Pursue the big idea regardless of your previous experience

Mikaela Jade is a former park ranger turned tech entrepreneur and
CEO. She leads Indigital, ideas that came to her in the shower
ten years ago and that she pursued with no previous tech
experience.


She joins Shirley Chowdhary for this week's ep of The Leadership
Lessons, highlighting how her own story shows the possibilities
in pursuing the best ideas, regardless of your background or
previous story.


For Mikaela, the possibility was to use augmented reality to tell
Indigenous stories. Still working as a park ranger when she came
up with the idea, she knew there had to be better way to share
traditional, Indigenous perspectives at cultural sites.


“My heart just broke every time we put a metal, aluminum sign in
the ground in front of these cultural places that are so
significant to the community that live there, and whose country
it was,” she says.


“But also, to all the visitors that were coming. The signs would
say things like: “This is an Aboriginal site” and that would be
it…not incorporating the traditional perspectives of the site at
all.”


Mikaela is a proud Cabrogal woman, had the opportunity to see
augmented reality for the first time at a university event, and
it’s spurred her on to create to use the cutting-edge technology.


“What if we could use this technology where instead of reading a
sign when you go to a place, couldn’t you just put your phone up
and an elder could appear in holographic format and tell you the
right story, for the right reasons, in the right language, at the
right place, at the right time?”


Based in Kakadu at the time, Jade tells Shirley that everyone
thought she was mad to pursue what then seemed to be such an
outland-ish idea. “I had no idea was I was doing! No idea what I
was doing from a tech perspective."


The Leadership Lessons is made possible thanks to the
excellent support of Salesforce. It's produced by Agenda Media,
publisher of Women's Agenda. You can check out our other podcast,
The Women's Agenda Podcast.





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