Lucy Bloom
Mission-driven organisations rarely fail because the mission is wrong. They fail because leadership cannot turn purpose into operational discipline, raise the money, hold the team, and make hard calls when the cause runs into reality. The leaders who can do that are unusual, and the ones who can also explain how they did it are rarer still.
Lucy Bloom is an Australian author and former charity CEO who speaks to leaders on creative leadership, resilience and turning purpose into results, drawing on turnaround work at Hamlin Fistula Ethiopia and Sunrise Cambodia.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Lucy Bloom
- She has run mission-driven organisations through real turnarounds, including a $7 million fundraising programme at Hamlin Fistula Ethiopia and a model shift from orphanage to community development at Sunrise Cambodia. Her leadership material is drawn from those decisions, not from theory.
- She is one of a small number of Australian leaders to appear on the global Top 30 #SocialCEOs list, which gives her credibility with audiences that care about purpose translated into delivery.
- She combines a long commercial career, two decades running a boutique advertising agency, with senior charity leadership. That cross-sector range lets her speak credibly to both corporate and not-for-profit rooms.
- As a HarperCollins-published author and frequent contributor to ABC, Sky News, the Australian Financial Review and CEO Magazine, she has the public communication craft to hold a senior audience for a full keynote.
Biography highlights
- Founding CEO, Hamlin Fistula Ethiopia (Australia); raised over $7 million for hospitals and a midwifery school in Ethiopia.
- CEO, Sunrise Cambodia; led the transition from orphanage model to community-first programmes.
- First and only Australian named to the global Top 30 #SocialCEOs list.
- Two-time finalist, Telstra Business Woman of the Year Awards.
- Author of three books across three genres, including the HarperCollins memoir Get the Girls Out (2019).
- Speaking and writing platform spanning ABC, Sky News, Today, the Australian Financial Review, CEO Magazine and Australian Vogue.
Biography
Hamlin Fistula Ethiopia is a women’s health charity working in one of the most demanding operating environments in the world. It needed money, a credible Australian operation, and a leader who could hold both the cause and the donor relationships. Lucy Bloom was the founding CEO. Over a few years the Australian arm raised more than $7 million for hospitals and a midwifery school in Ethiopia.
She was then headhunted by Sunrise Cambodia, a children’s charity that needed to move away from the orphanage model toward community-first development. She led that transition. She is the first and only Australian on the global Top 30 #SocialCEOs list, a recognition that tracks operating substance rather than profile.
Before the charity sector she spent two decades building and running a boutique advertising agency. That commercial track record is why her material lands in corporate rooms as well as not-for-profit ones. Clients she has spoken to include Deloitte, Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, JP Morgan, Amazon Web Services, McDonald’s and Tourism Australia.
She is the author of three books across three genres, including the HarperCollins memoir Get the Girls Out, and a regular contributor and interviewee in Australian national media. The throughline across the work is straightforward: how leaders convert conviction into results when the resources are tight and the stakes are real.
Key speaking topics
- Creative leadership
- Values-based leadership and kindness at work
- Purpose-driven organisations
- Resilience and reinvention
- Storytelling and business communication
- Change leadership in mission-driven settings
Ideal for
- CEOs and executive teams in mission-driven and purpose-led organisations
- Boards and leadership teams in not-for-profits and foundations
- Corporate leadership audiences working on values, culture and purpose
- Conferences with a women-in-leadership or social-impact track
Audience outcomes
- A working account of how a charity CEO raises seven figures and rebuilds an operating model under constraint.
- Specific examples of values-based decisions made in real conditions, not as theory.
- A reframed view of creative leadership as a discipline that produces commercial and social results, not a personality trait.
- Practical communication craft from a published author and broadcast contributor.
Talks
A keynote on running mission-led organisations as serious operating businesses, drawn from Bloom’s CEO experience.
Key takeaways:
- How creative thinking translates into operating decisions in resource-constrained organisations.
- What it takes to raise significant capital for a cause without losing operating discipline.
- How to hold a team through structural change in a mission-driven setting.
A keynote arguing that kindness is a leadership capability with measurable organisational effects, not a soft cultural add-on.
Key takeaways:
- Where kindness shows up in hiring, performance and exit decisions.
- How to keep values intact when the organisation is under pressure.
- What recognition as a top global #SocialCEO required in practice.
A keynote on creative reinvention for leaders facing structural change.
Key takeaways:
- How a 20-year agency operator and charity CEO approaches reinvention as routine practice.
- The questions that surface assumptions before they become liabilities.
- How to set conditions for innovation without losing operating focus.