Featured | Leadership

Beyond the echo chamber and the keys to open-minded leadership

Ritchelle Drilon
August 5, 2026

Alice Spraggon spent her early career dealing with the fallout of broken systems. As a police officer in London, she arrested young people whose offenses stemmed from loneliness and neglect, while their parents never appeared, leaving social services to step in. She realised she was treating symptoms, not causes.

That insight, that systems often respond to crises rather than prevent them, has driven her career ever since. Today, with the social sector facing a cost-of-living crisis, housing emergency, and demand far exceeding supply, Alice says, “Too hard is no excuse.”

Alice Spraggon is VP of Content and Engagement at Clarity Global, having spent her career across government, not-for-profits, corporate, and philanthropy. Her work focuses on systems change, understanding where systems fail vulnerable people and redesigning them for better outcomes.

Q&A with Alice

What inspired you to pursue a career in the social sector?

I come from a family where service to the community is very important. It is a thread that my parents, perhaps unintentionally, wove into my upbringing and it certainly stuck.
At 19 I joined the police force in London. It wasn’t quite the community role that I’d imagined, with a lot of ‘public order’ policing at football matches and demonstrations. But when I wasn’t doing that, what I saw up close were families and communities which had been badly let down by the systems which were intended to support them.
In the district I was based in, there was a group of young people who were arrested quite often, on offenses that were largely driven by loneliness, boredom and disaffection. Their parents never sat in on their interviews, leaving local social services or young offender’s team to step in. I realised that we were just mopping up at the end. I was dealing with the symptoms of their rejection, not the cause. Something was broken here.
I wondered instead how we could give these young people the time and care they needed to stop the pattern or prevent this cycle. That’s how I found my way into social work and child protection.
In the years that followed, I’ve experienced the social sector from many perspectives.

What is the most fulfilling part of your work?

The possibility of systems change.
Systems change gets thrown around as the answer to so many things, and sometimes from powerful system actors who have failed to notice that they too are part of the system. To change systems, we must first understand our part within them and be open to changing ourselves.
SVA works within many systems, deliberately operating at the intersection between government, not-for-profits, corporate and philanthropy. We have a track record of leveraging those relationships to drive and demonstrate systems change.
Having worked in all these sectors, I know systems change takes time and tenacity. But instead of saying ‘there has to be a better way’, we actually explore what that could be. We test and refine new innovations, and work to have them taken up and scaled to the benefit of people and communities around Australia. That’s why SVA exists, and it’s what gets me up in the morning.

What is the most impactful project you have worked on so far?

I led a piece of family reunification work when I was working in child-protection, where I coordinated the reconnection of six siblings and their mother. The siblings were dispersed in different foster placements or had left care, and the mother had been denied contact whilst in custody. Facilitating their reconnection meant navigating a web of processes and permissions and overcoming the resistance of foster carers and others in the system. But I knew it was the right thing to do. I knew, that long after they had left the care system and become adults, that the effort would be worth it. This family would be forever changed because of the opportunity to reconnect. There are human stories like this one at the heart of every system. The nature of work in the social sector can be hard, but we have to put in the effort to make sure the inherent difficulty in the system isn’t passed on to recipients. It’s something I have kept front of mind across my career and I have found it central to SVA’s approach too. Whether it’s in the social value analyses our Consulting team does, or the innovative funding models we have coordinated to help scale the disability housing sector or to prevent people leaving prison from reoffending, the human experience is always at the centre of our work.

What are the biggest developments you have seen in the social sector so far?

I have seen over the past few years in Australia is a clear shift towards the systemic recognition that recipients of social and human services have a voice. It hasn’t always been the case. And sadly, it seems it has taken successive Royal Commissions to get here.

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing our sector nowadays?

Our world is grappling with the effects of some very serious compounding and intersecting challenges: our changing climate, tense global relations and conflict, food and resource scarcity.
It all wraps up for people and communities in a cost of living and housing crisis, and inevitably, those hit hardest are the people who were already experiencing the deepest disadvantage. There is a widening gap between those who live comfortably, and those who can’t make ends meet. We have a crisis of demand that the sector cannot meet.
But too hard is no excuse.
We have to put our collective expertise to work and bridge these unacceptable gaps in outcomes across the early years, education, housing and employment.

What emerging technology or trends do you believe will shape the sector’s future?

While I remain resolute in my view that we, as a society, must preserve the ‘human’ in human services, it would be foolish to think that the rapid rise of AI technology isn’t going to shape the way we manage processes, build networks, and design and scale solutions.
We need to take every opportunity to explore the possibilities, while safeguarding against the risks of this very powerful technology. Keeping people at the centre of that discovery process, ensuring the safety of staff, clients and partners, must be our first priority.
We should also embrace the possibility that, used effectively, AI might offer solutions to so-called wicked problems, accelerating evaluations of new programs and social innovations so that they can be brought to scale faster.

What advice would you give aspiring leaders in this sector?

Avoid getting stuck in an echo-chamber, listen to the views of people you disagree with, and don’t rely on the moral goodness of your position to convince others.
I know that spending time with people who disagree with you, or actively oppose your position, is wearing. But not to do so, means we don’t get the exposure to different perspectives and experiences.
User-centred practices require us to be open-minded and informed by the experiences of others. If, as leaders, we can’t practice this in all of our interactions, we cannot expect to lead organisations which put people and their experiences at the centre of what we do.

Tell us more about your organisation. What is something unique about it?

We were founded to speed up innovation in the social sector, leading the charge on problems which many people would deem ‘too hard’.
We uniquely work across business, government, community and philanthropic funders to influence systems change at all levels, so that more people and communities in Australia can thrive.
In a nation as vast as Australia, with a social system which is federated rather than moderated, the role SVA plays as a partner and convenor is perhaps more important today than it was when SVA was first founded 24 years ago.
We’re supporting people on the frontline of service delivery to redesign practice so that it is more inclusive and sustainable. We’re building the field, working with partners to define and measure what success looks like. And we’re advocating to put best practice at the heart of policy.

What leaders can take from this

Systems change begins with self-awareness. Organisations and institutions cannot transform systems without first recognising how their own decisions, practices and power contribute to existing outcomes.

Keep the human story visible. Policies, funding models and service systems can become abstract, but their consequences are always personal. Effective leaders work to ensure that complexity is not transferred to the people seeking support.

Leadership requires intellectual openness. Listening only to people who share our values or assumptions can narrow our understanding. Constructive engagement with disagreement strengthens decisions and helps leaders design services around real experiences.

Innovation must remain grounded in care. AI and other emerging technologies may help the sector evaluate, connect and scale more effectively. Their value, however, depends on whether safety, dignity and human experience remain central.

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