A volunteer fire fighter with the NSW RFS in his spare time, Morgan Popely is our Incubator Manager who gets excited by his role that allows him to constantly learn something new.

Morgan manages a diverse team responsible for the growth of Macquarie’s innovation ecosystem. Opening in 2017, the Incubator helps start-ups to scale their businesses, researchers to refine their entrepreneurial ideas and students to develop the skills they need to launch their own initiative.

Morgan’s main interest is in helping people to really refine how their value proposition translates for their customer in the immediate, and over the longer term for direct revenue growth. In simple terms, ‘how do you get money without grants or investors?’

Working in the start-up development space is something that’s only come about for Morgan in the last couple of years. Most of his career has been spent developing strategic partnerships between the university and corporate sectors. Before joining Macquarie in early 2021, Morgan held senior B2B sales and consulting roles at Deakin University and Western Sydney University, respectively, as well as working at a start-up himself.

Fascinated by the complexity of challenges and opportunities for Australian Universities operating in the modern market, Morgan is currently undertaking a Master of Research with a research topic on understanding Organisational Agility in Australian Universities.

---

1. Something you’d like staff to know about

This is a work-related story, but for pretext:

I fought the 2019-2020 bushfires in NSW as a member of various RFS strike teams and emergency response teams. We worked tirelessly as a team to defend people’s houses, livelihoods and their lives. It was one of the toughest periods of my life and took so much out of me physically. But I recently came to understand that the fires affected me emotionally as well. The last few months I have noticed the thoughts of upsetting things I have seen on fire calls coming back into my mind, and felt at time an anxiety building when least expected. Perhaps this is triggered by the floods, or the conflict in Ukraine or maybe something else. Regardless of the trigger I’ve realised that Post Traumatic Stress is a normal thing for a volunteer fire fighter, but we must do more as a society to equip volunteers with the tools to process traumatic events.

 

So here is where work comes in:
Out of nowhere I had a panic attack at Macquarie, MCing an event. I couldn’t believe it as public speaking has been such a regular part of my work. I was embarrassed. But I was honest about it with everyone at the event. And what I experienced after that amazed me. Not one person gave me an awkward glance. No one laughed at me. But instead, people came up to me one after the other and shared their stories of having panic attacks. One person (a successful start-up founder I know well), embraced and high-fived me, exclaiming “Welcome to the club!” before giving me his tips on managing panic attacks. I am so grateful for his attitude, and for all the other amazing people in that room that were so open about their own struggles.

The bottom line is that no matter who you are or what you do at Macquarie, if you ever feel panic, anxiety, depression or any other completely normal human experience, this is a place you can be open about it because people here truly care and want to help. And you might be surprised at how normal these feelings are.

2. Something you feel proud of
This will probably sound silly, but I feel proudest of myself when I feel like I’ve helped someone else grow or develop in some way. When I see them put in the work to go to the next level and they achieve the success they wanted, I secretly get a buzz out of it as well.

3. What you need to do your best work
I do my best work when there is a clear overarching vision and strategy to align the work to; something to measure outcomes against. If this does not exist, then I do my best to help create that vision so goals can be achieved.

4. The coolest bit of equipment you use in your work, and what it does
Probably LinkedIn. A few years back LinkedIn asked me to give a presentation to a group of their clients on how to use the platform to generate partnerships and sales as I was considered a ‘power user’ of the LinkedIn sales platform. The way that data can be manipulated and used to generate insights and motivate activity is something most people are not aware of but is incredibly powerful and yes, I would say cool!

5. Something you’ve read recently that has had an impact on you
The Witcher books. I am up to the last one in the series. Please note the books are considerably better than the Netflix show. So if you have enjoyed the show, I can highly recommend you get into books!

6. A favourite photo from your camera roll

This is me and my daughter Olive at a recent football game. Going to the footy with my dad is one of my fondest memories I have growing up and one of the things with which we’ve bonded over the years. No matter what was going on in our lives we always found a way to get together at the footy, chew the fat, and boo the other team. It is amazing to be able to keep this tradition alive with Olive.

7. The first person you go to for advice (and why)
My wife, Cherie, because she is the smartest, strongest and most inspiring person I have ever met. She also never sugar-coats anything and annoyingly always plays devil’s advocate, so she forces me to be less self-centred and think about others in any situation.

For my fashion advice, I go to my 8-year-old daughter Olive because she knows what’s cool 😉

8. A website or app you can’t live without (and why)
Wordle. I have an ongoing battle with my mate, Simon, who I have known since high school. Each day we send each other our Wordle scores in a never-ending quest to be the better Wordler. We have now also have a daily Quordle (where you do four wordles simultaneously) and Framed (Wordle but with movie stills to guess the movie title). So yeah, I’m an addict.

9. Where you live and what you like about living there
I live in Kurrajong so I regularly go for bush walks in the Blue Mountains National Park. We have an amazing community and produce the best apples and honey in Australia (in my humble opinion!)

10. A personal quality you value in others
I value when people are genuine, open and honest. This comes in lots of forms. It might mean putting your hand up when a mistake is made and owning it and seeing the opportunity to learn from it, or supporting a colleague when you see they need help. I have learnt through my career that the only way to build strong partnerships or strong collaborations, is to first build strong trust. Trust is the foundation to everything. And trust starts with honesty.