Australian Communities Foundation Director, Glen Noonan, spent 33 years at professional services firm PwC including 24 years as a Partner before making a deliberate, and very personal, career shift to take up the role of CEO at Diabetes Victoria.

Glen’s son, Lochie, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when he was nine years old. Glen became personally involved in the work of Diabetes Victoria by joining the organisation’s board soon after the family received the diagnosis.

“Joining the board of Diabetes Victoria 12 years ago was my way of making a contribution,” Glen explains.

“I went on to join other not-for-profit boards, as well as taking on roles that focused on diabetes in the community because it was important to me to contribute at both a board level and a community level.

“I understood that I was in a fortunate position in my life and how I was able to care for my son, and I knew that was not necessarily representative of everyone who is impacted by diabetes.”

In this recent conversation with ACF, Glen shared his insights as a carer, his ambitions as CEO of Diabetes Victoria, and his thoughts on the role of philanthropy to support fairer outcomes for all Australians.

Did you think a role heading up a not-for-profit like Diabetes Victoria was going to be part of your career journey after spending more than three decades at PwC?

I was very fortunate in that PwC enabled me to have multiple careers within a career. I grew up in the country and didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I decided to study computer science and accounting at university to keep my options open. I joined PwC in a role that enabled me to do both IT work and accounting work and I was lucky to be given lots of opportunities to develop skills that ended up helping me progress through the ranks rapidly to make partner at a young age.

I’ve been involved with not-for-profits for the last 15 years and I knew diabetes was an incredibly important social issue as the fastest growing chronic condition in Australia.

As a parent of a child with type 1 diabetes, I know what it’s like when your child has hypos [hypoglycaemia] in the middle of the night and you stay up to constantly check blood sugars and you watch them yoyo up and down without getting any response. That’s a very difficult experience.

The thing with diabetes is that it’s a 24/7 condition. It’s a condition you can never take a break from and that means it has a significant mental load. We understand that people with diabetes make an extra 180 decisions a day to manage and monitor basic things that everyone else takes for granted.

It’s a serious, complex condition which can affect the entire body. It requires daily self-care and if complications develop, diabetes can affect quality of life and reduce life expectancy. It’s also the leading cause of blindness in adults and it’s a leading cause of kidney failure. People with diabetes are four times more likely to have a heart attack or stroke, one in three people with diabetes experience depression, and our First Nations community members have three times the rate of diabetes than non-Indigenous Australians.

Diabetes Victoria was an important support for our family while Lochie was growing up. We connected through the camps program, which brought kids living with diabetes together to learn from each other and build self-confidence.

So, when the leadership role at Diabetes Victoria became available, I knew it was the right time for me to make the shift from the corporate world to this position which is aligned to my personal ‘why and what and how’ I want to contribute to this particular societal issue.  

Being able to bring the experience and perspective of a carer to the leadership role, I believe, is really valuable.

What are you most excited about for the future at Diabetes Victoria?

I’m most excited by the opportunity to provide leadership and support to those who are affected by, or at risk of, diabetes.

Our team at Diabetes Victoria is committed to extending our reach across the state. Currently, there are around 374,000 people living with diabetes in Victoria – we anticipate this number will be 500,000 by 2026. We want to increase our impact to reach and support more of these people. As the peak body, our purpose is to amplify the voices of people who are living every day with this complex condition.

There’s so much to do across the spectrum of advocacy, policy, prevention programs, diabetes education and management, developing better and more innovative care pathways, increasing funding and research for diabetes and translating research into tangible outcomes and then putting all of that into the hands of people living with diabetes.

Diabetes Victoria has diversified its revenue stream by operating a commercial services arm, For Purpose Commercial Solutions. How does the service support other small-medium sized not-for-profit organisations?

It’s a service that was born out of necessity eight years ago from our own experience.

We have seen many not-for-profits struggle with areas around their technology and shared services, including membership and donor management, digital marketing, campaign delivery and call centres. These are all really important functions for not-for-profits but a lot of them don’t have the capability or the resources to be able to deliver quality services in areas like these that are important to their success.

We made an investment in all of these areas. We learned the lessons and made the decision to offer those services to other not-for-profits, for us to either implement and/or run in a cost-effective way on their behalf. When we provide these services to other not-for-profit organisations it frees them up to focus on their real cause.

Going forward, we will continue to expand and develop this offering.

Diabetes Victoria has had a low-cost Future Fund at Australian Communities Foundation since 2019. How will the Fund be used to help support the organisation’s programs, services and research?

We see the Fund as a really important way to help achieve our objectives of providing support, advice and a sense of community for people living with diabetes. We also love that Australian Communities Foundation and Diabetes Victoria share the same core values.

We plan to use the Fund to continue to provide opportunities that help deliver support through activities such as camps or new research.  

We’re driven by developing the next big breakthrough in treatment and care and being able to offer hope for a much-needed cure. To that end, the cure starts with research and improvements to quality of life for people affected by diabetes.

You’re also a Board Director at Australian Communities Foundation and Chair of ACF’s Finance, Risk, Audit & IT Committee – what are your thoughts on philanthropy’s role in the social sector?

The recent difficult times of Covid have certainly seen mental health and other issues brought to the fore and this is a significant issue within diabetes. I think these times have shone an even brighter light on the role of philanthropy in our community.

I believe philanthropy plays a hugely important role in our society to deliver fairer and more equitable outcomes to all Australians, particularly those who are marginalised and living with significant health issues. We see this with conditions such as diabetes, which comes with a huge mental burden, significant stigma and which is, of course, a growing health issue. There are significant opportunities for philanthropy to help support fairer outcomes.

Support Diabetes Victoria’s long-term sustainability

Make a donation to the Diabetes Victoria Future Fund to help support the organisation carry out its mission of empowering Victorians affected by diabetes into the future.