Strategy Director - Disability M&A - White Box Enterprises - Remote / Work from Home

White Box Enterprises builds, strengthens and backs social enterprises that create jobs for people overlooked by the mainstream market. Now they’re launching a new team to help disability enterprises grow through acquisition; building stronger organisations, greater scale and more jobs for people with disability. It’s a chance to help prove a new model for sector-wide change.

Ripple Opportunities is working with White Box Enterprises to help them find their next Strategy Director - Disability M&A. Could it be you?

Why you might love this opp:

• Bold by design: White Box builds what doesn't exist yet - then proves it can scale. They start enterprises from scratch, back them with capital, and invest further in the ones gaining traction. Every bet is grounded in evidence: real data, lived experience and enterprises they've built themselves. When the policy settings aren't working, they push for change there too. Behind all of it is a simple conviction: hundreds of thousands of people with disability - skilled, capable, ready to work - are being turned away by a market not designed with them in mind. White Box is building the alternatives, and backing the sector to get there.
• Impact in action: Four social enterprises already built and in motion: Australian Spatial Analytics, with 150+ employees and 80% neurodiverse workforce; Beacon Laundry, creating 200 jobs across two sites; Civik, targeting 250+ regional jobs; and Witton Barracks, a community hub in Meanjin/Brisbane. Around them, White Box is building the infrastructure that makes the broader sector possible: Australia’s first Social Enterprise Loan Fund, an Australian-first Payment By Outcomes trial, the EVOLVE Program working across orgs representing 730+ employees with disability. In 2022, White Box hosted the Social Enterprise World Forum in Meanjin/Brisbane, bringing the global sector's leading thinkers to their doorstep.
• In a nutshell: The two Directors will work with the Principal to lead a merger and transformation function that hasn't yet been seen within the disability space. Applying your consulting toolkit with social enterprise principles and care, you'll work alongside disability organisations, getting to know their business from the inside out: their portfolio, their growth potential, the gaps an acquisition could fill. From there, you'll build the market pipeline and identify the right targets, actively pursue opportunities, manage the acquisition through to close and support post-acquisition transformation - all while holding trusted senior relationships with partner organisations.
• Your week: Monday you're deep in conversation with a disability enterprise CEO - getting under the hood of their business, understanding what they believe is possible and laying the groundwork for a journey they've never been on before. By midweek you've shifted gears: pressure-testing a target's financials, stress-testing the thesis and pulling together the threads for a board that needs to make a decision. Later in the week you're back with an organisation twelve months post-close - helping their leadership team work through what's changed, what isn't landing and what needs to shift. In between, you're working closely with the Principal, other Director and sector partners, finding new angles to a problem when one approach stalls.
• Your style: You're the kind of person who can hold a sharp financial analysis and a warm, unhurried conversation in the same afternoon. You're curious by default: you lean in, ask good questions and figure it out quickly rather than pretending the learning curve isn't real. You're not just here for the job - you're here because this role is a vehicle for the systems change you want to see within your community. This is reflected in the way you guide your team to bring their best selves to the mission.
• Inside White Box: Seven years in, and White Box is still building, testing and backing bold ideas over safe ones. When one approach stalls, they find another. The team is distributed across the East Coast but comes together at least twice a year - and when they do, the competitive streak comes out: trivia, sport and top-notch karaoke. Day to day, the team moves fast, hears each other out and follows through on what they say they'll do.
• What you bring: You may have come through strategy consulting, M&A advisory, and/or organisation-wide transformation with a knack for spotting opportunities and originating deals. Either way, you understand the full deal lifecycle - from market scans and target identification due diligence, negotiation and close, through to integration and transformation. Experience across service delivery, manufacturing or production sectors is a bonus. But the real essentials are commercial rigour, sharp relationship instincts and the ability to bring both into social enterprise work that stretches far beyond the usual consulting playbook.
• The detail: Full-time, permanent role. Salary competitive for the role’s responsibilities. Remote across the East Coast. Meanjin/Brisbane, Eora/Sydney or Naarm/Melbourne preferred where we have offices for you to visit and be a key part of our team. Occasional travel to support the relational nature of the work. Full permanent work rights in Australia required.

What's involved:

The balance of work will shift over time but to start:

60% Strategy, M&A and Transformation

Working with each organisation to understand their strategic position and build the case for what an acquisition could unlock. From there, you're leading the deal end-to-end: scanning the market, building investment theses, assessing target portfolios and managing due diligence through to board-ready business cases. Beyond the close, you're helping integrate operations, align leadership and make sure the acquisition delivers a stronger enterprise with more jobs for people with disability.

30% Relationship Management and Stakeholder Engagement

Working directly with CEOs and boards of disability organisations - some encountering acquisition thinking for the first time. Building credibility, earning trust and guiding stakeholders through a change process with no real precedent in this sector takes sustained relational investment: bringing people on a journey, holding their confidence during uncertainty, and knowing when to push and when to let things breathe.

10% Leadership, Stewardship and Program Learning

Delegating and assuring the work of managers and juniors, contributing to team rhythms and helping White Box make sense of what they're learning as the program unfolds. You'll help shape what this model can become - and share insights generously.

Next steps:

If any of the above resonated with you but you don’t tick every box:

You should throw your hat in the ring, whatever those years of experience look like in your personal impact journey. We’d love to hear from you!

We're reviewing applications on a rolling basis and may close the listing if a perfect match is found, so we encourage you to apply early.

Submit an application via clicking 'Apply Now'. Please check the listing on the Ripple Opportunities website for the full and latest up-to-date information.

Questions? Please contact hey@rippleopportunities.com using the subject line: Strategy Director - Disability M&A - White Box Enterprises - Remote / Work from Home enquiry via EthicalJobs.

Ripple Opportunities works with the country's leading social impact businesses to match them with the next gen of impact operators and creators. www.rippleopportunities.com.

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