How Nadya Fauzia built a career creating social impact

Nadya Fauzia's latest career move has taken her from Melbourne to Phnom Penh, where she has joined innovation consultancy 17 Triggers as a senior researcher and strategist. The organisation uses human-centred design and behavioural insights to address challenges in health and well-being, food and agriculture, climate, and financial inclusion.

For Nadya, the move is both professional and personal. She grew up between Indonesia and the Middle East, where inequality was part of everyday life.

"Inequality wasn't an abstract concept for me. It was visible in my family and my community," she says.

Living alongside friends whose families had experienced displacement gave her an early awareness that security and opportunity are not shared fairly. At school, she gravitated towards history, wanting to understand how the past shapes present-day systems. That curiosity led her to UN Youth and, eventually, towards work focused on policy, power and social change.

While studying a Bachelor of Commerce and Law conjoint degree at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, Nadya explored these interests through research and practical programmes. She took part in Velocity, Solve It, Makerspace training, Summer Lab and the Future Voices forum through the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE).

"CIE gave me a set of instincts I still lean on every day," she says.

"Programmes like Velocity and Solve It built real comfort with ambiguity and rapid prototyping. They also taught me the importance of failing hard, failing fast and moving on."

Summer Lab introduced Nadya to Jamie Newth, who is the founder of Soul Capital, an impact investment fund. This connection showed her that a career centred on impact could be viable and later gave her an early opportunity as an investment analyst at the fund. Relationships formed through UN Youth and the World Economic Forum's Global Shapers Community also opened doors. In a relatively small, relationship-driven sector, she says, the people who take a chance on you early can matter as much as the roles on your CV.

Nadya’s career has been anything but linear. She spent two years in a corporate role before moving to Melbourne, where she worked in public policy consulting across health, education, social services, First Nations communities and disability inclusion. Across those fields, the core work remained consistent: understanding complex problems, listening to the people closest to them and turning evidence into practical strategies. She also learnt that solutions are stronger when they are built with communities, not simply designed for them.

For students hoping to build careers with social impact, her advice is to think less about finding the perfect job and more about finding a problem worth committing to.

Someone interested in education, for example, might become a teacher, shape public policy, undertake research or build a social enterprise. The pathways are different, but each has the potential to create meaningful change.

For Nadya, building a career in impact means developing useful skills, investing in genuine relationships, and accepting that progress is often incremental.

"I'd rather be part of a small, real piece of progress than disengage completely because the whole picture feels too big," she says.