Raymond Ingrey

The Bachelor of Business Administration (Indigenous) is a premier course designed for Indigenous Australian professionals wishing to gain a degree qualification and maximise their career options. Find out more here. 

I really did it to challenge myself. Being in a number of leadership positions, both professionally and in my voluntary roles in the community, one of the things that I wasn’t really confident in was around actual business management understanding, the money and finances. I identified that I wanted to go down that path of better understanding how the whole business concept works.

I also identified that in our community, we’ve got to be less reliant on government funding, and more looking at how we can actually get better in the business world and start to become economically sustainable, and what better way than to do the BBA course and get into it? When we’re talking about creating a business model and fully understanding, sometimes you’ve got to be less reliant on bringing the skill set in, and rather build capacity within, and that’s why I’m doing the BBA course – to build capacity within.
 

In the past there’s sort of been Mickey Mouse courses established for Aboriginal people, so sometimes there's the perception that it’s watered down or it’s made easy just to get Aboriginal people to pass. I was under the assumption that maybe the BBA might be that. But it’s actually the Business School that delivers it, so the same lectures that we get, the mainstream school get as well. I want to put in effort like any other person; I want to get it on my learning merits, not just pushed through because I’m Aboriginal.
 

With my previous experience, there’s a lot of stuff that’s crystallizing because it’s explained properly, and explained in a way that it’s received well. In Principles of Money and Finance, just unpacking your financial statements – I’ve looked at financial statements for the last 10 or so years, and really didn’t understand much and relied on other people to give me that advice. Now I have the skillset to unpack it and ask questions myself. I’m already asking questions that I wouldn’t have asked in the past. It is challenging, especially when we leave here and you’ve got your own family and work life and all your other commitments, but that’s something we’re balancing well. 
 

Having that formal qualification will open up doors. In the past a lot of my role has been Aboriginal focused; in regards to they put Aboriginal people into roles to give government advice from an Aboriginal perspective. But what this could do is actually give me the confidence and skillset to go for jobs that aren’t Aboriginal identified or Aboriginal focused. I could see myself going into the business management unit within government, or into finances. Once I finish the BBA I’d probably want to look at what options there are to do further courses around business administration, or go into a specific area like accounting or marketing. 
 

We’re all challenged to ensure that we’re socially, culturally and economically safe, and I suppose for black fellas, we need to get into the economy. The only way that I see us doing that and being sustainable is to start creating enterprises and get into the mainstream economy of Australia. To maximise our economic base that we have now we really need to start to get into it and actually start to upskill ourselves and build our own capacity, and getting involved in a program like the BBA is critical. To have access to the UTS Business School that’s got a great reputation is pretty unique for Aboriginal people. I would encourage anyone that’s an entrepreneur or in leadership positions, or that wants to have the skill set to better understand the world that we’re living in and where we’re going, to have a go and investigate the BBA program.