About Shawn

Jingeri. (Hello)

When I was younger, I used to sit on mountain where I lived and listen. I always felt like the mountain was talking to me. Later in life I would learn the cultural signifcance of listening to country and the meaning of Dhungai. In my culture, the land talks through you, and the ancestors talk through the land. The old people said the ancestors were telling me, through that mountain, where I would end up. Helping people. Working on big problems. Bringing people together. I have never once felt I was lacking a purpose. That feeling has never left me.

Shawn Andrews with his daughters wearing Always Was Always Will Be shirts, MCing Survival Day

MC, Survival Day · With my girls

Where I'm from. What I do.

I am a Mununjali and Migunberri man of the Yugambeh language group, on my father's side. My Country is in South East Queensland. I have lived most of my adult life in Narrm, Melbourne, on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. Sovereignty was never ceded. That is not a phrase I say lightly. It is a fact I work inside every day.

Facilitation and business development are what I'm known for. The rooms I built taught me how to hold the ones I'm asked into now. The MC work, the keynotes, the coaching all grew out of that. People bring me in when a conversation has broken down, or when one has to happen and nobody knows how to start it. Governance reform. On-Country circles. The work is the same every time: respectful and honest at once, because anything less than both does not hold.

I have spent a lot of years learning how to do that well. I listen first. I have keynoted at sustainability, energy, leadership, and education conferences. I have represented First Nations business internationally, including at APEC. I am regularly brought in to talk through the structures and processes that build better teams, better organisations, and genuine First Nations engagement. The kind that goes past a statement on a website and changes how a place actually works.

What I have built

What I have built.

I have always been an entrepreneur. As a kid I ran a truck-washing business and employed the younger brothers of my best friends, paid in pies and cans of Coke, because that is what they wanted. The instinct never went away: see a thing that needs doing, build something around it, bring other people in.

Some of what I built worked. I co-founded DHUWA Coffee, the first Indigenous-owned coffee brand stocked in a major Australian supermarket. During COVID I worked across a number of supply businesses we built quickly to meet the need of the pandemic. We delivered 120 tonnes of hand sanitiser to Woolworths. I bought manufacturing facilities and worked across import and export. I built Indigicate, an Indigenous-owned outdoor education company that took thousands of young people onto Country and reached more than 60,000 people across six countries before it closed. I led the development of Victoria's First Peoples Renewable Energy Strategy inside government. I have helped develop children's conferences in Switzerland and led delegations of Aboriginal young people to international children's rights spaces.

Some of what I built failed. I am honest about that, because the building and the rebuilding are the same skill, and pretending otherwise would be a lie. I am a reformed gambling addict. Earlier in my life, that addiction pulled apart businesses that had real promise. It took me four years of working on myself to come out the other side. I started again with twenty dollars. I speak about this publicly, and on purpose. If we want great leaders, we have to be willing to be vulnerable. I talk openly about being strongest when you are at your weakest, because I have had to live it, not just say it.

What I believe

What I believe.

I talk about the hard things, the ones that need to change. Where I have succeeded, where I have failed, and what the failure taught me. Pretending a hard thing isn't there has never once made it smaller. I am a proud girl dad and a feminist, and I don't leave misogyny and toxic masculinity for women to carry. I was successful on paper long before I felt safe in myself. Closing that gap, in people and in the organisations they lead, is most of my work now.

Buneen Consulting

Cultural safety, truth-telling, governance, and strategic facilitation.

Buneen Employment

Job pathways, workplace change, and long-term support.

Dreaming Futures

Healing and cultural reconnection for Aboriginal children in care.

In practice

The work.

My approach is grounded in First Nations ways of working, and it should be. We are talented, strong, and carry a living culture. The deficit story told about us for generations was never true. It was a framing, repeated until people forgot it was a choice. My work helps people see past it, then do something with what they see. Hard conversations are not won by the loudest or cleverest person in the room. They are built on listening, on working alongside people, on bringing them together to heal. That is the work, and it is what I am taking forward now: coaching, leadership and communication training, the writing, and everything we build under Be BRAVE Feel SAFE.

Bunurong Land Council Aboriginal Corporation — Strategic Vision Day, April 2025

Self-Determination in Education Conference — Be BRAVE Feel SAFE workshop with 70+ Koorie Education Support Officers, 2024

DEECA — Principal Policy Advisor, First Peoples' Energy team. Led the First Peoples Renewable Energy Strategy

VPSC Executive Coaching Panel — Vendor No. 557290, active

NAIDOC Victoria Ball — MC; multiple NAIDOC and Survival Day events

Closed the Developing Sustainable Communities Conference in Vancouver, 2017

Wanbil Lee Prize for Ethical Leaders in Business, AGSM UNSW, 2021

Harvard Business School — Investing in Sustainable Communities, 2022

MBA Executive, AGSM UNSW, 2024

Jingeri. (Hello)

Where I'm from. What I do.

What I have built.

Moments from the work.

What I believe.

The work.

Let's have the conversation you've been circling.