A super fossil-free future
Kirstin Hunter, managing director at Future Super and winner of Money Management and Super Review’s Women in Financial Services award for Superannuation Executive of the Year, is not afraid to shake up the system to create a better world while improving wealth.
For her and the team at Future Super, winning the award was a great acknowledgement of the work they were doing to use the financial system to build a future free from climate change and inequality.
Future Super is Australia’s first 100% fossil-free superannuation fund and Hunter centres her life around ethics: she’s a strong advocate for veganism, gender pay equality, the environment and corporate behaviour.
During the recent climate strikes, the firm led a coalition of businesses called the ‘not business as usual alliance’, which saw over 3,000 businesses across Australia and New Zealand participate.
It started as a request from inside their team to join the strike but led to them calling on other businesses to close their door for the day to take action.
“We called on other businesses to take the same action and made it so that employees didn’t have to choose between a pay cheque and the planet,” Hunter said.
“As a result of that, between 100,000-150,000 employees were able to take time out of work on 20 September and attend the climate strikes across Australia.”
She said the best piece of career advice she had been given was to think about “who your personal ‘board of directors’ are”.
“These are the people who advise you on your career direction, in a similar way to a board of directors would advise a company,” Hunter said.
Once you make it to the top, it was important to remember you started at the bottom and to reciprocate the same help.
“Pay it forward with generosity, all of us who have been successful in our careers, particularly in financial services have done so with the benefit of the advice of our mentors and people who’ve come before us,” Hunter said.
“As leaders, particularly as female leaders, it’s incumbent on us to pay forward that advice and to help build up the next generation of leaders.”
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