There has been a trend in recent years to revisit the way we work and live. The onset of COVID-19 this year has accelerated that process and forced on us all a readier acceptance of new ways of doing things.

The need for change has occupied George Liberopoulos for some years. Over 18 months ago, the former senior executive joined forces with former colleague Rita Cincotta to found Impactology as a means to help businesses to generate strategies that went beyond pure profit incentives to do good in the community as a whole.

This month the organisation is hosting Impactology Live2020, a three-day virtual event that is aimed at individuals who wish to make an impact on the community. Mr Liberopoulos said he expected over 10,000 people to follow the event online.

“It takes one conversation to trigger a thought to set up a path to change or to plant a seed of thought that along with other ideas picked up along the way will inspire one to go along a different path,” Mr Liberopoulos told Neos Kosmos.

“We are not a not-for-profit organisation. We have developed from delivering corporate programs to develop better leaders.”

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Over the three days of the event the speakers that will help create an impact and help to inspire participants include: Greek writer and founder of the not-for-profit organisation Women on Top Stella Kasdagli; US-based Melbournian Dimitra Manis who is the Chief People Officer for S&P Global; Houston-born Roula Christie who is one of the biggest radio hosts in the US; Tassos Katsaounis a Texan entrepreneur of Greek descent who founded The Bread Man Baking Co, one of the fastest growing businesses in Texas; as well as Peter Parthimos, the founder and CEO of Futsal Oz and Harry Korras, the CEO Life Worldwide.

Mr Liberopoulos said other inspirational speakers to feature in Impactology Live included Australian Sue Brierly, the mother of Saroo, the author of A Long Way Home which inspired the movie Lion starring Nicole Kidman; Israeli Rami Elhanan and Palestinian Bassam Aramin whose story inspired the novel Apeirogon by Colum MaCann.

“I had a corporate role for many years and left that to start my own business, a management consultancy focusing on helping businesses grow in meaningful ways. Rita (a former colleague) was an executive at Swinburne University focusing on Human Resources,” Mr Liberopoulos said.

“We decided to do something together as our values aligned. We set up Impactology as a way of developing and growing leaders to have more impact. Big corporates came to us asking us to develop people to be better corporate leaders.

“We need a better way to conduct ourselves with out family, our community and work. These all need to be aligned – you cannot be amazing at work and not look after the other aspects,” Mr Liberopoulos said.

Impactology, he said, was created to deliver programs to deliver impact and it found favour with corporates in Australia and across the globe. The founders began to look at launching programmes that would be aimed more at individuals when the COVID-19 pandemic set in earlier this year.

“COVID-19 fast-tracked the development of Impactology. We saw with COVID this was the time to create a community of Impactologists to inspire and share ideas. This is a time where we need to adapt and evolve.

“We started with free webinars to help individuals and brought in psychologists and experts in their fields to help. The response to our ideas was very sympathetic.

“We are now at a point where have over 30 speakers linked through a proper television studio with a producer to deliver quality content during the three-day event. The talks will be streamed live through the organisation’s Facebook page.

“This will not be a workshop of panel discussion. Rita and I will interview the speakers individually. The aim tis to provide authentic messages that speak to individual people and their challenges. The talks are about connecting with people who build and advance.

“When ideas collide, things can never go back to what they were before,” said Mr Liberopoulos.

♦ Impactology Live 2020 will be held 19 to 21 November from 8am to 5pm each day.  For more information go to the Impactology website.