injustice and extraordinary resilience and joy. You moved from being a visitor to becoming part of a complex set of identities — partner in a mixed-race marriage, mother, adoptive mother, community contributor, and someone living between cultures.
¶ Sandy’s Journey to South Africa
There’s so much I want to explore, but let’s look at this through the lens of identity and how it connects you to your work. What first drew you to South Africa?
When I was tiny — six or seven — I apparently announced to my parents that when I grew up, I was going to live in Africa. I didn’t understand it was a continent, not a country, so there were lots of places to choose from. South Africa wasn’t top of my list; I wanted East Africa. I think that came from movies and TV. I thought I’d either be a doctor working in refugee camps, or a Jane Goodall-type researcher. That was my imagined contribution.
So I got this opportunity for South Africa and thought, “I can start there and then go to East Africa — Kenya, Tanzania, wherever.” But I had a concrete relationship there through which I could engage. Initially, it was meant to be a start into a life of service somewhere on the continent, but it very quickly turned into a love affair with the country, the politics, and the people. Everything was so compelling that after a few years, it became impossible to think about being anywhere else.
So how old were you when you went there, and what was the invitation that got you there?
I was just out of uni — 21 or 22. I’d been seeing someone whose father made documentaries in southern Africa, many for NGOs. He knew all sorts of people. One of the NGO CEOs came to Sydney, learned about the youth leadership work we were doing, and said, “We have a program in South Africa — you could come for a period if you're interested.” I said yes immediately.
So ultimately, the awkwardness of your ex-boyfriend being there with a new girlfriend became a gift.
It really was. At the time, it felt awful, but looking back, it was pivotal. It forced me into spaces where I formed deeper relationships with South Africans. During that period, the country was incredibly violent — the last gasps of the apartheid regime. People described it as “the last kick of a dying horse,” but that horse could kick hard.
You were right in the thick of it, and you had some incredibly close calls.
Yes — and I couldn’t tell my parents. I think your hitchhiking stories would have been the mild version compared to this. Even day-to-day movement was dangerous. I used combis — minibus taxis — and because I was skinny, they’d squeeze me between people. Women would look at me and ask, “Does your mother know you’re here?” And I’d think, “Not HERE here…”
¶ The Violent Landscape of Apartheid
And much of your early work was about bringing young black and white South Africans together?
Yes — we worked with high school students to break down stereotypes by creating shared experiences. Our hypothesis was: if they know someone personally, it’s harder to buy into racist narratives. We made them do physically hard work together — building, digging, creating — over a full weekend. Shared agony builds solidarity.
¶ Bridging Divides Through Community Work
That must have been incredibly rewarding.
It really was. And I just hope it wasn’t too paternalistic now that I look back, but it was the best we knew how to do at the time. Living and working in the townships, witnessing the violence but also the resilience, changed me deeply. I lost a lot of friends — young activists who were killed. People ask why I didn’t just leave when it got dangerous. But my friends didn’t have that choice. I had a passport; I could get out. They couldn’t. And I felt that if they were willing to show up for justice with such courage, I couldn’t in good conscience retreat to safety. The least I could do was bear witness — to say, “I was there, I saw what happened,” especially when governments gaslight communities. Sometimes bearing witness is all you can do.
¶ Lessons on Individualism vs. Collectivism
I want to talk about the way that experience shifted your sense of self — your identity.
I learned how deeply Western culture worships the individual. We grow up thinking in terms of “my rights, my freedom, my success.” But in South Africa, I learned the opposite worldview — that we are fundamentally collective beings. Watching what is happening globally now, especially in the U.S., I believe a lot of dysfunction comes from this unbalanced obsession with individual liberty at the expense of the collective good. It creates conditions for rampant capitalism, white supremacy, and systems that crush those already marginalised — especially Black women, who endure the intersection of racism, sexism, classism. And yet, those were the very people who welcomed me, protected me, nurtured me.
Your reflections remind me of a First Nations speaker at B Corp Assembly last week, who spoke about connection to place, nature, and community — and how Western cultures lost that. She asked: “At what point in your cultural history was your connection to community and place decolonised?” It’s confronting — but powerful.
