Hi, I'm Jayne.
I grew up in Eltham, on the outer edge of Melbourne, and I'm still part of the community here. I run a not-for-profit called Imagine Re-Evolution and a small live cohort called The Joy Project. I speak, I mentor, and I spend a lot of time in rooms with people trying to work out who they want to be next.
I'm going to tell you how I got here, because I think it matters.
The long version
Straight out of school I studied disability work. I did my placement at Kew Cottages, just after the fires there. It was formative and it was hard, and part-way through I noticed something in myself that scared me a little. I was starting to think institutionally. I could feel a kind of thinking settle in that I didn't want to keep. So I stepped away, deliberately, and went and studied accounting while working full-time. Not because I loved accounting, but because I wanted to prove to myself I could hold a completely different shape.
I started in accounts departments and moved up quickly. It turned out that leading teams and holding people came naturally to me. Over the years I ended up as a project manager, running projects globally. On paper it was a great career. In reality, I was slowly noticing that the work didn't feed the part of me that had gone to Kew Cottages in the first place.
Then I became a Mum.
Everything shifted. Not in a curated way. In a this-doesn't-fit-me-anymore way. Corporate life became less and less compelling, and I started volunteering, doing community engagement, showing up in rooms where people were trying to make things better. I noticed something: I loved bringing people together for a common cause. It gave me purpose in a way nothing else had.
One night, standing on the staircase at home, I said out loud to my husband: should I start something?
He said: you absolutely should.
And that's how Imagine Re-Evolution began.
I founded it in 2022, after watching what COVID had left behind in our community. Young people who couldn't quite reconnect to school. Teachers finding it harder and harder to engage them. Older people quietly lonely. And, weirdly but really, piles of perfectly good stuff sitting on the roadside. All of it, in different ways, looking for purpose.
Imagine was born to show that everyone and everything has purpose. We work with young people aged 12 to 25 in intergenerational mentorship programs, and we run a creative upcycling initiative called reePURPOSE that transforms donated materials into something new. The two things sound different but they're the same idea. Don't throw it away. Don't count it out. Don't decide too early what it's worth.
Why The Joy Project exists
I built The Joy Project because I kept noticing something in two very different rooms.
At the Imagine drop-off, I'd watch the mums pull up with their kids and I could see the overwhelm on them, sometimes visibly. In a completely different setting, at business networking meetings, I was hearing the same thing from the women there. They were raising kids and looking after ageing parents and running homes and owning businesses and being all-round kick-ass, and there was no room left for anything that brought them joy.
I heard it again and again. And I realised I was one of them.
The Joy Project is my answer to that. It's a small, live cohort where women come home to themselves through making, gathering, laughter, and the quiet work of remembering. It's not therapy. It's not a wellness performance. It's a practice.
What I actually believe
That love and connection are the antidote to just about everything.
That mistakes are real. That we all have fears and insecurities and love hard and work hard and play hard, and life is not perfect, but being comfortable in the uncomfortable is where the actual growth lives.
That meeting people where they're at, without expectation, with respect for them and for the space between us, is how you engage with anyone on any level.
That authenticity is not a strategy. It's just showing up.
That kindness is strength in action, not softness.
That everyone carries their own gift, and my job is to hold the space long enough for them to remember it.
And this one, most importantly: this is not toxic positivity. Life can be hard AND filled with lessons and love, at the same time, in the same breath. I don't do the version of this work that tells you to think your way into being fine. I do the version that says: yes, that's hard, and you're still here, and here's the next small thing.
The bit I'm honest about
I've experienced burnout. I've been overwhelmed. I've made so many mistakes I stopped counting. I've missed opportunities. I have full-blown imposter syndrome that still shows up regularly.
And I'm still here. I've lived to tell the tale. And I'm still thriving, despite it.
I say this because the reason my voice lands, when it lands, is that it's been earned. Not from reading books about resilience, but from actually doing the hard bits and coming out the other side with something to say about it. If you're reading this and something in you is thinking she can't really understand what I'm carrying, I probably can. And even if I can't, I'll meet you where you are.
What I'm doing right now
I'm the CEO and founder of Imagine Re-Evolution, a youth-led not-for-profit in Melbourne's north-east. It's the bigger context for everything.
I run The Joy Project, a live in-person cohort in Eltham for women ready to reconnect with joy. Small on purpose. Six women, six weeks.
I speak at events, in schools, in corporate rooms, on panels. On joy, on belonging, on love-based leadership, on building something from nothing.
I mentor one-on-one, quietly, with a lot of listening.
And I write, when I have something worth saying and not before.
The small things
My family are everything to me. I love them all with everything I have, AND I am determined to have something that fulfils my purpose. Both things are true, and I refuse to hide one to sound better at the other.
I love music, I love laughter, and I love coffee.
I've built everything from Eltham because I already knew the streets, the people, and the shape of the Village. That was half the job done.
If you're still reading
Then something in this landed. And if there's a version of us working together, a cohort, a speaking invitation, a mentoring conversation, a coffee, I'd love to hear from you.
No formality. Just a note.
With love,
Jayne x