Leadership Spotlight - Episode Three
Some careers are built on ambition. Others are built on purpose. Episode three of our Leadership Spotlight podcast series features Andrea Christie-David of Bupa. This conversation traces the moments that shaped a leader who chose meaning over momentum - from stepping away from corporate law, to confronting systemic barriers, to building organisations that put people at the centre. It’s a candid reflection on the decisions that test your values, the moments that ignite a fire in your belly, and what it really takes to lead with integrity, commercial acumen, and social impact at scale.
Q. Looking back across your work history, what themes feel most central to who you are as a leader?
Everything I've done is purpose-led. I started my career in corporate law, and it didn't take me long to realise that wasn't exactly what got me out of bed in the morning.
I got a really good piece of advice from my senior associate, who's now a partner at a top-tier law firm and he said, “If you're so passionate about this stuff and saving the world, then you need to go and do that now.” He said, “If you stay in corporate, you'll be on the treadmill and you'll probably never leave, but you need to have the guts to do it early in your career and choose the vision and purpose that you want to set for yourself.”
That was it was for me. I really wanted to help other people and use my skills in a way that benefited a broader set of people who may not have been as fortunate as me.
I love commerciality and I love entrepreneurial ventures. When I went into social justice, it was in a large social enterprise law firm that had a commercial element to it, where we were making money to fund pro bono services. That's probably the two factors, commercialising and finding entrepreneurial pursuits and doing it with social purpose.
Q. What are two or three defining moments that have shaped your career and led you to the work that you're doing today?
That conversation is one of them. When I was a young lawyer and I had great aspirations when people would say, “What's your dream job?” I’d say, “I want to be a lawyer at the UN.” I thought, I have to do it. I have to test it and go. I went and did my internship in New York, and I got to work in political affairs, but I also got to work as a lawyer in the disputes tribunals. I didn’t love it!
That reshaped my vision of what I really wanted for myself, I saw a lot of bureaucracy and a lot of ineffectiveness at getting outcomes. It brought me back to grassroots impact. How could I have impact on people's lives at a closer level, but at scale? That redirected me.
Then the final one is just before I started my business. I was growing in my career, but I had my three children, and just before I had my third one, my managing partner resigned. I was told by the board that I was not being selected to take over his role, even though I was the successor and I was 37 weeks pregnant. It was a major disappointment.
I went on maternity leave and came back to an old white male who had been put in the role and had never worked in the firm before. When he and I sat down to discuss my return, he told me to go back to running a litigation practice, even though by that stage I was the COO.
So, it was within 48 hours of that discussion that I went home and wrote the business plan for Leor. I raised capital from family and friends, and it basically spurred on my motivation. A fire in your belly moment. Within about seven or eight weeks, I had the business up and running. There are those funny defining moments that give you momentum and energy, and realignment. You think you're on one path, and then things happen that surprise you and make you realise your path is somewhere else.
Q. You’ve consistently worked in sectors supporting families, children, or people in need. What drives that purpose for you - where does it come from?
I did experience childhood trauma, so that’s definitely defined who I am. I wanted to change the outcomes for other people, and help people who might have experienced the same thing to find ways of using it as a source of resilience and strength - redefining your own path rather than being defined by the trauma. That’s absolutely driven my purpose.
When you experience things like that, you see injustice and want to seek justice for others. You want to level the playing field. That drew me into social justice law, then into early childhood, where we supported a lot of children with complex needs. I did a lot of advocacy to government about how they could be better included and gain access. Now in mental health, I’m driving that access and inclusion piece with our teams.
Q. How do you help emerging leaders navigate the reality that they won’t always be liked, but they must always be trusted?
It’s not the easiest thing, because it’s not a lesson you can learn off paper. You have to learn it through the hard knocks - and that means sometimes genuinely having people not like you. It means making really difficult decisions and discharging them in the best interests of where you’re going as an organisation or as a team, rather than focusing on one individual or personality.
