Ben is a Wiradjuri man born and raised on the Gadigal and Wangal Lands now known as Sydney’s inner west. Brought up to be proud of his family’s background and deeply aware of the value of his culture and identity. Ben, although reserved in his persona, brings a strong voice and a huge energy level to Shared Path’s endeavours.
Ben brings a vast professional expertise and a strong personal story to Shared Path, from his days as a professional athlete, coaching and facilitating individual and team performance in the corporate setting, development of athletes to achieve their goals, education and design and implementation of innovative health and education programs. From high performance to ground breaking innovative health programs Ben is aware of the critical barriers that exist and how important it is to create the right environment for sustainable change. Change has been characterised in a negative way but when viewed through the Indigenous Success model change is an opportunity to reflect, inspire and grow.
Ben is passionate about enabling people to have the confidence in their abilities to take on opportunities in their lives and make the most out of them. This is why he cofounded Shared Path with Sean, so that through collaboration and his experience, skills, knowledge and network Shared Path could free up other Indigenous community members to act on their opportunities to realise their business projects and secure financial freedom.
Sean is a Birra Gubba and Kabi Kabi descendent who was born and raised on the lands of the Gureng Gureng in Bundaberg. Growing up in country Queensland in the late 1960s, through the 1970s and 1980s was an interesting experience for a light-skinned Indigenous person.
In the early days Sean thought he was going to play cricket for Australia, just like most other kids. In the end though, he'd managed to play cricket in England on two occasions - once on the 1988 Australian Aboriginal Cricket Tour, and the following year for a local English team. Sean also had a long high level cricket career in both Brisbane and Sydney. These experiences have enabled Sean to develop effective communication and engagement skills across an extremely broad spectrum of people and cultures
Work was easy to find, resulting in many jobs across different sectors such as construction, mining, hospitality, primary agriculture, health, corporate, Aboriginal Community Controlled Health, business and start ups, to technology. But Sean has always had a passion for health after living amogst many close relatives and friends who were cut down in their prime by chronic disease.
Since the early 2000s Sean has been working in Indigenous Public Health, more recently specialising in tobacco resistance. Through this work he's realised the importance of helping people to find their own solutions by looking deeper into the problems they confront. It is through this vast experience of public health that Sean has co-founded Shared Path to be the vehicle to help people take more control over all aspects of their life through developing their own ideas into sustainable businesses.