It is powerful. And it’s true — we have taken a fork in the road where individual freedom trumps everything, even humanity. And if you elevate individual freedom above community, you create systems that exploit, devalue, and brutalise. You create billionaires extracting wealth from everyone else, believing somehow that money buys them safety or connection. It doesn’t.
And you weren’t just immersed as part of a project — you married into a Black African family. You adopted a child, had a child. You embraced the culture wholeheartedly.
Yes — and that full immersion wasn’t planned; it was just how I’m wired. Even as a kid, I was drawn to difference. In school, I learned sign language to speak with Deaf classmates. I was always curious about how others experienced the world. So when I moved to South Africa, learning languages — first Zulu, then later Sotho/Tswana when we moved near Soweto — was a natural extension of wanting to belong, to participate fully.
It really struck me in the book how fully you embraced the culture — there seemed to be nothing you held back. Did you feel like you were deliberately throwing yourself into it?
¶ Embracing Culture and Language
No — it wasn’t a conscious “throwing myself in.” I was simply there, and when you are there, you show up. What I was very aware of, though, was my white privilege — the knowledge that I could leave at any time because I had an Australian passport. My friends, young Black activists, didn’t have that option. Their lives were at risk daily, and they couldn’t step out of it. So I felt strongly that if they chose to show up in dangerous situations, then I needed to honour that by staying too. I could never match their stakes, but I could match their commitment to being present.
The other thing is that learning language became essential. When you learn language, you learn culture — you can’t separate the two. And I learned through kids in the township because kids don’t care if you sound ridiculous. They’ll teach you endlessly without judgement, and their vocabulary and games help you pick up rhythm and patterns. That’s how I learned Zulu, then later Sotho/Tswana when we moved across Soweto. Soweto was incredibly cosmopolitan in a linguistic sense — people would thread multiple languages into a single sentence. It was playful, expressive, beautiful.
And it really seems like you just went all in — nothing held back.
I suppose I did, but it didn’t feel extraordinary to me — it just felt like living. I’m a social person and an extrovert, so for me, learning languages was the only way to be part of things. People weren’t going to switch to English just to accommodate me — nor should they. They’d say, “Learn. We’re not adjusting for you just because you’re white.” And they were right. So I learned.
And funnily, even before South Africa, that immersion instinct was always part of me. In school, when we had a deaf class integrated with ours, I just naturally learned sign language so I could communicate. Difference always drew me in. So living across cultures in South Africa wasn’t “brave” — it was aligned with who I’ve always been.
¶ Navigating Identity and Belonging
And yet it also seems like such a courageous thing to do — as a young white woman in circumstances that were so volatile.
I never felt courageous. I just felt connected. And connection brings responsibility. What was difficult was carrying the knowledge of privilege — knowing I could leave when my friends couldn’t. That’s what made me choose to stay in situations that were frightening. Because if they couldn’t check out, neither would I. And that wasn’t heroism — it was reciprocity. It was relationship. It was Ubuntu in practice.
And yes, I lost a lot of friends. I’ve been to more funerals in my twenties than most people attend in a lifetime. People ask why I didn’t run. But my friends didn’t run. And sometimes the most important thing you can do is stand beside people and say, “I see you. I believe you. I witnessed this.” When states rewrite history and deny atrocities, witnesses matter.
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Fifteen years is a long time to spend in a country. Did you think it would be forever, or were you just living in the moment?
¶ Reflections on Life in South Africa
A bit of both. I wasn’t thinking about old age or retirement — but I was thinking a few years ahead. I was in it for the long haul, whatever that would look like. South Africa felt like home. When I visited Australia, it didn’t pull me back. South Africa was richer — politically, socially, emotionally. It made me feel incredibly alive.
When I eventually returned to Australia, that’s when I experienced culture shock — not on the way to South Africa, but on the way back. It took me about five years to readjust. Australia felt very vanilla, very surface-level, after the intensity and richness of life in South Africa. Everything there had been full-colour — politically, socially, emotionally. Coming home felt muted by comparison.
Beyond those five years of adapting, how did your experiences in South Africa change the way you viewed the world and your role in it?
¶ Material Richness vs. Life Quality
The biggest lesson was understanding how much is “enough” materially. In the townships, people often had very little, but their lives were rich — not because poverty is noble, but because they built richness from whatever they had. If they’d had more, they would have created even greater richness. But they weren’t obsessed with accumulation. When I came back and worked in corporate for ten years, I was surrounded by people who didn’t know how much was enough. They were constantly chasing the next rung, the next bonus, the next car. But they weren’t necessarily any happier.
