Sita Sargeant On Tourism For Social Impact And Activating Women’s History

Sita Sargeant is a social entrepreneur and author promoting gender equality through tourism. She founded She Shapes History to show that women have always shaped history – and to make their stories easier to find, connect with, and remember.

By making women’s history accessible and engaging through walking tours, events, and digital content, she aims to open a gateway to a bigger, richer understanding of Australia’s past. Because when we recognise women’s contributions in history, we build more respect for women today.

What started as a single walking tour in Canberra has grown into a national social enterprise, with tours now running in Canberra, Sydney, and Melbourne, and plans to reach every capital city by the end of 2026. Today, Sita leads a team of 26, including two full-time and 24 casual staff, changing how we engage with history through relevant, emotionally impactful, place-based storytelling.

Her first book, She Shapes History: Walks & Stories About Great Australian Women (Hardie Grant Explore), shares over 250 stories from 31 towns and cities. She has written for The Guardian and The Age, and her work has been featured by the ABC, Canberra Times, Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney Weekender, and Missing Perspectives.

Her TEDx Talk, Why Respect for Women Starts with History, explores commemorative justice as a pathway to gender equality. In 2025, she was named an IGNITE Tomorrow Maker by the AMP Foundation, one of eight social entrepreneurs selected nationally for a $110,000 grant and capacity-building program.

Sita holds a first-class honours degree from the University of Queensland in Studies in Religion and English Literature. She has previously worked as a Research Officer at the Australian National University, a Digital Producer at the Museum of Australian Democracy where she led a national civics education campaign on referendums and the Constitution, and as the Community and Marketing Manager at Café Stepping Stone, a work integration social enterprise providing employment and training to migrant and refugee women.

Sita discusses why storytelling and tourism are essential tools for social change, reframing historical narratives through women-led walking tours, and why designing businesses that centre wellbeing, generosity, and patience leads to more sustainable and fulfilling journeys for entrepreneurs.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Emma Dimech] - Could you please share a bit more about your background and what led to your passion in tourism and social enterprise?

[Sita Sargeant] - I actually never thought I would end up in tourism or social entrepreneurship; I thought I would end up working in foreign policy. Midway through 2021, I went back to my parents' place in Canberra, a place I never thought I'd end up in.

I was working at a university, and I started engaging with Australian history for the first time in my life. Up until this point, I had always been interested in women's stories and history, but I’d never really engaged with Australia. I thought there was nothing here, which I think is a pretty common view.

I started engaging with Australian history and I had this moment where I went, “Oh my God, this is so much more interesting than anyone ever told me”. I then had to ask the question that I've always and still continue to ask, which is, where are the women? Where are the women in the story of Australia?

Once I started looking for them, they weren't exceptionally hard to find. Women were just never positioned as central characters in the story of Australia. After a few months of complaining about this to my trapped family and friends, I decided I was going to do something about this.

With absolutely no experience in tourism, I started running a weekly walking tour. It just grew and grew from there, and I ended up going full-time on She Shapes History at the start of last year. I'm now one year into being full-time, which is still a bit wild to me.

Could you tell us a bit more about the work you're doing and the plans you have for the future of She Shapes History?

Our bread and butter is walking tours. That’s how it all started and it’s still a core part of what we do. They’re two hour tours that tell the story of a place from the perspective of women. We also create digital content primarily for social media as a way of making these stories accessible and engaging to a much wider audience, including people who might never pay to join us on a tour in person.

Increasingly, we are creating more and more partnerships with cultural institutions like councils and historic sites. These can look like content partnerships, where we create a series of social media content. We just wrapped up one with the Yarra Ranges Regional Museum in Victoria, which detailed the stories of eleven incredible women who had shaped history in the Yarra Ranges, through social media content and a map.

We also work with historic sites on delivering tours. It’ll have launched by the time this episode airs, but we’re currently working on an ongoing tour at the Abbotsford Convent, which I’d argue is one of the most important sites for women's history in Australia. It’s a huge historic site in Victoria and Melbourne.

I strongly believe women's history should be everywhere. Our goal is based around activating women's history and making it easy to engage with it, whether that's on a tour or through a partnership.

I am spending the next year focused on building out our team. We're recruiting for a few people and building on our capacity to put in place some incredibly strong foundations from which we can scale up.

We’re looking to launch what we're doing in cities across Australia and hopefully globally. For us, the next year is about getting our house in order and then it'll be taking over all the houses in the neighbourhood, and then the suburb.

You’re currently an AMP Foundation Tomorrow Maker, so you're getting support to develop and grow She Shapes History. What have been your reflections and learnings from the support to date?

Getting into the program was incredible in that it was what gave me the confidence to take the leap towards going full-time on She Shapes History. As part of that program, I received $110,000, which made a really big difference and allowed me to go all in, instead of hedging my bets and working part-time somewhere else.

Honestly, the biggest thing for me has been the cohort. It’s such an incredible group of people.

I've made amazing friends from doing both the Ignite and Spark programs. A few of my closest friends have come from those programs: they’re people I now see regularly.

Some of them too are people that I would've never met otherwise and, three years ago, I would've been surprised to know that not only are these people in my life, but I'm good friends with them.

