Three months into her new job as chief executive of World Vision Australia, Claire Rogers talks to DAVID ADAMS about her passion for helping to bring about lasting change among some of the world’s poorest communities…
Taking up the helm at World Vision Australia as its new chief executive has been a change of direction for Claire Rogers. But it’s one that has enabled her to explore her passion to make a difference in the world in new ways.
“My calling…has been to be a Christian leader in a secular workplace, and that’s what I thought God had called me to do,” says the 50-year-old who took up her new role last November, having most recently worked as head of ANZ Australia’s digital banking as well as, for eight years until last April, chairing the board of Ridley Theological College in Melbourne.
TREASURED MEETING: Claire Rogers with her sponsor child Lwin during her visit to Myanmar last November. PICTURE: World Vision Australia.
“I’m immensely inspired and encouraged by the opportunity or the privilege to take this role and reach the hearts of Australians to be generous and having the will to give every child in the world life in all its fullness. It’s exciting every day I come to work.”
“And so when this opportunity came along, it was like ‘Oh, I need to think about that’. But as I worked through it, [I realised] it had always been weighing on my heart that I actually wasn’t doing a whole lot for people in a poverty context – other than supporting World Vision and other organisations. But this really is quite an exciting blend…of my corporate experience and the ability to really make a significant difference in the world.”
Ms Rogers, who had just clocked up 90 days in the new role when she spoke to Sight recently, says one of the key factors in her decision was the observation that World Vision has “the capacity and the brand recognition and the reputation to speak to the hearts of every Australian”.
“So it was really about reframing [my] mission and I’m immensely inspired and encouraged by the opportunity or the privilege to take this role and reach the hearts of Australians to be generous and having the will to give every child in the world life in all its fullness. It’s exciting every day I come to work.”
To ensure she was well-equipped to speak about World Vision’s work in the field, one of the first things Ms Rogers did after stepping into the role was to spend four days in Myanmar where she saw firsthand examples of the lasting difference the organisation’s work makes.
“My favorite example from the trip was these women who were running a savings and loans group for their community and they proudly showed me their box where they keep all their records…[These are] elderly women from their community stepping up into a leadership role. You could see the immense pride on their faces that they were playing this role…That’s sustainable because they are part of that community – they’re not an import of aid or support that’s going to go away at some point. They are owning it…”
Another example was a farmer she met who was shown how to improvement production techniques – such as using organic fertiliser and rotating crops – to improve his yield. “So he was able to feed more of his family and more of his community and started to generate a business from that empowerment and teaching. And that stays.”
The trip had the added bonus of allowing Ms Rogers to visit a child – a 10-year-old boy named Lwin – whom she and her husband Michael and their two children, 17-year-old Lachlan and 13-year-old Maddy, have sponsored through the organisation for the past four years.
“It was very moving,” she says. “And the way the community welcomed me – I felt really humbled to have been treated with so much love…”
While her relationship with World Vision goes back some 10 years or so – Lwin is the second child her family have sponsored through World Vision, the idea of helping lift people out of poverty around the world is something that has been with Ms Rogers far longer.
Having grown up in a Christian family in Melbourne, Ms Rogers, who now attends St Jude’s Anglican Church in Carlton, recalls a trip her parents took to Asia when she was a young teenager, returning to tell their children about the poverty they encountered and the “need for us to be a part of helping others [around] the globe”.
“So it was pretty much a part of my upbringing that we would often talk about our privilege and others in the world not having that privilege…” she says.
While Ms Rogers doesn’t have a background in the development sector, she does bring a considerable track record in marketing, growing businesses, digital transformation and leadership experience to the role.
“The part that I really bring to this is the local transformation in terms of engaging the supporters in new ways – through digital, through visual, video. We’ve got a journey to go on to move off paper – a lot of our experience is paper. I want to transform the experience [and] there is so much at our disposal now to make that rich…Not everyone can get to the field… so it’s about how do we bring that up close and allow people to really have their hearts touched.”
One recent example of how World Vision is doing just that has been the establishment of a pop-up virtual reality experiential centre at the Macquarie Centre in North Ryde, Sydney, which, soon to be rolled out nationally, provides people with an immersive experience showing World Vision’s food distribution programs in places like Mosul in Iraq, refugee camps in Aleppo and in Myanmar.
“Watching people see that and become moved by it and then stepping out of the experience and wanting to make a difference was quite dramatic,” notes Ms Rogers.
Being the first female CEO of World Vision is also something she welcomes. Noting that women are playing a key part in senior roles in the development sector today – among those Ms Rogers names are Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop and Opposition foreign affairs spokesperson Penny Wong, she says women are playing a “massive role” in transforming Australia and the world.
“I’m excited to be leading Australia’s largest not-for-profit and bring fresh perspectives and different ways of doing things.”
And while World Vision has been criticised in some quarters in the past for not being upfront enough in its Christian identity, Ms Rogers says the organisation will continue to be “transparent” about the fact that it’s a Christian organisation.
NEW WAYS OF CONNECTING: Claire Rogers at World Vision’s virtual reality experience in North Ryde, Sydney.
“We don’t hide it…it is very much part of our culture, our DNA, and it’s significant in the way we are received in the communities we go to work in. While they might come from a different faith background, they know and trust our motivation and it comes from Jesus’ call to meet the needs of all the poor. And so that’s very much a part of our purpose…”
As part of the rearrangement which took place when Ms Rogers joined World Vision, former high profile CEO Tim Costello has now taken on a different role as “chief advocate”.
“It’s fantastic to have Tim still around because his is a voice that has a lot of carriage in the Australian debate and conversation around aid and poverty and child protection…” Ms Rogers says.
“He will continue to advocate and be a big part of our advocacy program and continue to be a public voice in the media. He’s also going to spend…a lot more time in the church sector to really drive the theological engagement with questions of equity and meeting the needs of the poor. And he will also be involved in doing what he does so well, which is making connections and helping us reach and talk to more people about the amazing work that we do.”
And asked what she would like people to be praying about with regard to her new role, Ms Rogers is quick to answer. “For open and warm hearts in the Australian public for the will to make it so that every child should have life in all its fullness. That’s really the heart of it. Because we don’t raise money for the sake of raising money, we raise it to put it into the field…to make a lasting difference.”
