We have decades of experience working in and with for-purpose organisations to create change.
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.
PRISM is a social change collective founded by May Miller-Dawkins and Jo Taylor.
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 Taylor has spent 30 years working at the intersection of philanthropy, organisational leadership, and social change, as a funder, an executive, a program designer, and a practitioner.
She has distributed more than $400 million in philanthropic funding and raised over $100 million for for-purpose organisations. At the Paul Ramsay Foundation, she was part of the leadership team from the beginning, helping build one of Australia's most influential philanthropic institutions from a $4 billion start-up through three strategic iterations. She was the founding Executive Chair of the Pay What It Takes initiative, which has reshaped how Australian funders think about the true cost of impact. She is the inaugural CEO of the Siddle Family Foundation, a steering committee member of Resource Generation and an Ambassador of Rainbow Giving.
Jo is an Adjunct Professor at UNSW Business School and the creator of The Giving Academy at UNSW's Centre for Social Impact, Australia's flagship learning program for the philanthropic ecosystem. She has spent two decades designing and leading leadership programs for social change leaders, philanthropic executives, women and emerging leaders nationally and internationally.
She is a researcher, a Leap Ambassador, and the executive producer of The Announcement — a three-part podcast documentary examining Patagonia's transfer of ownership and what reimagined capitalism might mean for the climate crisis.
At PRISM, Jo brings that full range to every engagement: the hard-won understanding of what it takes to lead a for-purpose organisation, a particular skill for creating the conditions where difficult conversations become possible, and the ability to help others find their own version of clarity.
Jo lives on Gumbaynggirr land, moving between Sydney and Bellingen, with her partner and two sons.
We work collaboratively and draw on the rich experience of Members of the Collective.
Working in 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.