Empowering Communities with Luz Restrepo from Made by Many Minds

Bendigo Business Stories

In our latest episode, our host, Kimberley Furness from OAK Magazine, delves into the inspiring journey of entrepreneurship with Luz Restrepo founder of Made by Many Minds.

Originally from Colombia, Luz's story is one of resilience and innovation. After studying medicine, she discovered her passion for business and communication.

Luz arrived in Australia at age 45 and her experience led her to found SisterWorks, a charity supporting migrant women, and later co-founded Migrant Women in Business Pty Ltd, empowering migrant women entrepreneurs nationwide.

Join us as Luz shares her challenges as a migrant woman in a foreign country: limited resources, a strong accent, but abundant knowledge and determination. Luz talks about the difficulty of finding a job with little to no English but feeling privileged with her professional background, she took the decision to create a job for herself and all the migrant women in the same situation. This was the beginning of Sisterworks, an obsessive woman looking for commercial, employment, and training opportunities. In 2021, Luz resigned from Sisterworks which at this point needed a manager and not an entrepreneur like her anymore.

Not wanting to depend on grants to pay bills anymore, Luz decided that her next venture would be a company and she created Migrant Women in Business within a month to support migrant women who have a product or service to sell, providing an easy-to-use Marketplace and connecting them to wholesale buyers. Luz makes it clear that the consumers' behaviour needs to change, they need to understand where the products come from and who is making it.

Luz discovered that most registered ABN in Australia and regional and rural areas are micro businesses with up to three employees and they are facing the same challenges as the migrant community including poor technology literacy. Luz saw the opportunity to help more all businesses migrant or not and turned her focus on regional Australia, with her venture Made by Many Minds Pty Ltd supporting micro-business development and creating connections.

Luz's proudest achievement is the capacity to create work, establishing a different model for migrant women to learn by doing. Her journey embodies resilience, compassion, and entrepreneurial spirit.

ABOUT OUR SPONSOR MCKERN STEEL

This series is proudly sponsored by McKern Steel. McKern Steel is a leading supplier of high-quality structural steel for residential projects across Victoria.

Located across three venues in Bendigo, they are dedicated to keeping their business regionally based.

McKern Steel are also an active player in the community through the McKern Foundation, which is focused on contributing to community projects that benefit the health and wellbeing of youth.

ABOUT OUR HOST KIMBERLEY FURNESS

Kimberley Furness is the national award winning publisher of OAK Magazine, a proudly independent media publisher dedicated to sharing stories and amplifying voices of female change makers and women in business in regional and rural Australia. Kimberley is a long time content creator for print and digital, a social media trainer for rural business owners and the host of chart topping podcasts A Friend of Mine and She Makes News.

ABOUT BE.BENDIGO

Every successful community has a strong and growing business community.

Be.Bendigo exists to provide a range of information, support and programs to assist, develop and grow our broader business community. We are member based organisation with a commitment to developing our business so that we can continue to add value for our members, partners and stakeholders.

Find out more via our website. Be social on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy