About Jo

Jo Burston is the founder and Managing Director of Job Capital, a company she grew from nothing to $40M in less than 5 years with a team of 12. She is also the co-founder and director of startup.business and founder and CEO of the social impact movement Inspiring Rare Birds.

Rare Birds works to promote opportunities for women in entrepreneurship and leadership and is working towards creating a truly diverse and inclusive business landscape. The business partners with startup.business to provide a blended learning environment in order to teach entrepreneurial skills and mindset to children and adults.

Jo collaborated with startup.business co-founder Dr Richard Seymour, from the University of Sydney Business School, to develop its first program taught in primary and secondary schools and was rolled out nationally in 2018.

Sharing entrepreneurial journeys is one of Rare Birds’ core offerings. Jo has so far published three books – Brilliant BusinessKids, Australia’s 50 Influential Women Entrepreneurs and #IFSHECANICAN. Brilliant BusinessKids is her most recent publication, launched in August 2016, and is a comic book showcasing the real-life stories of 12 children – many of whom have global enterprises. The book can be read as a standalone publication or as the course book for startup.business.

Jo has been recognised as one of Australia’s top entrepreneurs for the past six years and is a leading authority on global women’s entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship as a whole, and SMB markets. She was recently invited by Microsoft to address some of the 45,000 delegates at its Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto and also delivers a summer course on entrepreneurship at Oxford University, in the United Kingdom. In 2018 she was named Financial Review 100 Women of Influence Alumni and Optus My Business Businesswoman Of The Year.

Jo was the 2015 regional Oceania ambassador for the UN-recognised Women’s Entrepreneurship Day and is currently or has previously been on the boards of:

• YPO global steering committee for D&I
• Lamborghini Female Advisory Board
• University of Sydney Business School.
• University of Sydney Innovation and Entrepreneur Advisory Group.
• Victorian Government startup and innovation initiative – LaunchVIC.
• TEDx curatorial advisory panel
• Entrepreneurs Organisation board (learning chair and strategic alliance chair over 6 years)

Jo is an active mentor for fast growth entrepreneurs, both men and women, and is passionate about encouraging young Australians to endeavour to find out exactly who it is that they want to become, and create their own jobs to achieve this.

Jo has been invited to speak at events for the Prime Minister’s Office and Cabinet (Women’s Alliance Summit), Office For Women, DFAT, ASEAN-Australia Entrepreneur Business Forum, Google, Microsoft (WPC & APC) Dropbox, Xero, EY, Commbank, Women In Focus, National Achievers Congress, Westpac, CPA, Women’s Agenda, Startup VIC, General Assembly, VIVID, LinkedIn, Are you Ok?, Charter Hall, Cancer Council, UTS, UNSW, Sydney University, First Robotics Mass Challenge, Entrepreneurs Organisation (EO), Young Presidents Organisation (YPO), G20YEA Summit, Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI), Innovation Bay, Women in VC, Innovation Aus, Australian Computer Society, Pearcey Foundation Award, Macquarie Bank, Maddocks Lawyers, Business Romantics, RWIRE, Laing and Simmons, Conscience.org, Oxford University, AFR, BRW,  ARC training Center for Innovative BioEngineering at the University of Sydney, Qantas, TEDx, ASEAN Summit, Flying Solo with David Koch, American Express hosted by Andrew Banks and Tennis Australia during the 2017 Australian Open. Jo has been invited many times to appear and react for Sky News Business and for major media outlets like Fairfax, NewsCorp, BRW, AFR, SMH and Forbes.

She was also invited to speak on the world’s first inflight Tech Talk in collaboration with TEDxSydney and Qantas, and participated in government-level discussions about funding for women in STEM and Entrepreneurship. Jo attended a roundtable by invitation from The Prime Minister and the top 20 heads of entrepreneurship and innovation in Australia across academia, industry and government, which resulted in the release of Australia’s Innovation paper in 2015.

In addition, she has advised the State Government (SMB Minister, Minister for Women and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) and was on the Board of Directors for the LaunchVIC initiative, a 60 million dollar body designed by the Victorian Government to accelerate startups. Jo also partnered with DFAT and Australian High Commission in PNG to launch Inspiring Rare Birds in 2019.

Her philanthropic interests include Dress For Success, Cancer Council, Project Futures, School of Life Foundation and Aim For The Stars Foundation. Jo has a special and deep interest in education and Fiji and in 2017 formed the “RakiRaki Schools Donor Initiative” where she mobilised over 2000kg of education material and books for primary schools post Cyclone Winston.