On Thursday 21st June, six of GB’s executives participated in the CEO Sleepout in both Brisbane and Canberra; experiencing for one night the tough conditions that over 116,000 homeless Australians go through everyday.

For over a decade, Vinnies have been running their annual CEO Sleepout, where many of Australia's top executives sleep rough for the longest and coldest night of winter, to address homelessness in our community and help change the lives of Australians in need.

Even our Gentle Bears couldn’t keep the GB team warm, at minus four at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra for Stacey Williams - Executive Director of Sales, Account Management and Marketing and Drew Spilsbury - Executive Director of Marketing and Communications. While Brisbane’s Powerhouse was not putting on any power temperatures for Damien Gilhooley - Executive Director of Strategic Development, Pete Nicholson - Chief Financial Officer, Chenoa Daley - General Manager of People and Performance and Pete Tomkins - General Manager of Specialty Markets, at two degrees.

In addition to sleeping rough for the night, the GB team raised an amazing $23,564.18, with GB matching employee donations dollar for dollar, helping Vinnies to give disadvantaged Australians a safe and secure place to call home.

We asked the GB team how they found the experience first hand:

“A truly humbling experience and I gained a deeper insight into the frustrations, humiliation and experience the homeless encounter on a daily basis.” – Damien Gilhooley

“Thank you to the Culture Champions, our GB supporters and all the sponsors for giving us this amazing opportunity. The Sleepout organisers had us take on the character of a homeless person and ‘put us in the system’ and it was so frustrating as we were told to go from government department to department. So while it was a small insight into of the day in the life of someone living in homelessness, I did actually feel that we walked in their shoes for a 12 hour period and now I have even more appreciation for the truly inspiring people who help homeless people in so many ways. Some people in this society really are heroes.” – Chenoa Daley

“All I did was take one night out of my comfy life and rough it a little. It was the Culture Champions who had the vision and did the bulk of the work. I received an email from an employee afterwards, ‘I am so grateful to work for a company that is so compassionate to the community, with both the gentle bear programme and having CEOs who would be willing to put themselves in such discomfort’” – Pete Tomkins

“What a humbling experience! I feel so much more educated and understand we all have a role to play in preventing poverty.” – Stacey Williams

“This was such an eye opening experience and I just wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone who contributed, and especially to our amazing culture champions Liv, Jacintha, Nicola and Teresa for all their work pulling this together.” – Drew Spilsbury

“I was blown away by the support that GB has shown for this important cause, demonstrating once again the values of our organisation and deep care for those in difficult situations.  It is this concern for others that underpins our work as a third party administrator.” – Pete Nicholson

Thank you to all who donated to the GB team for this amazing cause, we look forward to seeing our Executives take up the challenge again in 2019.

(L-R) Drew Spilsbury  and Stacey Williams

(L-R) Pete Nicholson, Pete Tomkins, Chenoa Daley and Damian Gilhooley