Bridging two worlds

Her chosen mission in life is bridging divides to battle global inequality and she has traversed this ambitious path for 26 years with her international NGO, the Adara Group. Audette Exel AO MAICD is the founder and chair of Adara and she sits on the Westpac board. Exel is this week’s guest on our AICD podcast Boardroom Conversations. Listen to the podcast here.

More than 25 years ago, self-confessed human rights activist Exel decided to use her high-level law and banking experience to help people in extreme poverty.

She admits the journey has not been easy but says she has no regrets. “It's been a bit of a journey of joy and tears. But I'm proud to have done the work, and I'm proud to work with the people that I do as a result,” she told Boardroom Conversations.

As ex-chair of the Bermuda Stock Exchange and former managing director of the Bermuda Commercial Bank, Exel was well-placed to set up and steer an NFP financially through a rocky road of challenges and ensure it had funding.

“We are a very early example of social entrepreneurship in action. We're now quite a significant international non-government organisation (INGO) and very well known in our areas of expertise, in very remote places. And we're also one of the leading independent corporate advice businesses in Australia.”

A unique model

Her purpose in setting up the NFP was to “manifest this fundamental belief I have that if we want to effect change in our world, one way to do it is to bridge the divide.

“Adara’s tagline is ‘We bridge worlds’. Setting up Adara and deciding to work with, on the one hand, Wall Street investment banking and on the other hand, people in extreme poverty, in very remote places, was a way to manifest my belief that you can bring those two worlds together. So, it was a new model.”

Adara works with partners, governments and communities to bring quality health and education services to people living in some of the world’s most remote places. It designs and scales programs across maternal, newborn and child health and remote community development. 

Adara’s development work is funded by two “for purpose” businesses, Adara Partners and Adara Advisors. The businesses have donated more than $25 million to Adara Development since 1998. Adara Partners is a leading boutique corporate advisory firm. It has a panel of senior business leaders including David Gonski AO FAICDLife and Ilana Atlas AO FAICD. The panel work pro bono and are assisted by Adara’s team of corporate advisory professionals.

The INGO has a series of boards in Nepal, Uganda, Australia, Bermuda, the UK and the US. Exel is chair on all those boards. “And it's interesting, they love to work as one giant global board.”

She said Adara experienced many branding challenges on the development side, in international development work, which is enormously complex and difficult. “I came to it with the hubris and ignorance that belonged to me at 35, and woke up in the middle of various disasters and realised I had no idea what I was doing. And that I needed to hire people who are absolutely expert in complexity, and the business.”

Mistakes along the way included assumptions made from a western business perspective, which was not necessarily in tune with the needs of vulnerable people.

“It took me a while to wake up and realise, actually, not only did I know nothing, but it's genuinely dangerous to interfere in the lives of vulnerable people when you know nothing. So, there was a series of mistakes that I made by rushing, light-hearted ones like the first thousand latrines we ever threw out, because I was desperate to work on health and sanitation. Nine hundred and seventy of them became goat sheds.”

However, the entity has endured. “Mandate by mandate, we're generating revenue for our work with people in poverty. But we're also showcasing pro bono investment banking, if you like, and how you can use the skills of the market to effect social change.  So, the whole thing is wrapped up in a whole lot of governance.”

Adara also has some “incredible donor supporters” who have backed the entity for a whole quarter of a century. “So an unusual model, an unusual funding structure. But if you like, a foot in the camps of some of the most privileged people on the planet and some of the most marginalised, and so it makes for a wonderful, complex, but wonderful life.”

Philanthropy is not just something you do when you go home at the end of the day, adds Exel. “Running a business with purpose or leading a life with purpose is a 24/seven occupation. And it's just so much fun and so enriching. Hard sometimes, but fabulous.”