What if it goes right?
Noah Yang is the Founder and CEO of We Are Mobilise - a technology-driven charity that has distributed over $4 million to people facing homelessness, supported more than 1,500 people into housing, and built a 50+ partner national charity network spanning every Australian state and territory. All with a team of eight.
We Are Mobilise has deployed Australia's first direct cash transfer programs, backed by the Paul Ramsay Foundation with research from the University of Melbourne. The model applies startup thinking to one of the country's most complex social challenges - technology that turns a process that used to take weeks into same-hour delivery.
Noah started this journey at 20, heading out onto Melbourne's streets with bags of bread after a lecture at Monash University. He built Mobilise alongside a career in management consulting before leaving his job with $6,000 in the bank to go all-in. Six months later, Mobilise partnered with Nedd Brockmann for his run across Australia, and together they have since raised over $9 million across multiple national campaigns.
That combination of commercial thinking and relentless ambition has defined Noah's approach. He sits at the intersection of business and impact - building partnerships across corporate Australia, government, and philanthropy to prove that homelessness is solvable at scale.
Mobilise won the Telstra Business Award for Outstanding Growth in Victoria (2025), was the charity partner for the Triple J Hottest 100 Countdown in both 2025 and 2026, and Noah was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Social Impact (2026).
Noah is a leading voice on impact, fundraising, and innovation in the social sector. He speaks on entrepreneurial leadership, technology for social change, building from scratch, the power of direct giving, and what it takes to go all-in.
Talking Points
Going All-In: What If It Goes Right?
Have we been playing it too safe?Going All-In: What If It Goes Right?
Noah Yang walked away from a management consulting career when We Are Mobilise had $6,000 in the bank. No investor, no guarantee, no fallback. Just a question he refused to stop asking: what if it goes right? That question has since produced over $4 million distributed directly to people in need, a national charity network spanning every Australian state and territory, and a Forbes 30 Under 30 recognition. This Keynote is a direct challenge to every leader, team, and organisation sitting on something they have not yet committed to. The biggest risk is rarely failure. It is never finding out what was possible.
Key Takeaways:
- A reframe of risk: why the cost of inaction is real, measurable, and consistently underestimated by individuals and organisations alike
- How to use "what if it goes right?" as a practical decision-making tool rather than a motivational phrase
- The leadership conditions that build cultures of calculated boldness rather than defensive caution
- What Noah's decade of building reveals about the relationship between conviction, commitment, and long-term outcome
A Tech Startup That Happens to Be a Charity
If a team of 8 can do this, what is possible in your industry?A Tech Startup That Happens to Be a Charity
We Are Mobilise built a technology platform that distributes cash directly to people facing homelessness in the same hour a request is made. A process that used to take weeks. They did it with a team of eight. This Keynote is about what becomes possible when startup logic and commercial discipline are applied to a sector that has been running on goodwill alone, and why the most consequential innovations right now are happening in places most industries are not watching.
Key Takeaways:
- A practical case study in building scalable technology under extreme resource constraint
- How commercial thinking and process rigour unlock innovation in environments that appear resistant to change
- Frameworks for identifying where your organisation is managing problems with legacy approaches and where genuine disruption is possible
- Why the next wave of meaningful innovation is as likely to come from outside your sector as from within it
Homelessness Is Solvable. Here's How.
This isn't a sad story, it's a solvable problem.Homelessness Is Solvable. Here's How.
122,000 Australians are experiencing homelessness right now. Only 6% of them are sleeping rough. The other 94% are invisible: mothers escaping domestic violence, young people couch-surfing, families one rent payment from crisis. Noah Yang's response to that data is not grief. It is a plan. We Are Mobilise has spent a decade building the evidence base, the technology, and the national infrastructure to prove that direct giving works at scale and that homelessness, properly resourced and properly trusted, is a problem with a solution. Audiences leave this talk not with sympathy but with a changed framework for what evidence-based intervention actually looks like.
Key Takeaways:
- A complete reframe of what homelessness in Australia actually looks like, grounded in current data
- The evidence base for direct cash transfers: what the research shows, where it has been independently verified, and why the sector is shifting
- What organisations, businesses, and individuals can do to move from charitable relief to systemic contribution
- A framework for thinking about trust, autonomy, and evidence-based decision-making that applies well beyond this issue
Raising $10 Million Without a Fundraising Playbook
Mobilise raised $10m+ by going where people already are.Raising $10 Million Without a Fundraising Playbook
Not by running galas or mail campaigns. Not by asking donors to come to them. They partnered with an endurance athlete who had 3,000 Instagram followers. They became the charity partner for the Triple J Hottest 100 Countdown. They pitched philanthropic foundations on a model Australia had never tried. None of it was conventional. All of it worked. This Keynote is practical and specific: a framework for growing audiences, building community, and raising resources by adding value to things people already care about. Every attendee leaves with at least one idea they can test the following week.
Key Takeaways:
- The core principle behind Mobilise's fundraising strategy: go where people already are and add value to what they already care about
- How to identify unconventional partnership opportunities and make the case for them internally
- Practical frameworks for community-led growth that apply equally to NFPs, associations, schools, and commercial organisations
- At least one transferable idea every attendee can implement immediately
Belief Before Evidence
It all started with bags of bread and no plan.Belief Before Evidence
Noah Yang was 20 years old, fresh out of a lecture at Monash University, heading onto Melbourne's streets with nothing but an idea and the decision to act on it. No business experience, no funding, no roadmap. What followed was a technology platform, a national charity network, and a Forbes 30 Under 30 recognition, built one step at a time from a starting point most people would have talked themselves out of. This Keynote is for anyone waiting for the right moment, the right conditions, or permission that is never coming. There is only one way to find out what is possible.
Key Takeaways:
- Why the conditions you are waiting for are unlikely to arrive, and why that is the most clarifying thing to understand early
- The practical difference between starting messy and starting recklessly, and how to tell which one you are doing
- How action creates the clarity that planning alone never produces
- The single most important mindset shift young leaders and emerging professionals can make to accelerate their own trajectory
Video
Nedd Brockmann + Noah Yang | Australian Philanthropic Services & Philanthropy Australia
Australian Philanthropic Services had the privilege to explore the unique partnership between ultramarathon runner Nedd Brockmann, and Founder & CEO of We Are Mobilise, Noah Yang.
