about
hey there,
I'm miki kovari.*
I work with people, organisations, and communities to facilitate transformational change. Through coaching, consulting, and collaborating; I work with individuals and collectives to radically increase impact. Drawing on systems innovation, collective organisation, and regenerative stewardship, I support people and organisations to make meaningful contributions to social and environmental justice.
In practical terms, I support individuals or teams to embark on long-term transformational change processes. This starts with hearts and minds work developing awareness and skills. It leads to behaviour change through practice. It becomes embodied and institutionalised through new structures and systems.
My engagements increase people's capabilities (awareness, knowledge, and skills), develop people's emotional engagement (attitudes, motivations, intentions), and shift people's behaviours and practices (actions and habits).
During my engagements I often support organisations to develop new strategies, processes, learning programs, evaluation frameworks, and ways of working. I have a particularly good record with grant proposals having written submissions that have raised over $20m over the past 10 years.
I work through my company dcntr and with collaborations like the Turnstone Collective and Native Foodways. I research, analyse, write, speak, coach, consult, and collaborate to move us towards more communal, caring, and abundant systems. See my services here.
More about my identity and background
I'm a middle-class, white, cis, male, with Magyar (Hungarian) ancestry and cultural heritage. I believe positionality is critical (learn more about why it is important for me to share my various identities here).
I went to a private school (my dad was a teacher there so we only paid 25% of the fees) and completed an Economics Degree at the University of Sydney. I completed my honours in Political Economy and wrote my thesis on Indigenous self-determination and enterprise development.
I'm about as privileged as you get. I am constantly interrogating my power and privilege and thinking about how to share the unearned benefits I receive. Click here to see a list of resources I engaged with and draw on in my work.
I was born and raised on Gadigal land (aka Sydney, Australia) in a Magyar microcosm. I grew up speaking Magyar at home with my parents, grandparents, and sister. I have lived in Magyarország (Hungary) for some years and visit yearly. I have a Magyar daughter who lives in Budapest. I also have two kids who live with my partner (Ella Colley) and me in Gangagruwan on Dharawal Country (aka Kangaroo Valley, NSW).
My family left Magyarország in the 60s and 70s due to political, economic, and cultural oppression from the occupying Soviet forces. My grandparents, some of whom are holocaust survivors, had enough of the turmoil. Leaving their homeland meant relocating to someone else's land. By leaving their home because of imperialists, they became colonisers.
My parents joined the Australian colony and I was born a coloniser. We have contributed to the oppression of First Nations people by participating in the illegal Western political-economic system imposed on people living on these lands. We have benefited from the genocide, dispossession, and oppression of the First Peoples.
God, that is hard to write and integrate. Even after all these years of decolonising work. But it's true, and we have to face up to these truths so that we can do all that we can to try to repair the damage. It is impossible to achieve justice and rectify the crimes committed by the British Crown, the Colonial Nation-State, the early colonisers, and us, the current colonisers. But we must think with an abundance mindset and be open to restorative possibilities. Such as how we participate in transformative reparations and landback.
As a coloniser, for almost 20 years, I've been working to support First Nations people to decolonise these lands (see my work). I'm trying to unlearn modern Western-European-American cultural constructs so that I can participate in a nation of nations that centres First Nations Peoples and their ways of knowing, doing, and being.
* I don't capitalise my name as I'm against capitalism :) That's a joke, using caps is called capitalisation, but you get the jest. I don't use caps in my name to decentre the status quo and show there are workable alternatives to orthodoxy in the smallest things. We should always be looking to decentre dominating ideas and practices that reinforce negative power dynamics. Our language and grammar is a great place to start. I'm inspired by the example of bell hooks, john a powell, and adrienne maree brown.