Who is Sinead Singh?

She’s a proud Wiradjuri and Indian woman who has grown up walking between cultures. A successful businesswoman, the founder of First Nations StartUp, a mentor and a coach, Sinead uses her life experience and expertise to empower communities and budding entrepreneurs. 

Sinead was born on Ngunnawal Country (Queanbeyan) and raised on the Gold Coast & Tweed (Kombumerri & Bundjalung), where she has lived most of her life. Her parents are proud Wiradjuri people, and her dad has connections to the Ngiyampaa Tribe tribe from the Cobar region as well as Indian heritage. 

Sinead describes growing up with “strong cultural parents” who ensured she knew about her Indian and Aboriginal heritage. Her journey to standing strong in her cultural identity hasn’t been easy, and it is one people should know about. 

Sinead was born in Ngunnawal Country (Queanbeyan). Source: VisitNSW

Quite early in her career, Sinead realised she had a gift for “spotting gaps” and entrepreneurship, and was determined to use those to support her people and their businesses. She moved into the world of consulting and founded First Nation Start Up four years ago. At the time, her marriage of 10 years had broken up, she had five operating businesses, all of which required her to be on-site, and she was about to become a single mother. “It was a lot,” she says.

But her inspiration to keep going came from her community. First Nation Start Up is a business accelerator and consulting agency that specialises in restoring the Indigenous circular economy one community at a time. As a founder, her goal is to see more accelerators, business support services and consultancy services built, owned, operated and maintained by mob. At the heart of the business, Sinead believes it is the emotional support the company provides that makes the biggest impact.

“Most of our clients will come to us for motivation - they want to yarn to us directly and know they are moving in the right direction”.

First Nation Start Up’s goal is to see more accelerators, business support services and consultancy services built, owned, operated and maintained by mob. Source: First Nation Startup website

Sinead’s energy and passion for her work are infectious. She is motivated by seeing First Nations people emotionally and economically empowered, and understanding they have choices and don’t have to be part of the system. “When that takes place it makes my heart grow”.

As a founder, she has established a strong business commitment to cultural integrity, both in how they work, and whom they do business with. She is proud that they can say no to working with companies that don’t align with their values, which often means saying no to big government contracts as well as “money companies". 

She believes that cultural identity and values are inextricably entwined with how you build a business. “It's like two ropes twisting together – pulling in the ropes to get them where they need to be to make it strong.”

But she’s not always been so strong or proud of her cultural identity.

Like many people from diverse cultural backgrounds in Australia, Sinead struggled with her cultural identity for many years. She experienced a sense of shame and secrecy in her cultural identity for years, and would  tell people she didn’t know that she was Indian as it was safer than saying she was Aboriginal. 

As a young girl, she grew up “feeling like an imposter in [her] own country". 

Her school years were clouded by racism directed toward First Nations kids and navigating a heated political environment. Sinead recounts how she would spend weekends sitting at the tent embassy with her nan and then coming to school to experience racist comments such as ‘you just can’t educate aboriginal black kids”.

“The shame, it has always been there.”

The impact of these years on Sinead was profound.

“I thought I [was] stupid all my life just because I am Aboriginal, and I had huge imposter syndrome at uni thinking that I didn’t belong there, that these were not my people”.

But all of this started to change when she started to connect with other Aboriginal and South Asian kids and all the “other kids every which way”, she says with a wry smile. This connection gave her a glimpse that she was not an imposter and that this was her country. 

In talking with Sinead, I am reminded how complex this process of making and growing into your cultural identity can be and how you carry the stories of your ancestors with you. 

Her great great grandfather came from India with his brother and they both married Aboriginal women. Her grandfather wouldn’t talk about their past in India or answer questions about this part of their identity. It was a time when people were told to ”shut up about their indigenous history”, when there were still massacres and genocide happening. “I can understand completely why any brown person from anywhere [at that time] would be shutting up about their background”.

Source: Linkedin @ Sinead Singh

Generations later, Sinead now holds dear a strong connection to her family and her First Nations and South Asian community, and a growing desire to know more about her South Asian identity. 

She says these communities have been her saving grace during the hardest times of her life, for which she is very grateful. She wears her last name ‘Singh’ loud and proud and so does the rest of her family.  “It's only in the last year that I have completely let go of shame completely – and that has really been a powerful thing.”

I comment on her wisdom, and Sinead tells the story of waking up one day and seeing things differently.  “I could never look back and see things through sad eyes and generational trauma again.”

I had to be a leader in breaking the generational trauma and curses of my family, in changing the narrative that people couldn’t be trusted, and in helping people build businesses.

Almost as if Biami (god in Wiradjuri) - opened my eyes one day and told me to never look back - And I never did.

You can connect with Sinead Singh via Linkedin and learn more about First Nation Start Up here. 

Swagata is an executive coach and facilitator who is passionate about promoting community mental health and wellbeing, and facilitating people and organisations to reach their true potential. She has 30 years’ experience in the mental health and wellbeing space and has worked with leading mental health and wellbeing organisations, and State and Federal Government bodies across her career. You can connect with Swagata via Linkedin.