Dr Linh Nguyen’s award-winning course project inspires future business leaders to learn from Indigenous knowledges and reimagine sustainability and responsible leadership to create meaningful, lasting impact through UNSW’s Social Entrepreneurship Practicum.
Takeaways:
You’d be forgiven for thinking students gathered amongst the rows of colourful plants at IndigiGrow’s native nursery in La Perouse are science majors. Although they learned about flora preservation and bush foods, the UNSW Business students were there to learn how to become sustainability-focused entrepreneurs and leaders.
The On-Country experience was part of Social Entrepreneurship Practicum, a work-integrated learning (WIL) course at the UNSW Centre for Social Impact. For many people studying business, the course offers an opportunity to work on real-world projects and apply what they’ve learned at university to address social and environmental challenges.
That kind of perspective explains why Dr Linh Nguyen, who leads the Centre’s WIL courses, wanted to be a teacher from a young age.
“My aspiration is for students to graduate as purpose-driven professionals and leaders,” she says.
“That is why I try to move them beyond learning about social impact and sustainability to experiencing how it is created in practice.”
The Social Entrepreneurship Practicum provides approximately 200 students each term the chance to explore how social enterprises use business as a vehicle to address social and environmental challenges. Through the course, they develop professional skills and new perspectives, and work on a real challenge within the ambiguity and resource constraints of a social enterprise partner.
A featured project involved a collaboration with IndigiGrow, a 100% Aboriginal-owned social enterprise founded by Peter Cooley, a UNSW CSI alumnus, forming the basis of a final group assessment. Students developed social impact reports analysing IndigiGrow’ impact across five sustainability -aligned pillars: bush foods; employment; skills and training; retail and education and communicated these impacts to diverse stakeholders.
The project enabled students to apply sustainability concepts in practice while learning how Indigenous knowledges and perspectives can inform sustainable development.
Through in-class engagement with IndigiGrow, an On-Country excursion and the social impact report project, students learned about the organisation’s philosophy and model, explored native plants and bush foods and learned about relationships between land, plants, community and ecological well-being.
Dr Nguyen says the engagement helped the cohort connect business practices with sustainability
“It strengthened their understanding of how sustainability operates in practice while fostering a sense of purpose and aspiration to make meaningful contributions.”
Dr Nguyen’s MBA gave her a strong understanding centred around efficiency and commercial performance, while her PhD focused on social entrepreneurship and its impact. These experiences have defined her approach ever since: that business can be a vehicle for both economic value and positive social and environmental impact.
“For me, teaching social entrepreneurship is about helping students rethink what business is for,” Dr Nguyen says.
“I want to teach them to collaborate responsibly, think beyond short-term gains, and understand that whatever sector they enter, they can contribute to meaningful and sustainable change.”
And incorporating Indigenous knowledges into her courses is now at the centre of her approach.
“Many students learn about sustainability, systems thinking, circular economy and think they’re modern concepts,” she explains.
“But when they learn about Indigenous knowledges, they see these underlying principles and ways of thinking have been practised for many thousands of years.”
And, according to Dr Nguyen, the lessons they provide are invaluable.
The SDGs are designed to be interconnected, yet research shows that sustainability can still be implemented in fragmented ways. Indigenous knowledges as living knowledge systems offer holistic and relational perspectives that recognise the deep connections among people, Country, culture, community, economic activity, biodiversity and wellbeing across generations.
These perspectives challenge dominant anthropocentric worldviews that that place humans above nature and prioritise economic growth over ecological and social wellbeing. They invite us to rethink sustainability through caring for Country, continuing culture, strengthening connections to Country and community, creating economic and social value in ways that support collective and ecological wellbeing.
The SDGs are designed to be interconnected, yet research shows that sustainability can still be implemented in fragmented ways. Indigenous knowledges as living knowledge systems offer holistic and relational perspectives that recognise the deep connections among people, Country, culture, community, economic activity, biodiversity and wellbeing across generations.
These perspectives challenge dominant anthropocentric worldviews that that place humans above nature and prioritise economic growth over ecological and social wellbeing.
They invite us to rethink sustainability through caring for Country, continuing culture, strengthening connections to Country and community, creating economic and social value in ways that support collective and ecological wellbeing.
The difference can be seen in how decisions get made. Indigenous approaches encourage perspectives beyond the organisation and its direct stakeholders, teaching students to question how decisions may impact Country, community, culture and future generations. They also emphasise collective discussion and how decisions can reflect shared responsibilities and community priorities.
For students, Dr Nguyen explains, this can fundamentally broaden how they think about sustainable development and how they understand responsible leadership, value creation and sustainable business.
“Listening to IndigiGrow’s story and journey helped me better understand the role Indigenous social enterprises play in creating social and environmental impact.” Social Entrepreneurship Practicum student
From helping students understand how sustainability is operationalised to developing their collaboration and community engagement skills, integrating partnerships into learning gives participants an experience that is impossible to replicate in the classroom.
One student noted, “visiting the nursery and seeing the native plants firsthand was a highlight; it brought the project to life and helped me appreciate the cultural and ecological significance of native species.”
Another reflected that “Peter's passion and insights gave me a new perspective on Indigenous-led sustainability initiatives,”
“Social Impact work-integrated learning changes the meaning of the assessment,” Dr Nguyen says.
Students are not simply completing a project as an academic assignment. They know there is a real organisation, a real challenge and a real audience for their work. Their learning also has a purpose: to create meaningful value to the social enterprise partner they collaborate.
One student shares “Having a real company to work with made the assignments feel more valuable and impactful”
While the another reflects “I really enjoy the experience of being able to contribute towards writing a social impact report that could help a social enterprise strengthen its stakeholder relationships through this” and that “I learned the importance of collaboration, also learned the importance of social impact.”
Dr Nguyen’s approach to integrating SDGs and Indigenous knowledges into her teaching won UNSW’s SDG Showcase People’s Choice Award in 2026. And she’s not slowing down. She’s continuing her partnership with IndigiGrow to encourage future leaders see business differently.
Dr Nguyen and UNSW staff are collaborating with IndigiGrow founder Peter Cooley and other Indigenous leaders to develop educational resources that focus on Indigenous approaches to business sustainability.
The collaboration with IndigiGrow extended beyond teaching to contribute to broader scholarship through the co-development of a teaching case study with the UNSW CSI team and Peter Cooley.
Sage Business Social Impact - Measuring and Demonstrating the Social Impact of an Indigenous Social Enterprise: The IndigiGrow Case Study was published in Sage Business Social Impact which can be used in global classrooms that highlights the critical role of Indigenous epistemologies in shaping relational, holistic and community engaged approaches to sustainability and impact measurement.
“Ultimately, the aim is to move students beyond simply knowing what the SDGs are,” Dr Nguyen says.
“We want them to develop the capability to navigate complexity, recognise different ways of knowing, collaborate responsibly and make more thoughtful sustainability decisions in their future careers.