The support you get from people on the same journey as you makes such a big difference. I've been thinking a lot about community and celebrating achievements, and the people who really understand your achievements when they happen and celebrate you are the people who know how much work it takes and what went into it. It’s the people who stood alongside you while you worked seventy hour weeks for three years straight leading up to that.

The people who understand that the most are social entrepreneurs who are on that same journey themselves. I am incredibly grateful to have been exposed to people like that and to have so many cheerleaders in my corner, which came from doing the AMP Foundation Tomorrow Maker Program.

What would be your top tips to help purpose-driven organisations when they're just starting up?

It's okay to start really slow. She Shapes History started as less than a side hustle because it didn’t make any money in that first year, it only cost me money. It's okay that things take time.

I feel like people are seeing She Shapes History now with all our growth and the opportunities we're getting, and it feels like we're absolutely everywhere. What people don't see is that I started She Shapes History midway through 2021, and I didn't end up going full-time until early 2025.

There were several years of me doing it part-time, weighing up if it was something that I should even be doing. There were periods where I considered pursuing a full-time career in the museum sector as opposed to focusing on She Shapes History.

It’s important to feel okay with the fact that it will not happen overnight and that things take time. I think that the advantage of that is you can give yourself and the community the time to really get to know your brand, to get behind you, and for you to sort your s**t out.

By the time you're ready to start seriously scaling, you have a lot of your house in order and people are ready and there to back you.

What do you see as some of the most important traits for impact leaders and entrepreneurs?

Generosity, to be honest, is the biggest one. I think that's something I don’t necessarily always see enough of in any sector.

When I say generosity, there's a bunch of different things I mean by that. I was talking about this with a friend at a dinner party last night actually, in that generosity is someone who will share about their day and what they're up to without you having to ask them a series of increasingly invasive questions to get information out of them. They want to share with you.

Generous people are people who if you talk about something you’re struggling with don't hesitate to offer help or connect you with the right person. People who will tell you about an opportunity, even if they might be going for it too, because they know it's a good fit for you and something that could make a difference.

That is what stands out to me when I consider strong social entrepreneurs I know and people that I want to spend my time with. They're people who are very generous and who will show up for other people. They will be the first to buy a new product, to show up on a tour, or to come out and support you. I think that comes around as well, in that people you show up for, will show up for you. They reflect that energy for you.

There's such a scarcity mindset in the social impact sector. It's something I've really felt and seen, and I don’t completely understand why.

It doesn't cost you anything to be a kind, generous person and to show up and share opportunities. If someone gets an opportunity that you also wanted because you told them about it, you weren’t meant to get it in the first place.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently creating a positive impact?

I think there's a lot of social enterprises in tourism who would never call themselves social enterprises, but they prioritise community and leaving the world a better place. I think that the Venn diagram between people who end up in tourism and people who are social entrepreneurs is a circle.

I'm going to shout out She SUPs, which is run by this absolute powerhouse of a woman named Vikki. They actively identify as a social enterprise, and they run stand-up paddleboarding classes in Sydney.

Vikki also takes people on trips around Australia and overseas and is someone who so deeply believes in the power of stand-up paddle boarding to empower women and create community. Huge shout out to Vikki! If you ever want to get into stand-up paddleboarding and you’re in Sydney, go do that with her.

I'm also going to shout out my very dear friend Justin Steele from Local Sauce Tours, who's operating in both Sydney and Brisbane. He’s not someone who would identify as a social enterprise, but he has worked with Parliament on King, which is a really funky cafe to do these refugee dinners where all of the money goes towards the refugee community.

Justin is someone who runs tours in neighbourhoods with the sole goal of bringing people to the businesses there. He's really incredible.

In that same vein is Adie Chapman from Oh Hey! WA over in Perth. She's someone who, again thinks with a community and values first mindset, looking at how tourism and walking tours can lift up the community.

Those are just three people, but I feel like we don't realise how much people working in tourism, and particularly walking tours and activity providers, are intentionally thinking about how they can do things well.

All of us are accountable to the communities we see on these tours, and we understand the impact we can have on businesses that are not getting foot traffic, so I think we just care a bit more.

I’d definitely recommend looking into tourism companies in Australia, but those are just three that I know personally.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?

I am a big believer in reading fiction books. I have a double degree in studies in religion and English literature. I love reading; it's the one hobby that I've managed to keep as She Shapes History has increasingly consumed to my life. I read lots of books throughout the week, and I have a soft spot for romance despite being a lesbian woman. I just love love.

Each year, I usually pick one really big book and I will read maybe a chapter a week, just so I can sit with it and read it closely. It's probably the one way that I still actively use that part of my degree.

Last year, I ended up reading Moby-Dick, and I read that regularly. I was reading a chapter every few days because they varied so much in length, and I think that was great. It's such a good book. It's an epic and a classic for a reason.

I would recommend for anyone to just pick a book that has nothing to do with your social enterprise and what you're doing. Moby-Dick has nothing to do with women's history. There’s maybe a loose link to tourism if you really squint, but honestly, it's got nothing to do with what I was doing. It's just a beautifully written book that teaches you so much about life, strategy, and friendship.

I would say pick a book- you can pick mine from last year, Moby-Dick, or you could pick a different one- but that would be my recommendation. Go read some fiction or even just some romance. That’s always great.