We’ve all been in that position where you absolutely love a team member - they’re a beautiful human - but they might not be the right person for the job. You’ve got to do the right thing by them, and by the organisation and team. Sometimes it’s about the rest of the team around them - how does it make them feel if that person isn’t the right fit for the role?
It’s a bit of hard knocks and mentoring as you go. I always say to my team:
I’m going to throw you in the deep end, but I’ll be there to guide you and catch you when you fall.
I also want them to be responsible for making decisions and holding themselves to account when decisions don’t go right. It’s okay to make mistakes, we’re going to make them along the way, but know you’ve got what you need to make the choice. Back yourself and know when you might need to rectify and go down a different path.
There’s another analogy I learned: the double-door analogy. If the door can swing two ways, make the decision - you can always come back and rectify. But if the door only goes one way, definitely escalate it. Go to a senior person before making the decision, or hand it off if it should sit within their delegation.
Q. What does invest in future leaders look like in practice for you, as well as giving them the reins to make mistakes?
Throwing them in the deep end a little bit. Stretching people as much as you think they’re capable of, then checking in on how they’re going with those stretch tasks.
I like to have one on ones with all of my immediate team members, even if they don’t report directly to me, because I’m often stretching people across the broader team. Making sure they feel comfortable telling you, “Maybe that was too much,” or “I don’t know if I’m doing okay,” and having those open conversations is crucial.
And taking feedback. One of my team said the other day, “I don’t know if you’re open to feedback, but…” and I thought, You’re so right. I’m not very good at that. So thank you. Treating feedback like a gift rather than an attack takes time, maturity, and humility. You don’t know everything, and there will be people who observe things differently.
One of my leadership styles is surrounding myself with people who have knowledge that I don’t have. I want them to bring something to the table that I don’t have. I don’t want to be surrounded by clones or people who just say yes.
Q. What was the key learning for you about scaling Leor?
It’s that culture and values piece. As you scale, yes, you grow quickly, then you have to rectify. You have to make sure you're consistent and that you're driving consistent values and expectations. It's constant. It’s a mistake to think it’s a set and forget.
As you grow, open new sites, or enter new geographies or communities, understanding how your vision and value proposition land in that location, community, geography, or even discipline is crucial. It’s not one-size-fits-all. Staying alert to that and being able to evolve is key.
I’ve always said this about myself: I don’t want a set and forget type opportunity. I like something I need to be alert to - you plant the seeds, it grows, it’s great to watch, but you can’t lose sight of the fact that in this industry, the human services sector, you’re working with humans. Humans capability and the ability to meet the needs of other humans is really the product.
If you aren’t supporting your team - making sure their cup is full but not overflowing - then you’ve lost sight of your key role as a leader in human services. Your people have to be your primary focus.
Q. Which reforms feel most urgent and could be most helpful to that workforce?
The first is paid placements. Placement poverty is a term everyone’s familiar with. I remember one of my OTs saying she didn’t even have money to do one of her placements in a regional location. She was living away from home, didn’t have much money to feed herself, and had to do an unpaid placement.
Given these predominantly feminised workforces, there's a huge amount of injustice in that. Considering trades, with mostly male apprentices, get paid to train, but we don’t afford the same in most feminised workforces. I know there’s been reform, but it didn’t go far enough. More courses need to be included.
The other major reform is better recognition of vocational qualifications for migrant communities - particularly where it's not about university or postgraduate study, but fields like aged care, early childhood, disability. Why are we so strict with vocational qualifications?
I always come back to one example: one of my most amazing educators was Hungarian. I hired her when her English wasn’t amazing - she’s now fantastic - and she went on to do a broad spectrum of roles at Leor, including managing the intranet and developing training programs. When I hired her, she was so caring. She ended up being my children’s educator for a long time.
Her vocational qualifications in Hungary were more comprehensive than even some undergraduate education qualifications in Australia.
