By GEORGIA WESTGARTH
DON’T build wells in places they won’t get used.
That was the message among many other uplifting and motivational anecdotes, speaker, Holly Ransom, entertained audiences with at the first Casey Cardinia Business Breakfast of 2016.
An esteemed social entrepreneur, lawyer, world’s youngest Rotary President, as well as the youngest person to be named in Australia’s ‘100 Most Influential Women’, Holly from West Australia has made her mark worldwide.
At just 21 years old she was approached by Rio Tinto Iron Ore boss Sam Walsh to help transform his business.
Now in her mid-twenties, Holly has travelled the world and sat down for what she calls ‘coffee chats’ with strangers she now calls mentors, and business minds she rubs shoulders with on a global scale.
The CEO at Emergent Solutions, Holly was a youth representative at last year’s G20, where she learnt a lot about seating arrangements.
“You don’t sit Russian President Vladimir Putin next to Barack Obama,” she told the crowd of Casey-Cardinia business owners.
With a big laugh, Holly turned the audience’s attention to how they could better implement changes to drive youth employment and engagement in their business as well as the not-for-profit sector.
Holly wants to see more intergenerational leadership occur through both generations working together and with zero government relations experience, Holly told of her fear at the G20 summit.
“I just wanted to put my head between my knees, I was having a panic attack at the worst time possible,” she said.
Holly used her age and experience to speak for youth all over the world.
She told the G20 of the scary figures we faced in youth employment.
“By 2025 three-quarters of the workforce is going to be under 30, and currently one in three young people finish the certificate or course they start,” she said.
And it’s trust in the economy, she says, that will break the worsening trend.
She said businesses needed to make powerful, early impacts on young people to keep them interested.
“This generation is highly technologically engaged and one per cent trust advertising,” Holly said.
Instead they trust peer to peer referencing sites and online blogs.
“This generation’s minds are already 57 per cent made up before they even drop an email or ask a question.”
So Holly put it to them and asked the Casey-Cardinia businesses present to take a look at their own online footprint and how it could be improved to a wider, younger audience.
Holly cemented her words with one undeniable image.
It was of the election of the Pope in 2005 compared to that of 2013.
The 2005 image shows a crowd of people watching the event: the 2015 image is a sea of smartphones.
Allegations have found the much talked about image to be false – however misleading or not, the image paints a picture of the smartphone pocket phenomenon.
And it’s tapping into those forums which Holly encouraged local businesses to do if they want to engage with young people at their own game.
