Exposed: How I Was Discriminated Against By a Big 4 Firm for Being Male

Growing up, I would have been considered a minority of sorts.

I’m a first-generation Australian who grew up in the working-class western suburbs of Melbourne and went to low-budget public schools.

My parents moved to this country in the 70s from Yugoslavia with little education, no grasp of English, and little money. They spent three decades doing backbreaking factory work to provide a better life for their young family.

Despite this inauspicious start, I studied hard, worked hard, and through a series of trials and errors, hustled my way into coveted gigs with the likes of EY, KPMG, and Macquarie Bank.

I then took a risk and threw it all away.

I spent the better part of a decade tirelessly building an innovation consultancy. We worked with almost 100 large brands across the globe, incubated 100 startups, and generated millions in top-line revenue. We were named one of Australia’s fastest growing new companies by the AFR in 2018. We received numerous write-ups in top-tier publications over the years. I wrote a handful of complementary books and grew our supporting podcast to over 1 million downloads.

We had, by all accounts, a great run for a small business.