Creating a more accepting world: finding purpose in inclusion

Grant Barton: diversity and inclusion consultant - Sydney, Australia

This article is based on two conversations with Sydney-based Grant Barton – the first when he was seven weeks into his new role, the second at twelve weeks. In our first conversation, he walked me through his path from advertising into diversity and inclusion. In the second, we went deeper into some of the obstacles he overcame along the way, and what it really means to care so much about your work that you upend your entire life for it.

(Rather watch the full recordings? Here you go!)

“There were mornings I’d wake up crying because I was just so exhausted,” says Grant. “I didn’t know how I was going to handle the day…I was working with LA at 6am, with London at 11pm, and doing a full day in the middle…My body just wasn’t able to keep up with what I was trying to make it do…That’s when I got to the point where I thought ‘I can’t do this anymore’.”

Seven weeks in

Grant is discovering what it feels like to wake up genuinely excited about the day ahead. Yes, even on Monday. “I have to go to campus then, too – it’s not even a work from home day and I still look forward to it!”

As a senior consultant in diversity and inclusion (D&I) at Sydney’s Macquarie University, he’s working to create environments where everyone can show up as themselves without fear. He’s found his purpose and he’s thriving. “I’ve only been in this role for seven weeks. So, it’s still very, very new to me. I think you can see when I’m talking about it, I’m smiling. Like I really, really enjoy it.”

But it’s taken him 20 years to get here.

An accidental advertising career

Grant never intended to work in advertising. Growing up in rural New South Wales, he’d wanted to become a criminal psychologist. But his careers advisor insisted he’d be better suited to merchant banking. This didn’t fill Grant with joy, so he opened a university guidebook at random, “How does advertising at the University of Canberra sound?”

Perhaps fate was on his side that day. “Advertising’s a little bit like psychology, right?” says Grant, “We’re trying to convince people to do things and change their behaviours, so it’s a pretty good compromise.”

For a while, he loved it, “I was really living the dream,” working on big campaigns alongside colleagues who became friends. “There were tough days, but the fun at the end was worth it.”

The slow burn

Then he moved to Japan for six years and the pressure ramped up. Sometimes he’d be on set for 17 hours. “It was exhausting. And then there’d be a $200 cab ride home.” The glamour was gone.

Things didn’t ease up when he returned to Australia. Working on a global brand meant brutal hours: LA at 6am, London at 11pm, and everything in between. “Sometimes at Christmas I’d take my laptop home, just in case. Looking back, this was advertising: what kind of emergency could we have?!”

He took it seriously because he cares about people, “I carry a huge weight of responsibility. I’m the kind of person that can’t let anybody down. I kill myself to make sure I don’t drop the ball.” Anything he didn’t do would fall to his team – and he refused to do that to them.

But something had to give.

The breaking point

“It sounds like a midlife crisis,” he jokes, but swears it wasn’t. Turning 40 was a natural opportunity to stop and reflect, “Is this really what I want to be doing with my life?” He knew he needed things to change. But burnout was already closing in.

“I’d wake at 3am in a sweat thinking, ‘I forgot to do that!’”, emailing colleagues in LA begging for help. Nervous sweats. Panic attacks, “probably not worth panicking about, because it was just advertising – we’re not saving lives.” But knowing that’s one thing; changing your mindset’s another. “It got to a point where my body wasn’t able to keep up.”

While he loved his colleagues, it came at the cost of other relationships, including with his long-term partner, Pat. “You end up spending more time with people at work than the people you live with.”

Grant was at breaking point. And that’s when fate stepped in.

The fire

His dedication hadn’t gone unnoticed. The Advertising Council of Australia asked if he’d like to lead an initiative helping educate agencies around the country on how to work better with the LGBTIQ+ community.

Grant didn’t know it yet, but he’d just found his purpose. “It was like a fire had been lit in my belly – I thought ‘This is what I need to be doing!’” And the initiative was a huge success.

Carrying on in his current role was clearly unsustainable. So, Pat offered him a lifeline. “We’re lucky,” he told Grant, “We’re in a position where you can take a break…I’d rather struggle for a bit than have you go through this.”

So, “I quit my job with nothing to go to, because I knew I needed to focus my energy on building connections in the D&I space – so I could start to forge a career doing things I really cared about.”

Five months in the wilderness

Buoyed by purpose and hope, Grant began applying for jobs. But the rejections started coming in. And they didn’t stop.

“I’d been told transferable skills are all the rage – that’s all employers care about. They’re not.” Over five months he applied for 78 jobs, and every single one was a generic ‘Thanks but no thanks’. No feedback. Nothing. “I even applied for a job doing what I used to do as I just needed to get back into work. And I got rejected from that too. So I slammed my laptop shut and thought this is bullsh*t. I’m done.”