When she applied for an undergrad at the end, they said they couldn’t see enough intention and rejected her. I escalated because I knew someone there, but we’re crying out for these people, and we’re rejecting them when they want to do further study.
We need to think more laterally about qualifications for overseas migrants and create more pathways to permanent residence. My background as a migration lawyer gives me perspective, in the early 2000s, many people entered through skilled migration. It’s much harder now, narrower, more challenging and yet we still need so many of these people.
Q. What attracted you initially to leading Bupa in mental health services and delivery?
Well, I love building things, so that was attractive: the chance to build a business, but with the backing and scale of an organisation like Bupa. It felt like a dream come true. That was amazing.
And to come into a space where I hadn’t delivered mental health services personally - though I was on the board of Relationships Australia NSW for nine years, so I understand governance and delivery. I’d had touchpoints with mental health in my role at the Salvation Army too. About 85% of our clients had complex mental health issues.
It feels full circle. I saw how people ended up there. Now I get to ask: What can I do to put prevention strategies in place? Increase access? Do something innovative and disruptive?
I feel fortunate to have been chosen for this role. I’ve got the support of the global CEO and local CEO to do something disruptive, not copy and paste. I’m being given freedom to test and innovate the model of care, and that’s exciting.
Q. What do you see as the biggest opportunity in terms of improving mental health access?
We’ve started by employing psychologists in most of our clinics. We’ve opened nine clinics since May and we’ve got two more to open before the end of 2025, with a further twenty next year. So, it’s a big ambition.
After first hiring the psychologists, I took time to think about what I thought the point of difference was for mental health service delivery in Australia. I’ve spoken to a lot of people in the sector, visited amazing places like the Black Dog Institute and Orygen. We hosted a co-design workshop in Townsville, because we’re about to launch our first regional clinic there.
By doing that listening exercise, similar to the approach I took in early childhood, reading journal articles and doing deep research, what surfaced was that there really isn’t a whole of person approach to mental health at scale.
We’re asking:
How can we look at the whole person’s health and let them engage with multiple clinicians in the same practice to bring change to life?
Q. Is it mapped out in terms of how that will happen? At Mindplace, what types of mental health needs or complexities are you able to service? Is there a specific clientele?
Yes, we’ve done some early frameworks, and we’re bringing on lead clinicians to help define that. As we bring on senior roles, they’ll populate it and bring it to life.
To date, we’ve been supporting adults at Mindplace, but as of next year we’re expanding into children. We’ve had a lot of families asking but we wanted to ensure our clinical governance frameworks were in place before expanding.
In terms of clientele, we’ve been seeing close to a gender balance, which surprised us. Anywhere between 52 to 57 percent female, and the rest male. The age range has also been really broad: from about 20 up to a 68 year old woman who accessed mental health support for the first time in her life.
Another interesting data point: about 48% of our clients have never accessed mental health support before. That was really our global CEO’s purpose, to expand mental health services through Mindplace to increase access.
Just by putting clinics on the high street, making them visible and de-stigmatizing mental health, we can make it more comfortable for people to walk in and access services.
I’ve been saying to people: the statistics say one in two people will experience a mental health challenge in their life. But it’s not helpful to say “one in two.” What we need to say is: that’s us. Half the people in this room. If we talk about it as our experiences, it becomes normal. It becomes accessible.
Whether you go once or every couple of months, it’s okay. It’s part of your normal health routine. That’s how we should treat it, not as something you only do when something goes wrong.
Q. We had James from Unison on previously, and he would like to ask you: What’s a mistake you’re glad you made?
I think I went into an in-house role, I did an awesome in-house legal role, and then I went into another one, and I absolutely hated it. I think that was a really good mistake because it reinforced that I didn’t want to be in corporate law. Then I went to the UN, and that got me more back on track into my social impact career.
Q. What’s your question to our next guest?
What does social impact mean to you?
Great question… And do you mind answering it?
What does social impact mean to me? It means having a positive impact on people you’ll never meet.