I come from a long line of women who never accepted “no” as the final answer.
My great-grandmother raised eleven children in rural Australia. My grandmother longed to study astrophysics at Adelaide University but was rejected, not for lack of brilliance but because of her gender. She topped the state exams in mathematics, yet she was offered medicine instead and
told to “come back when she was older.” She never returned. Life carried her elsewhere, and she married my grandfather, a man ahead of his time who believed possibility should never be limited by gender.
Together, they raised five pioneering children. One developed an extraction process from native desert plants that laid the foundation for early global sunscreen. My mother became a rural legend, a doctor who cared for patients in a remote part of Australia, and flew a Tiger Moth for fun in her spare time.
From them, I inherited more than DNA. I inherited a way of being:
That curiosity opens doors.
That resourcefulness turns obstacles into pathways.
That there is always another way.
These lessons began on the farm where I grew up. The wide skies and long silences taught me to listen. Boarding school taught me independence and adaptability. Becoming an exchange student showed me how deeply culture shapes who we are and how much there is to gain when we lean into difference.
I began to see that brilliance exists everywhere, irrespective of where you are born, the language you speak, or the culture you inherit.
Those insights carried into my teaching career. In the early 1990s, when the Australian government introduced the Languages Other Than English initiative, I was tasked with bringing Spanish to a rural school more than 800 kilometres from the nearest Hispanic influence. The resources I was given were irrelevant to my students’ world. If I had followed them, I would have lost the class, and quite frankly, myself!
So, I co-created something new with my students. Together, we built lessons that made sense to them, drawing connections between their rural realities and global ideas. Spanish thrived in that school for 30 years, influencing state policy and trickling into the national curriculum.
That became my quiet mantra: there is always more than one way to do anything.
Years later, when my body began to fail me — my eyesight, hearing, even swallowing — I had to lead myself again. Teaching full time was no longer possible, and I faced the unsettling question: what now?
So, I followed my curiosity.
I immersed myself in the world of digital marketing, exploring organic visibility, content strategy, and the ways people connect online. As my body healed and my energy returned, my desire to create something meaningful grew stronger. That is how Global QI was born.
I envisioned a space where everyone could be seen, regardless of budget, geography, or status. A weekly online shopping catalogue where clickable ads lead directly to vendors’ chosen destinations. A place where charities sit alongside innovators, where visibility is not bought but shared.
Global QI stands on two principles:
Collective amplification. When one business shares the catalogue, everyone benefits. A boutique in Byron Bay might find a customer in Berlin. A family-owned farm in outback Australia might reach a retailer in Toronto.
Pride in participation. There is deep satisfaction in knowing that by sharing someone else’s brilliance, you are helping to build their dream while building your own.
In just six months, Global QI has grown from monthly to weekly editions. And this is only the beginning.
Because this is not just about products or sales. It is about creating access. It is about exchanging ideas. It is about recognising the brilliance in every corner of the globe.
My daughters now carry this pioneering spirit forward. One works remotely while travelling the world when she feels like it, living a life I could only dream of at her age. Online business was barely an idea when I was her age; now it is her passport.
This is what I want for everyone: the freedom to live your wildest dream, even when it defies convention, even when it makes no sense to anyone else.
If I have learned anything from the women before me, from the farm I grew up on, from the classrooms I taught in, and from the cultures I explored, it is this:
There is always another way.
Global QI is mine.
What will yours be?
