South Australian Women in Innovation
(From left to right: Michelle Perugini, Allison Nikola and Leila Henderson)
Innovation in Adelaide is happening. Three Adelaide based entrepreneurs, Leila Henderson, Michelle Perugini and Allison Nikola are creating dynamic inroads into the Australian industry of innovation. They had each transformed their own individual start-up companies into distinguished and successful disrupters of the market. Michelle Perugini is the head of Presagen, which incorporates the use of artificial intelligence in medical examinations. Allison has developed CareApp, a application which allows for easier communication between carers, residents of care facilities and their families. Leila has developed an automated news release platform allowing for those who work in media to schedule their media releases.
Adelaide is a city which has seen the deindustrialisation of some its primary labour based industries. They argue that emphasising a contemporary form of industrialisation is needed to combat that. This is where innovation and startups come in.
“There’s no end to innovation here in Adelaide” Leila Henderson, the head of Newsmaker an automated news distribution platform said in an interview with Talk Talk.
“It’s about how well you can scale [your start up]” Michelle said.
They collectively agreed that no Silicon Valley start up company expects to stay in Silicon Valley. Adelaide’s start up industry is not supposed to be relevant to just a local demographic. These entrepreneurs aims are to take their companies global.
Listen below:
Guerilla Radio - An Interview With Pussy Riot
Pussy Riot is a group of political agitators. They are experimental musicians; they are protest musicians. Members of Pussy Riot have been arrested for their performances, and are considered to be political adversaries by the Russian state and its dictator Vladimir Putin. They are not looking to capitalise on media opportunities to promote their work. This is not a regular group. So this talk that we were so lucky to have had to be sincere. We offered to have a casual conversation with them. They respected that and agreed.
Pussy Riot is considered to be a feminist punk rock group, formed in Moscow in 2011. They gained international notoriety when they staged a performance inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour on February 21, 2012. The Russian Orthodox Church condemned it as sacrilegious. The group was protesting against the Orthodox Church’s support for Vladamir Putin, Russia’s autocratic president who has been denounced for his human rights violations and annexation of the Ukrainian Crimean Peninsula.
The three original members of Pussy Riot, Yekaterina Samutsevich, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Maria Alyokhina were convicted of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” for this performance. Samutsevich and Tolokonnikova have since left Pussy Riot.
The interview was improvised; the setting was impromptu, consisting of a laptop and microphones in a stairwell next to the University of Adelaide’s Unibar. Conversation was natural. In the discussion we heard anecdotes that humanized a group that has been shrouded in so much controversy as well as deemed criminals by the regimes that they challenge.
Maria, alluded to the possibility of facing punishment for returning to Russia, her home country she has been banned from leaving.
Sasha, touched on the deep, ruminating type of thinking that Russian people are inclined to do.
They are people that have so much to say, and in that moment a casual conversation opened up a rich political and social discourse.
Their performance was part of the Adelaide Fringe and its collaborator The Royal Croquet Club, which was based at the University of Adelaide. They brought their variety of performances and interchangeable roster of group members as well as an onstage performance by Indigenous Australian protest rock group Yothu Yindi.