Most lists of inspiring people contain the billionaires, or world-wide success stories of people who have decoyed 20-30-40 years of service towards their field.  While I also find the work they've done inspiring, I sometimes find it inaccessible.  Richard Branson spends 9-10 months completely immersing himself in a new industry and how the Virgin brand can enter the market.  While I get that is conceptually possible; without a staff of 35 in Virgin HQ, Richard Branson's deep Rolodex, an established brand such as Virgin, the billions in backing and most importantly, the 40-years of hardcore entrepreneurial experience Richard Branson has, I wouldn't know where to start with disrupting an established international industry.

So while I hold a huge candle to all the greats who have achieved so much, I've also constantly striven to find inspiring people who I can emulate now, my role models.

Role models are so important because they help guide you to make good choices, and so having good role models is paramount.  A good role model is someone who has taken the route you're travelling on before, and you admire and like the way they've come out the other side.  Just by talking to them and telling them where you're at, they can offer invaluable insight.  As well as that though, as they (or their projects) are only a few years older than yourself (in terms of experience), it makes it easier to look at what they've achieved and imitate them with your own twist.

Victoria Lennox:  In 2008 founded NACUE, which has 40,000 members in the UK.  Expanding internationally now through ICUE.  VIctoria won the Queen's Award for Enterprise in 2011.  She exited NACUE after only 1 year, and they now have 15 full-time staff!
Reason:  Victoria has grown an international non-profit with heaps of members, with paid staff and she has successfully exited.

Danny Almagor:  Received a Churchill Fellowship in 2004 and then subsequently founded the Australian Division of Engineers Without Borders, which is very well known and respected amongst engineering circles in Australia.  Successfully exited in 2010 after growing to 14 staff.
Reason:  He founded an engineering-based organisation in Australia, making his journey a lot closer to home for me.

Mai-Li Hammergren:  Founded MuteWatch 3 years ago in 2008 and has since gone on to sell 10,000 MuteWatches around the world.
Reason:  She founded a company that manufactures something in the real world, which required her to design the product, manufacture, mass-manufacture in Taiwan, test, tweak, launch, promote, market and sell.  Inspiring!

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs (when Steve Jobs was my age):  Founded Apple Computer and sold 200 units through the Byte Shop over 16 months.  The success of the Apple 1 meant that they got $250,000 of funding, and the rest is history!
Reasons:  As a wannabe-tech-entrepreneur, the condensed story of their beginning is a fairytale.

All 4 stories have a different angle for me:
Victoria:  How to grow your non-profit amazingly quickly.
Danny:  How to grow an engineering non-profit in Australia.
Mai-Li:  How to grow an international manufacturing company in today's day and age
The Steves':  What's possible if it all goes well.

I think it's really important to have role models that have achieved what you want to achieve in the next few years because it gives you something to model off and lets you know that what you want to achieve is possible.

I'm very fortunate in that I get to talk to my role models (except for the Steves).  Victoria Lennox is on the Robogals Global Advisory Board, Danny Almagor is just a tram ride away, and Mai-Li and I are both part of the Sandbox Network.

Finally, Vic, Danny and Mai-Li have all achieved their goals with integrity, grace and lots of hard work, all qualities which I admire.

YAN was an amazing experience.  I believe the more you put into something, the more you get out.  And so I put in as much of me as I could, and I had an amazing time!

YAN aims to be an intersection between mentoring the entrepreneur and mentoring the project.  And it achieves just that.  I have so many new ideas and activities I want to do with the Robogals Global team now that I'm scheduling a weekend away for us all just so I can divulge and teach my team the things I've learnt.

On a personal level, through activities we did and conversations I had during the week, I am a lot more attuned to myself - what I truly and authentically enjoy doing and how I will reach some goals by the end of next year that just weren't probable the week before.

YAN is a great program.  However, getting all these results isn't limited to people who go to YAN.  You can get these results by authentically looking at your life and asking tough questions, or through going to other programs.

I think the most important thing is to bring active listening to everything you do and you will learn heaps.

The other distinguished thing about the YAN bunch is they are all amazing individuals.  One is a councillor for their region, one topped their year level at University, people who work around the Globe for their causes, have projects enforced by the Clinton Global Initiative or have even been recognised by Barack Obama himself!

I feel very privileged to have been given the opportunity to spend a week with this amazing group of people, and I encourage all of you to apply to be a part of next year's cohort!

