Celebrating our colleagues: Dr Tiffany De Sousa Machado
Dr Tiffany De Sousa Machado, Associate Head of People and Culture, Adelaide Business School
Dr Tiffany De Sousa Machado leads a double life. A lecturer in entrepreneurship and Adelaide Business School’s Associate Head of People and Culture, she’s a respected and award-winning academic and researcher.
She’s also Dr Tiff – a transformative wellbeing and corporate health expert, teaching people to harness their personal power and change their lives, reaching hundreds of thousands annually through her speaking, writing, videos, and development programs.
"My role, this year, is trying to bring a sense of calm and peace, addressing fear of the unknown, so people can embrace the changes that we are going through at the University."
"It’s about ways to bring a positive attitude, looking at how we influence each other through our actions and our language and our mood."
Tiffany’s expertise has been hard earned. Her winding road to higher education and successful entrepreneurship was paved with grief, illness, and isolation.
“I wasn’t great at school ... I didn’t have any strong role models on how to do ‘academic work’ but excellent ones on how to do ‘work work’,” she recalls of her decision to go straight into the workforce as a school leaver, climbing the corporate ladder in Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne, and Queensland.
“Then my Mum died suddenly, before I had had an opportunity to have a wedding, or children, and it really made me take stock of what I was doing every day.’’
It was a crossroads in Tiffany’s life.
"I realised that if I was going to spend that much time away from the people I loved – because I felt a lot of guilt around not being able to be there for Mum when she died – that I wanted it to have meaning and purpose,'' she says.
“So, I quit my job and started uni at age 30. I was the first in my family to go to university. I absolutely loved learning about psychology and anthropology. I loved reading. I did more subjects than I needed to for my degree because I didn’t want to miss anything.
“Alongside my study, life happened. I got divorced, I re-partnered. I had children, stepchildren. I started a business. When I started my PhD, I had my second child. I was driven because it was so important to me.’’
Just as she had harnessed her grief to find a new direction through tertiary education, Tiffany used her lived experience to fuel her research for her PhD on post-natal depression in corporate Australia and in Sweden.
“I had my first child and felt very alone, and just suffered terribly with post-natal depression,” she says. “I was isolated, desperate for connection, and missing my Mum who had longed to be a grandmother and never got that chance.
“I learned so much about it over the next seven years, and I was a completely different person when I had my second baby."
"I had structured everything – myself, my environment, my activities – in a way that buffered that experience, and I was able to just thrive.’’
Tiffany also used her experience and learning to create her first business, The Village Foundation, designed to bring mothers together with others in a mentor relationship without judgement or competitiveness, through parenting programs, midwifery training, an app, and more.
“We are now rebuilding The Village Foundation for a face-to-face counsel experience, which will be launched later this year,” she says.
Tiffany’s path-finding work, in and outside the University, has earned her a Women in Innovation Social Impact Award in 2023 as well as a swag of other accolades.
"The Westpac Future Leader Scholarship and the Westpac Social Change Fellowship have been the most life changing and I’m still very much a part of that community and alumni. I now give back and develop some of their wellbeing programs. That was a 'before Award' and 'after Award' life change."
Tiffany is a firm believer in seizing opportunities to learn, network and grow, through the partnership programs and internships available through the University.
“As a Westpac Scholar, I had the rare opportunity to meet Brian Hartzer, who was the CEO of the bank at the time, and something he said stuck with me, which is that a large corporation – and he managed 40,000 employees – it's just 40,000 individual people with families, sport, children, hobbies, jobs,’’ she says. “So, when you look at a business like that, well it’s all extremely easy, you just connect with the individual.’’
Creating authentic connections at work benefits staff, bosses and business outcomes, Tiffany believes.
“When you invest in the whole person, you get more out of them, and that’s not why you do it, but that’s the natural consequence,” she says.
“It’s about checking in with how others are feeling. How did that operation go? How is your dad? Is there anything I can do for you? My own bosses are so incredibly caring about not just my work but my whole self. And that makes me want to do a better job.
“You get loyalty, you get people motivated because they want to do the right thing. When you micromanage, pick and transactionally interact with somebody, then you are going to get the bare minimum back.
“Erma Ranieri (Commissioner for Public Sector Employment) told me: ‘If you give people the space that they need to do whatever it is they need to do at that time, they come back with more passion, more focus and more dedication’.
"Bosses that recognise that you come to work as a whole person, with outside worries, relationship problems, school drop-offs and sports days, ageing parents or grandparents ... and see you for that, instead of what your output is, they are the bosses that get the most out of their people."
Tiffany’s schedule is daunting, but she draws on the pillars that form the basis of her Dr Tiff teaching - accountability, action and connection.
She has created her own 'village' of people she can rely on for help. She also eats well, and exercises regularly to keep her mental and physical health in check. She finds moments in the day for herself, enjoys a strong spiritual practice, and connects authentically with those around her.
"The number one thing that enables me to do all the things I want to do, is knowing my values, what I value most, and letting go of the outside judgement."
"So, I know my number one value is my children. I also know what gives me energy and that’s the work that I do at the university and in my own business."
She has also found that the language we use can influence our reality.
“If you walk around constantly saying life is too busy and stressful, then that’s what you create. So, I started to say, ‘I’ve got everything under control and I’m feeling quite balanced’ and suddenly I am, despite the number of things I have on my plate.’’
Written by Jackie Tracy, Communications Coordinator
Photography by Isaac Freeman, Communications Officer