Eugenie Harvey

As Eugenie Harvey approached her 30th birthday in 2000, she decided to chuck in her career and move from Sydney to London to pursue her long-held dream of doing something to make the world a better place. 

Eugenie had spent the previous three years working at Rupert Murdoch’s pay television start up, FOXTEL, after working for the Sydney Theatre Company following her degree in Communications at the University of Technology, Sydney.

After arriving in London Eugenie had a short stint working for the Brunswick PR Group (following an even shorter stint as a stand up comic…), where a chance encounter with David Robinson OBE, founder of the East London charity Community Links (www.community-links.org), led to her once again chucking it all in – this time to join David as a volunteer to develop which has since become known as We Are What We Do (www.wearewhatwedo.org). We Are What We Do aims to inspire people to use their everyday actions to make a difference to some of the biggest problems we are all facing – climate change, community breakdown, threats to our security, humanitarian crises etc – and is rapidly becoming a global phenomenon.

Eugenie and David launched We Are What We Do in 2004 with the publication of a book called Change the World for a Fiver.  The book, which involved more than 100 people donating their time and talents, has gone on to sell nearly one million copies worldwide along with its sequel, Change the World 9 to 5.

In addition to the books, the small but dynamic organisation most famously teamed up with Anya Hindmarch to create the iconic “I’m Not A Plastic Bag” bag which sold out nationwide when it went on sale at Sainsbury’s in 2007 and caused riots in subsequent launches! 

Eugenie has been named among the FT’s Creative Business top 50, was featured in the book, Everyday Legends and is a highly sought after speaker, sharing the extraordinary stories behind the development of We Are What We Do.