We spoke about our succession plans today.  We did a great activity:  if I were to leave Robogals on November 6, one month from now, what would I spend my next month doing?

We had 2 minutes.

I think it's a really good activity to try because organisations cannot survive on a few key individuals alone.  They need a great system in order to thrive.

Two Saturdays ago, I was in Adelaide taking a late-night stroll by the beautiful, still, River Torrens with 3 member of my Robogals Global team - Mun-Xin, Shu Jie and Makiko.

Eventually, our conversation lead to the organisation and how we could motivate our chapters to achieve more in terms of number of girls taught.

The Melbourne chapter of 2010~2011 produced amazing work, having taught 279 girls in the past year, with more visits planned for the remainder of the year.  We spoke about our past experiences volunteering with the Melbourne chapter and our observations about their team.

The Robogals Rural and Regional (RRR) programme achieves amazing results having already taught 801 girls since it began five months ago - again with more visits schedules by the end of the year.  We spoke about the key drivers that produced that result.

The Melbourne chapter of 2009~2010 was the best-achieving Robogals chapter ever, in my opinion.  They taught 206 girls, organised a community event "The Robogals Science and Engineering Expo" that had major media coverage, and held multiple social events for their volunteers to get to know each other and form a community.  We examined the key drivers of success there too.

Two-and-a-half hours after our walk began, and two hours after we first started talking about the topic, having brainstormed solutions as vast as changing the structure of the roles, putting in different incentive systems and restructuring the entire organisation, we weren't finding any practical solutions.

I wasn't going to let our hours of discussion not produce a solid action though, so in the last 15-minutes, we formulated a very simple solution where different roles in the committee are accountable for different statistics; there are 4 key statistics in the committee and our mentoring conversations will focus only on these 4 key areas.

We implemented the structure the next day, and I am excited by the fruits of our discussion.

Today, I learnt why our method of discussion worked.  Rather than focussing on the negatives:  how do we patch up this problem here and there so everything runs smoothly, we focussed on the positives:  what made this project successful and how can we replicate it everywhere with only a few, small, behavioural changes.

It's about looking for which works, not what doesn't work - the solution is already in the community.

We had the chance to visit one of the previous YAN Fellow's projects in Mexico.

I chose to visit "Deport-es para Compartir" (or "Sports to Share") because I was intrigued by its connection to the United Nation's 8 Development Millennium Goals.  Deport-es para Compartir aims to teach kids good morals and values through the UN Millennium Development Goals by engaging them in fun games and sporting activities.  It targets children and youth, aged 6 to 14.  It was founded in 2007 by Dina Buchbinder Auron, who was part of the 2009 YAN Fellowship and then joined the UVM Fellowship (the national version of YAN in Mexico) the year after in 2010.

We drove to their offices where we were introduced to the staff, then we walked across the street to a school they were working with.  Each of us introduced ourselves, where we were from, our projects, and how we greet each other in our respective countries to the kids.  The kids absolutely loved it!  Then we went outside, formed a huge circle, and played partner (the kids and us all paired up together to play) duck-duck-goose, but with a water bottle with water where you drip water onto everyone's head as you pass them.  Then we did some Q & A's about different ways you could use different objects (like buckets, hats, etc.), and before I knew it, it was over, and we returned to the Deport-es para Compartir office across the street for a delicious Mexican lunch, another presentation, more introductions and a free shirt.  A video of the day was made by Deport-es para Compartir.  It's funny how what I remember about the day isn't exactly what's shown on the video.  :)  (The bit where we all have our eyes closed and our hands in funny positions is when we were told to imagine ourselves getting on a plane, flying the plane through turbulence, etc., and then landing in an unknown destination, which was described to us, and which we had to guess.  We played the game twice, once in the classroom and once outside.  It's a game the kids play to experience the world!)

So that's the story, but here's what I love about the organisation.

1.  They have 36 staff, they're 4 years old and over 32,000 kids have taken part in their programme.  32,000!  Amazing!

2.  They have 2 Fulbright Scholars who will spend the year there in order to do further research on the programme and ensure the programme is effective in achieving its goals.

3.  The founder is just so passionate about her project and has done a YAN Fellowship, followed by the UVM program (the national version of YAN in Mexico), the year after in order to work on creating the best project she could.

4.  The projects aims to reach 6,000,000 children by 2015.

Her commitment, passion and hard work for the project has led to these amazing results.  It was so inspiring to see what's possible.