Our team has decades of experience working in and with for-purpose organisations to create change. 

PRISM Co is a social change collective working with leaders in philanthropy and civil society.We don’t solve problems for clients. We create the conditions for them to discover what they’re already capable of — and to work out their role in the bigger change that’s possible.That distinction matters. It’s the difference between receiving an answer and building the capacity to keep finding them.

We Value

Clarity

We help organisations see what they already know. We don’t impose a lens — we create the conditions under which clarity emerges. And we stand in clarity about our own work: we know who we are, and we don’t take on work that’s not ours.

Curiosity

There are no rote processes here and no predetermined answers. Each engagement is its own light source, refracting differently. We approach every piece of work as a genuine inquiry — and we expect the same from the people we work with.

Care

We see people. We trust in everyone’s innate capacity for insight, creativity and deep reflection. The relational dimension of this work isn’t a soft add-on — it’s the condition under which real thinking becomes possible.

Contribution

We are participants in the same story as our clients, not external experts. Our work is in service of a sector that is building toward deeper, more collective ways of working — and we hold ourselves to the same standard we’re helping others reach.

Founders

May Miller-Dawkins – Founder, Aotearoa New Zealand

May has over 20 years experience working with community groups, social enterprises, for-purpose organisations, coalitions and social movements to support and understand effective and long-term social change efforts and build collective leadership capability. She is a highly skilled facilitator of catalytic discussions that identify pathways to impact and of action learning amongst leaders within or across sectors. 

She has a particular talent for cultivating collective leadership including through cross sectoral collaborations such as establishing the ten-year long Oxfam-Monash Partnership to drive applied action research, and designing and leading the Governance and Transparency Initiative of The B Team – a global collective of business and civic leaders.

May has led learning and impact development processes for Open Government Partnership (Washington DC), Transparency International (Berlin), Yuwaya Ngarra-li partnership between the Dharriwaa Elders Group and UNSW (Walgett & Sydney), The B Team (New York), WEDO (New York), Toitū Tahua (Tamaki Makarau/Auckland), White Box Enterprises (Brisbane) and many more. 

May is an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the UNSW and a Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development. She holds a BA (Hons – Politics and International Relations) and LLB from UNSW and an LLM (Legal Theory) from NYU. 

May lives in Whakatū (Nelson), Aotearoa (New Zealand) with her partner, two sons and dog.

Jo Taylor – Founder, Australia

Jo has 25+ years of leading for-purpose organisations. Over her career, she has raised over $100m leading for-purpose organisations and has distributed more than $400m globally through philanthropic organisations. Jo is the inaugural CEO of the Siddle Family Foundation, a non-executive director of Philanthropy Australia, the inaugural Executive Chair of the Pay What it Takes initiative, a Leap Ambassador, and an advisor to numerous philanthropic organisations. 

This experience has given Jo a deep understanding of the challenges of building resilient organisations focusing on impact and a burning passion for leaders to do their best work and look after themselves. Jo has designed and led reflective leadership retreats and action learning programs for social change leaders, LGBTQI leaders, young leaders, social entrepreneurs, women, culturally and linguistically diverse leaders, directors and philanthropic leaders nationally and internationally.

Jo holds a LLB from Leicester University and a global MBA from Sydney University. Jo has studied adaptive leadership at Harvard (US), international public policy at Lee Kuan Yew School of public policy (Singapore), AI and technology (USYD) and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. 

Jo moves between Sydney and Bellingen, and lives on Gumbaynggirr land, with her partner and two sons.

We work collaboratively and draw on the experience of relevant advisors for specific projects.

We are grateful for recent collaborations with:

“May and Jo bring a level of sophistication in systems thinking that is rare — but equally important is the way they make that sophistication accessible. They design and facilitate processes that invite depth, honesty and clarity, and then translate what emerges into something that resonates not just with theorists, but with practitioners, leaders and partners who are working in and for their communities every day.”

– Lottie Turner, CEO Health Justice Australia


Members of the Collective

PRISM Co is a social change collective. The people who work within it are Members of the Collective — not contractors in the conventional sense, but practitioners who share the theory of change and way of working. Founders May Miller-Dawkins and Jo Taylor work alongside Members of the Collective who bring their own expertise, practice and point of view. What they share is the conviction that transformation is unlocked from within, not delivered from outside.

Meet Members of the Collective here.

We work across both Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

While these countries have vastly different histories, they both feature the violent colonisation of the Indigenous Peoples, the effects of which remain present in systems and institutions, and are lived by people every day.

In Aotearoa, we want to acknowledge Te Tiriti o Waitangi as the founding document of the country and the enduring, unperishable tino rangatiratanga of mana whenua and their right to mana motuhake. We support constitutional reform leading to co-governance, land back and pathways to reconciliation through justice. We give form to these commitments through a range of active efforts in both our working and personal lives. 

In Australia, we acknowledge the traditional owners of land and waters of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and that sovereignty was never ceded. We pay our respects to Elders past and present. We believe in the self determination of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and that community control, leadership and return of Country is essential for justice and self determined futures. We are privileged to learn from and with Elders on the lands we work on. 

We acknowledge we are on a continued journey to decolonise systems, our work and ourselves. We are committed to our ongoing learning and unlearning, and to consistently reflecting on whether or not our efforts and contributions enable or undermine self determination, Indigenous control and justice. Though imperfect, we remain persistent. We welcome your feedback.