His mental and physical health started to crumble. It got to a point where, “I didn’t have a reason to get out of bed…I was the heaviest I’d ever been in my life.” He knew he needed to break the cycle.

First, he had to stop himself from lying in bed all day, “Because if you’re not working, you’ve got no reason to get up.” Every night, he’d set his alarm for 6.30am, and every morning he’d force himself to go for a walk. “I found that getting out and getting sunlight set me up for a great day.” The science suggests walking can help calm the amygdala – the part of the brain linked to fear and anxiety.

Then, once he’d started to feel brighter, he took up swimming lessons, going back to basics in the pool. Learning a new skill can help develop a growth mindset, building the confidence to embrace challenges rather than avoid them. “That’s what got me through,” he says.

Looking back, Grant credits creating these daily moments of ‘micro-purpose’ to getting his mental and physical health back on track. And then slowly, slowly the tide started to turn.

Stepping stones

Finally, he got a six-month government contract doing communications for their people and culture team. It was close enough to D&I that he found himself in meetings with the diversity and wellbeing teams, building valuable connections. That led to a six-week opportunity as Acting Manager of Diversity and Inclusion, and he got stuck right in. The team not only achieved bronze status in the Australian Workplace Equality Index they also got their Reconciliation Action Plan underway. “I had an absolute blast,” he says.

More stepping stones followed, each bringing him closer to where he is today: finally working full-time in D&I.

Early days, real impact

Grant’s thrown himself right in – collaborating with networks for the deaf and hard of hearing, neurodiversity groups and ally networks. “I’m getting to know people on campus, understanding how I can better support them in their activities.” He’s planning activities for mainstream events, while amplifying grassroots initiatives.

One of the challenges in such a large organisation is that you don’t always hear about the brilliant work being done. So, Grant’s making it his business to find out everything he can. “Once you start speaking to people, you hear what’s happening on the ground,” he says. “We need to celebrate all this amazing work – and find a way to scale it up,” he says. Inspired by a recent event, he’s now pushing for accessibility considerations to become standard practice in seminars: dimming the lights to 30% and informing attendees they’re free to fidget or get up and walk around if required. “Why is this not the default?” he asks.

And he’s already inspiring others. During a recent workshop, Grant brought in a live captioner – a woman who typed everything that was said, in real-time. He told attendees, “I’m consciously speaking slowly so she can keep up,” to which the captioner responded, “Slow down even more, please Grant!” A playful banter began, with Grant checking in, “Is this alright?” She’d type back guidance, and the whole room could see the interaction unfolding.

The response was immediate. “I’ve had people asking, ‘That captioning you had was amazing – what technology did you use?’” Grant laughs, “It’s a person!” Other teams are now looking to implement this at events. “Once people know we can do this, it can become the norm.”

Sometimes the biggest differences come from the smallest actions. Grant recalls a colleague who was gradually losing her vision due to a genetic condition. “She doesn’t have vision from here down,” he says, gesturing to his chin. “So, if she’s walking past your desk and you haven’t put your chair in, she can stumble over it.” It’s such a simple thing: remember to tuck your chair under your desk. But for someone navigating the world with limited vision, it makes a huge difference.

It’s these low-cost, high-impact actions that Grant finds most rewarding. “We can have conversations about strategies, frameworks and systemic change. But at the end of the day, the things that make the most impact are the ones you can see straight away.”

A different person

One of the most notable impacts has been on Grant’s own health. He no longer wakes up in tears and has only dreamt about work once so far, “And I take that as a win, considering my brain never turns off!”

He smiles at how far he’s come. “Pat says I’m a different person!” His friends have noticed too. “They said when I was in advertising, there were days we’d go out for dinner and I’d look grey, I was so exhausted.” Now, they’re commenting on how fresh he looks and how much more energy he has.

He reflects on what’s behind this change. “When you’re exhausted and your brain’s overloaded, you feel heavy – mentally and physically. You might drag your feet or blink slowly, because you just don’t have the energy to do anything. Now, I feel light. I’ve got a bit more pep in my step!” This comes from doing work he genuinely cares about, what psychologists call intrinsic motivation. When we feel autonomy, competence and connection to others, we flourish. While advertising was centred around brands making money, he’s now doing what he calls “human work”. “It’s actually improving people’s lives.”

Swimming has played its part, too. 18 months ago, Grant was re-learning the basics. “Now I swim about two and a half kilometres, four nights a week!” This gives him the peace he’s been craving, “It’s a bit like therapy,” he says, “It’s like the day’s being washed away.” His growth mindset has seen him join a squad and even start competing in ocean races. But he’s quick to acknowledge it can be scary. “You don’t realise how deep it is until you’re out there!” Is it worth it, despite the fears of what lies beneath? Absolutely, he says, “It’s pretty amazing.”

