About Shawn

Jingeri.

When I was younger, I used to sit on the mountain where I lived and listen, and I always felt like the mountain was talking to me. Later in life I would learn the cultural significance of listening to Country, and the meaning of Dhungai, a Yugambeh word for deep listening and connection, taught to me by an uncle. 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 and bringing people together. I have never once felt I was lacking a purpose, and that feeling has never left me.

Shawn Andrews delivering the closing address at the Developing Sustainable Communities Conference, Vancouver, 2017

Closing address, Developing Sustainable Communities Conference, Vancouver, 2017.

Where I'm from. What I do.

I am a Mununjali and Migunberri man of the Yugambeh language group, on my father's side, and my Country is in South East Queensland. I have lived most of my adult life in Naarm, Melbourne, on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. Sovereignty was never ceded, and 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, and the rooms I built taught me how to hold the ones I'm asked into now. The MC work, the keynotes and 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, whether that's governance reform or an on-Country circle. 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, and it always starts with listening first. I have keynoted at sustainability, energy, leadership and education conferences, and 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 30 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, and 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, and 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, because 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, and 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, we are strong, and we 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 and 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, and on bringing them together to heal. That is the work, and it is what I am taking forward now through coaching, the Masterclass, the writing, and everything else we build under Be BRAVE Feel SAFE.

Closed the Developing Sustainable Communities Conference in Vancouver, 2017

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

Jingeri.

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.