Difference Makers Podcast

If you’ve ever been told to “wait your turn,” this conversation politely declines. We sit down with chartered accountant and risk professional Rebecca Casey to unpack how young leaders move from potential to presence—using expertise, community, and conviction to shape business and society right now.

Rebecca charts a clear route from a school enterprise in Sydney to Deloitte, Young CA panels in New South Wales and the UK, and a career leap to London. Along the way she shows why qualifications like the CA are more than letters: they open doors, build networks, and give you the platform to speak plainly on the issues that matter. We get specific on AI governance, data integrity, and ethics—what good looks like, where it breaks, and how to make accountability a daily habit rather than a compliance checkbox.

The energy from One Young World threads through the episode as we translate inspiration into action. Rebecca shares a grounded take on the circular economy, from volunteering with a hard-to-recycle plastics programme to making a personal pledge centred on reuse and repair. We connect those grassroots choices to workplace change—procurement standards, lifecycle thinking, and practical steps that reduce waste and build integrity into systems.

This is a playbook for focused impact: choose one problem, apply your skills, start small, and show results. If youth are the present, the question becomes simple—what will we build today? Listen for candid insights, actionable ideas, and a refreshing kind of optimism that pairs vision with the first step. If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who leads from the front, and leave a review so others can find it.

What if a ten-year-old’s love for maths could spark a career that blends finance, empathy and AI for social good? We sit down with Saad Bin Asim Zubairi of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan to unpack how curiosity, grit and global perspective can reshape what a chartered accountant does today. From finding the profession at an education expo to thriving in multinational teams through geopolitical turmoil, Saad shares concrete ways leaders can protect psychological safety while raising standards.

The conversation dives into the shifting toolkit of modern finance: automation, data analytics, and generative AI alongside audit and controls. Fresh from a One Young World workshop, Saad explains how he built a demo app for the Sustainable Development Goal of quality education in under an hour, proving that non-coders can prototype impactful solutions with GenAI. We reflect on powerful moments from the summit, including insights from Queen Rania and Nobel laureate journalist Maria Ressa, and why combating disinformation and online hate is now a core leadership duty, not a side issue.

Mentorship sits at the heart of Saad’s approach. He outlines practical steps for young CAs to balance study and work, use AI responsibly, and move beyond rote tasks into analysis, advisory and product thinking. The result is a roadmap for lifelong learning that keeps you valuable in a changing market while staying rooted in ethics and empathy. If you care about building a career that matters—and tools that help people—you’ll find real takeaways you can apply this week.

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A teenage mum, a bus to Galway, and a toddler in the back row of a lecture hall—this is where Sophie Sweeney’s story begins. That early proximity to learning didn’t just open a door; it rewired what a career could be. We sit down with Sophie, a lecturer at the University of Galway and a member of Chartered Accountants Ireland, to explore how a love for numbers became a mission to serve people through education, mentorship, and purpose-driven accounting.

Sophie shares how structure became her launchpad. The chartered pathway offered clarity—training contracts, exams, professional standards—while her curiosity turned financial statements into narratives that reveal choices, risk, and values. When the day-to-day of practice no longer aligned with her desire for visible impact, she followed the signal toward lecturing. In the classroom, technical rigour meets empathy, and the ripple effect is real: one educator can equip hundreds of future professionals to combine accuracy with ethics and to measure what truly matters.

Fresh from the One Young World Summit, Sophie reflects on the power of networks, representation, and stepping onto big stages with grounded pride. Carrying the Irish flag and connecting with delegates from around the world, she absorbed a simple mandate: you don’t need to fix every problem; you need to leverage your position to move good work forward. We talk imposter syndrome, how to claim belonging without losing humility, and why time pressure—from motherhood to research goals—can sharpen ambition. Looking ten years ahead, Sophie sees a human-centred academic career, a completed PhD, and a community of former students who return with stories of impact.

If you’re curious about purpose in accounting, the value of professional qualifications, or how education can multiply social change, this conversation is for you. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs encouragement, and leave a review with the moment that hit home for you.

Ever feel like your day is a blur of pings, context switches, and late-night messages that steal your sleep? We sat down with Brad Hook and Declan Scott to unpack why the profession’s greatest strengths—kindness, curiosity, creativity—can be undermined by hypervigilance and constant multitasking, and how simple, science-backed rhythms can restore focus and energy.

We dig into the data from the inaugural global resilience and well-being report for Chartered Accountants and preview what the next survey aims to measure after practical interventions. Brad explains why “measure, train, measure” beats guesswork, and shares tactical calm tools that create quick wins: one-minute breath resets, bookending the workday, and clear evening boundaries. Declan brings an experienced lens to early-career overwhelm, showing how coaching-led leadership and mentoring across generations can reduce anxiety, build confidence, and connect daily work to real purpose.

You’ll learn how attention is being fragmented by constant digital stimuli and why monotasking outperforms multitasking for quality and speed. We walk through the conditions for flow—clear goals, the right challenge-skill match, protected time, and fewer distractions—and how teams can pilot weekly or daily “flow zones” to unlock meaningful progress. We also dive into sleep as the bedrock of performance, from chronotypes and consistency to practical checks for issues like sleep apnoea, plus everyday habits that recharge your mental battery.

The episode closes on presence—the underrated skill of pausing, widening your view, and asking what matters most right now. If you’re ready to replace false urgency with real effectiveness, this is your playbook for calmer focus, better sleep, and stronger leadership. Enjoy the conversation, then share it with a colleague who needs permission to switch off notifications. If it resonated, subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: what single change will you try this week?

Curiosity isn’t a personality trait—it’s a practice that can shape a career and safeguard public trust. That idea runs through our conversation with Carla S. Vijian, whose path from Malaysia to New Zealand, Sydney, London and now New York traces a throughline from hands‑on audit work to ethics standard setting. We dive into how fieldwork hardens your scepticism—the kind that looks past headlines and asks who funds what, where assumptions hide, and how incentives bend outcomes—and why that habit is essential when claims move markets, pensions and policy.

Carla opens the black box of ethics standards and shows how practical and global the work really is: listening to regulators, investors and firms, and crafting principle‑based guidance that scales across 130+ jurisdictions without losing the self‑awareness professionals need day to day. We test the ideas against live issues: Norway’s Northern Lights CO2 storage milestone and debt‑for‑policy swaps that promise conservation and reconstruction. Both raise the same hard questions—measurement, transparency, accountability—that ethics can answer when applied with rigour. We also tackle AI without the hype: it’s a powerful tool, but not a moral agent. The IESBA’s technology guidance helps identify risks like bias, data integrity and over‑reliance, reminding us to validate models, document judgement and remain accountable for outcomes in the public interest.

Threaded through the technical is the human: marathon training as a blueprint for resilience, discipline and humility. You don’t run 42 kilometres at once; you run one at a time. The same is true for building trust—small consistent choices compound. Carla leaves three anchors for the next generation: make curiosity a daily discipline, choose courage over convenience, and pair purpose with patience. If you care about trustworthy reporting, sustainable finance and responsible AI, this conversation will give you practical ways to strengthen your judgement and your impact.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a colleague, and leave a review with the bravest professional decision you’ve made recently.