As head of social innovation at Westpac, I loved finding ways to use the resources of a big corporation to create social change. That mattered far more to me than having a fancier title. And what was interesting was that senior executives — mostly men — would quietly come to me saying, “I’ve achieved everything I thought I wanted… but I don’t know what it means. Can you help me find something with purpose?” They admired each other’s status, but privately felt empty. Purpose is what they were searching for.
It reminded me of South Africa in another way — people there didn’t constantly compare themselves to others. They weren’t looking sideways at who had more. They were looking at how to live well with what they had. In corporate Australia, people were trapped in perpetual comparison. They thought the next promotion would be the thing that finally made them feel fulfilled. But the moment they reached it, they were already setting their sights on the next thing. Fulfilment never arrived.
Township life, by contrast, came alive after 5pm — when people returned from surviving the “white world mask” they had to wear all day. At home, the mask came off. Life burst open. People greeted neighbours across the street, joked, moved with a rhythm that felt like dancing, lived out loud. That authenticity was intoxicating. It was my favourite time of day — the golden hour when people reclaimed themselves. We don’t know that here. Or we forget it as we grow up.
¶ The Golden Hour of Community
We really don’t know it here — or we lose it. Alcohol is often the way people try to access that sense of ease or authenticity, but it’s false. It numbs, rather than opens.
Exactly. Alcohol numbs — it doesn’t connect. I’ve never been a drinker because I never felt the need for it. I enjoyed people as they were. I didn’t need loosening up. But so many people now rely on alcohol or other props to feel socially comfortable. And that’s because we’ve lost the skills of genuine community — being present with others, being comfortable with ourselves.
Let’s bring this back to present day. Can you share a little about what you’re doing now with Social Outcomes?
¶ Evolving Work Models for Today
Not surprisingly, I’m still working in social impact. After years in South Africa, I realised you burn out at the coalface — the community frontline. So I shifted into supporting organisations doing that work. By the time I left South Africa, I’d been working in organisational culture — helping departments and teams understand how culture works and how it can serve communities. In Australia, I picked that work back up. At heart, I think I’m a teacher. I’m happiest when I’m helping people develop — when organisations get clearer, better, more people-centred, more impactful.
So Social Outcomes focuses on articulating, measuring, and communicating impact — which the sector has really been maturing in over the past decade. And about six months ago, I launched a new for-purpose enterprise called Impact Culture Australia — the next step. Once organisations understand their impact and can articulate it, the next challenge is embedding it into culture: systems, processes, behaviours, governance, operations. Impact Culture Australia supports that deeper integration — helping organisations move from “we can describe our impact” to “we live our impact.”
So which organisations are you talking about? For-profit, not-for-profit…?
¶ Launching Impact Culture Australia
For-purpose organisations — I’m agnostic to legal structure. They might be for-profit financially, but they exist for purpose. Their reason for being is impact, not shareholder value. Corporate organisations that exist solely for shareholder primacy aren’t the target. But for-purpose enterprises, social enterprises, even government programs — anyone whose core driver is impact — that’s who this is for.
I wanted the tool to be accessible — not expensive — because I believe the sector is heading toward a moment where funders will ask not only, “Can you articulate your impact?” but “How embedded is it?” We’re already seeing organisations that measure and communicate impact receiving more funding. The next frontier is depth. Funders will increasingly ask, “Is this lived in your culture?” And that’s where this work prepares organisations for what’s coming.
And how do you do that — do you work one-on-one with organisations?
We work in multiple ways. There’s the self-assessment and tailored action plan. Organisations can work through much of that on their own. We also offer a one-day workshop where we teach the art of culture — how to understand cultural levers, how systems reinforce behaviours, how clarity flows through an organisation. And if organisations want deeper support, we or our development partners can step in.
And I imagine the very fact that it’s cultural work takes you right back into the territory of relationships with others — interconnectedness.
Yes. And if you could only do one thing in an organisation, it would be to bring clarity. Clarity about who we are, what we’re doing, what we’re aiming for, how things connect. Clarity is transformative — for people and for organisations. And it’s the heart of culture work. Culture breaks down when clarity breaks down. If you can embed clarity and consistency through systems, behaviours, expectations, decision-making — everything improves.
Absolutely. And so you're launching — you said soft launch at the end of this year?
Yes — soft launch in December, and then a public launch at the end of January when everyone’s back from leave.
And if anyone listening wants to find out more, how should they get in touch?
We’ll have a holding-page website up soon. In the meantime, just come through the Social Outcomes Contact Us page — that comes directly to me.
Wonderful. And how long has Impact Culture Australia been in development?
¶ Building Clarity in Organisations
It’s been years in development. I took last summer off to document everything — a first draft of the whole methodology. Since then I’ve been building it out, refining, expanding. But honestly, I’ve been sitting on this for a long time, waiting for the sector to be ready. Even my own team at Social Outcomes would say, “I want to get into culture work — can you teach us?” But five years ago, it felt too early. Now? The appetite is here. The maturity is here. It’s time.
So what actually drove you to create this new venture? Was it frustration? A gap you kept seeing?
Not frustration — inevitability. I always knew I would do it, but I was waiting for the right timing. In the last year or two, the sector has rapidly matured in impact practice — measurement, communication, strategy. And that means it’s now ready for the next step: embedding impact culturally. So my aspiration is simple: to strengthen the sector’s impact capability. If, when I retire, I can look back and say I played a small part in helping the sector mature culturally — that’s enough for me.
¶ Balancing Purpose and Profit
So Social Outcomes and Impact Culture Australia are both for-purpose but also for-profit organisations — you balance profit and purpose. How do you navigate the balancing act of the two?
The team is very carefully chosen — and like calls to like. When you get to a certain age, you realise you need to be paid enough to cover your life — to wash your own face, as they say — but you also want to be doing work that matters. Meaning becomes more important than maximising income. And everyone on our team has caring responsibilities of some kind — grandchildren, ageing parents, community roles. So flexibility is foundational.
No one’s going to get rich doing this kind of work — but the richness is elsewhere. It’s in the flexibility, the impact, the relationships, the meaning. And that’s what the next generation is seeking too. They want accountability, trust, flexibility, meaningful work. If you shift the model of how business operates — if you redesign work culture — you don’t have to wait until retirement to live the life you want. You can live it now. It costs you something financially, but it gives you everything in terms of richness.
And I imagine that strengthens relationships within the organisation as well.
It does — because you want to make it work. And it requires trust, communication, and coming back together when something slips. It’s like a marriage — it takes work, but the work is worth it because of what it creates. It’s also very Ubuntu — centring the needs of the community rather than purely the individual, sharing responsibility, balancing give and take. It’s not perfect, but as a model, it works.
I love that. I think there’s so much other organisations can learn from it. And you're right — younger generations are absolutely yearning for this model.
¶ The Future of Purpose-Driven Work
Exactly. They want accountability — “trust me, and I will deliver.” They want flexibility, meaningful work, balanced lives. Not millions. Enough. Richness over accumulation. That’s what this model provides. And if we create organisations based on trust, flexibility, and meaningful contribution, we will build healthier organisations — and healthier humans.
We’re going to have to close now — although I could talk to you for hours. Let me ask one final question: three years from now, where would you hope Social Outcomes and Impact Culture Australia will be?
Still deepening the impact capability of the sector. That’s all I really care about. If, by the time I retire, I can look back and see that the sector has shifted — even a little — and that I played a small role in that shift, that’s enough. That’s enough for me.
I love that. I love the clarity of knowing what “enough” is. Sandy, thank you so much for having this conversation with me. Your book is beautiful — even if the cover photo is not actually your child! For listeners: you can get “Holding Up the Sky” as an e-book and you may still find second-hand copies around. And we’ll link to your site in the show notes so people can connect directly with you.
Thank you, Carolyn. And yes — when the Impact Culture Australia site is live, we’ll let you know so you can include the link. And thank you for inviting me into this conversation.
It’s been an absolute pleasure. I’ll be at your launch — just tell me when and where.
Fantastic. Thanks so much.
Thanks, Sandy. Bye.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the For Love and Money podcast. If you'd like to take a deeper dive into the purpose movement, visit us at thecauseeffect.com.au. And remember — doing good is good for business. So if you're not doing good… then what are you doing?