Carmen Garcia is the CEO and Founder of national award-winning diversity and inclusion certified social enterprise, Community Corporate. Operating in the niche space of corporate social responsibility, they specialise in recruitment with a social conscience and corporate volunteering. 

In 2021, Community Corporate won National Social Enterprise of the Year at the Australian Small Business Champions Awards. Fondly known by her peers as the Diversity and Inclusion Warrior, Carmen is a well-regarded social entrepreneur driven to make a profound economic and social impact through work. Based in Adelaide the social enterprise operates nationally. 

In 2021 Carmen received the Women in Innovation Award for Social Impact and was listed as one of the Top 50 Small Business Leaders in Australia by Inside Business. In 2020, she received an Australia Day Commendation Award for Inspiring SA Women, was also jointly awarded the Governor’s Multicultural Award for Individual Outstanding Achievement and her business was listed as one of SA’s Fast Mover companies in 2020. She is also an inaugural winner of the 40 Under 40 Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs in SA

This episode was so inspiring, as we learnt about some of the amazing work Carmen and the team at Community Corporate are doing, making a profound social impact on the community. 

Her passion to bridge the gap for Refugee and Migrant people helping to secure them work in corporate Australia is prevalent through this conversation. Statistics such as on 6% of refugees have worked after 6 months being in Australia, and still, only 25% after 2 years is a damming statistic that Carmen is feverishly trying to fix. 

She shares some great insights for corporate leaders in how to improve their social impact and diversity and inclusion within their organisations and how we can recognise our unconscious bias and reprogram our brains. 

We also discuss the challenges of being an entrepreneur and dive into her experiences along the way.

Books  mentioned in this episode:

• Social Impact Investing -  An Australian Perspective - By Stewart Jones, Helena de Anstiss, Carmen Garcia

Where to find  Carmen Garcia

• LinkedIn
• carmen@communitycorporate.com.au 

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