It’s not the first time Grant’s found freedom by doing something that scared him.

Coming full circle

One of the things he’s particularly passionate about is making safety and inclusion more visible. “At Macquarie, we have allyship training…If you participate, you get a rainbow lanyard. It’s such a small thing, but when you see staff walking around campus with them, it’s a symbol to show they’re someone who’s trustworthy; you can walk up and have a chat.” For people who’ve felt invisible, this level of understanding can change everything. Something Grant knows better than most.

“I only came out at university,” he reflects. Until then, he’d never questioned his sexuality. Although he’d been picked on throughout school, he’d always batted back classmates’ homophobic slurs with, “Well, mate, I’ve got a girlfriend and you don’t. Joke’s on you.” He says, “For some reason, it was like water off a duck’s back”. It was only once he’d gone to Canberra that he started to wonder, “Maybe some of those taunts might have been a little closer to the truth than I’d realised?”

He says this time was, “Horrible. Absolutely horrible. My world came crashing down because I thought I knew what my life was going to be like. And then everything changed.” He’d only just broken up with his girlfriend, his grandfather passed away, and now he was acknowledging his sexuality in secret. Grief and anxiety were wreaking havoc with his sleep, “My mind was all over the place,” he remembers, “Sex education back then was about how to put a condom onto a banana. There wasn’t any conversation around homosexuality, gender fluidity or bisexuality.” He was navigating seemingly uncharted waters – and drowning in the process.

Finally, after being astonished to see the ceiling turn purple and walls turn green during a presentation – only to discover he’d been hallucinating – he realised he needed professional help. “I wasn’t coping.” Seeing a therapist was the start of his journey towards acceptance. “She helped me realise that everybody’s unique, everybody’s different…I’m not abnormal.” And this gave him the confidence to share his news with a friend. Plucking up the courage, he said, “There’s something I need to tell you: I’m gay. And she turned to me, smiled and cried and said, ‘So is my mum.’” It was the first time either of them had told anyone. Grant says, “I’ll remember that conversation forever because it was so powerful.”

Creating similarly safe, supportive environments is what motivates Grant today. He’s building the world he wishes he’d had. “Normalising conversations around sexuality, gender and sex is something I would have loved,” he reflects. It’s about offering support to people you might not know need it – even through something as simple as rainbow lanyards, “Having those kinds of visual cues would have been absolutely brilliant,” he says.

An ambitious five-year plan

While society’s slowly shifting, there’s still work to be done. Grant’s a big believer in getting there through the tough conversations. “There are people who maybe don’t agree with some of the changes,” he says, carefully. “Having difficult conversations with people who aren’t interested, or don’t believe this is something we should be doing, is probably the hardest thing for me at the moment.” He says having an open mind and a willingness to listen is the only path to change, “I try to understand where that person’s coming from so I can understand what they’re thinking and unpack it from there.”

So, what’s the dream? What does success look like in five years’ time? “That I don’t have a job!” He clarifies, “Not because the industry is falling apart, but because we don’t need to be around anymore. We don’t need to be fighting for people. We don’t need to be fighting for equity. We don’t need to be fighting for inclusion. It’s just part of life. Five years is probably really ambitious, but that’s the goal!”

Taking the leap

Grant’s been through hell, but he’s found his purpose, “I really think this is it!” So, what advice does he have for someone considering a similar leap?

“Don’t hesitate,” he says. “I know it’s scary, especially if you’ve dedicated years to your career. But it’s never too late to give something else a go.”

That said, he reminds us it’s ok to, “Sidestep for a little bit if you need to; find the interim position that links your current world to your dream role, and spend time in that space. The more you do of that, the closer you’ll get to where you want to be.” It’ll also make the transition less daunting.

For those who’ve taken the leap, he offers one final piece of advice, “Find a micro-purpose in each day. That might be emptying the dishwasher, getting up and patting the cat, whatever. Just make sure you find it. On your journey to finding your bigger purpose, it can be disheartening every time you have a knockback. But you’ll get there in the end.”

For Grant, it took 20 years, 78 rejections and the courage to start over at 40. But he’s finally found the work that makes him look forward to Mondays.

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Uncut and unfiltered: the full conversation

Grant and I spoke twice. The first conversation covers his journey and the joy of finally finding purpose, along with a comprehensive list of some of Sydney’s best outdoor swimming pools! The second dives into more personal parts of his story – everything from coming out to burnout. His openness and honesty are humbling.

There’s a small amount of uncensored language in these recordings, but it’s minimal.