Real Problems, Real Solutions: SixPivot Clients Win Telstra Recognition for Technology That Matters
- Lauren Rutter
- Oct 13
- 10 min read
Updated: Oct 22
Two SixPivot clients honoured as Telstra Business Awards state finalists - Resource Hub wins Accelerating Women category, Social Protect recognised in Building Communities
When Lacey Webb was told twenty years ago that she had reached the end of her career trajectory in the waste management industry due to her gender, she could have walked away from the sector entirely. Instead, she made a decision that would eventually transform an entire industry's approach to both gender equity and operational excellence.
That decision led to Resource Hub — a waste management consultancy that has just been named a State Finalist in the 2025 Telstra Business Awards for Accelerating Women, while revolutionising how compliance and administration work in Australia's waste sector.
At the same ceremony, another SixPivot client, Social Protect, was named a state finalist in the Building Communities category for its AI-powered platform that detects and deletes abusive social media comments in real-time.
These aren't overnight success stories fuelled by venture capital or Silicon Valley playbooks. They're the result of founders who saw critical gaps in gender equity, in industry practices, in online safety, and refused to accept that things had to stay the way they were.
The recognition extends far beyond the Telstra awards. Social Protect placed 6th in the 2024 AFR Innovation Awards, won a Tech Partner News Impact Award in August 2025, and earned founder Shane Britten the Technological Innovation Award at the International Policing and Public Protection Research Institute's 2025 ceremony in London. He was also recognised in The Australian’s list of Top Innovators 2025. Resource Hub and its SixPivot-built platform Audrri are expected to place highly when the 2025 AFR Innovation Awards are announced on October 28.
But the real story isn't about the awards. It's about what happens when technology serves a genuine purpose, and when founders use their platforms to create the change they wished they'd seen earlier in their careers.
Building What She Wished Had Existed
Twenty years ago, as a young CFO in a family-owned waste business, Lacey Webb faced a career-defining conversation. "I was told there were no opportunities for advancement to CEO, both within the company and in the industry, due to my gender," Lacey recalls.
That moment became the catalyst for everything that followed. Rather than accept the limitation, she made a pivotal decision to leave and build something different; staying in the industry she loved while ensuring no other woman would face the same barriers.
When she founded Resource Hub in 2020, it wasn't just about creating a successful business. It aimed to fundamentally change how the waste management industry operated, both in terms of operational efficiency and workplace equity.
The sector presented unique challenges. Despite substantial female representation in administrative and back-office roles, women rarely progressed to management positions. The industry suffered from a 30% gender pay gap, with systemic undervaluation of women's contributions. Talented women in regional areas often stayed in positions for 15 years or more without advancement, not because they lacked capability, but because they rarely saw women in leadership roles.
Resource Hub would change that pattern entirely.
A Revolutionary Approach to Building Teams
When Lacey met Jess, a hugely experienced industry professional with 12 years of expertise, Jess was facing an impossible choice. After maternity leave, she could only return to work full-time at reduced pay, in a warehouse role that didn't utilise her skills.
Lacey created a part-time position for Jess that accommodated school and childcare needs. That decision shaped Resource Hub's core hiring philosophy: find skilled people with the right fit, regardless of availability.
Today, over 50% of Resource Hub's workforce comprises part-time professionals; predominantly parents returning to work, whose extraordinary talent is frequently overlooked by traditional employers. And 14 of Resource Hub's 15 employees are women.
"Our 'choose your own adventure' approach to workforce management demonstrates that flexibility and exceptional business results aren't mutually exclusive," Lacey explains.
Changing Industry Visibility
Recognising that representation matters, Resource Hub made strategic investments to increase women's visibility in waste management:
Regional Women Sponsorship Program: Resource Hub sponsors regional women to attend industry events in capital cities across Australia. This initiative addresses the stark reality that capable women in regional areas often remain invisible in industry networks, limiting their career advancement opportunities.
"Historically, women in waste management remained 'the person behind the person', providing expertise without visibility," Lacey explains. "We deliberately position women as industry experts and decision-makers, not just support staff."
When asked to recommend candidates for roles, Resource Hub deliberately provides a diverse range of candidates, including women from various cultural backgrounds and with varying levels of experience. "If we don't introduce these faces into workplaces, how will employers know they need to change?" Lacey asks.
The Platform That Scales Expertise
But Lacey understood something crucial: gender equity alone wouldn't transform the industry. The business model itself needed to work spectacularly well.
That's where Audrri (Auditing the Resource Recovery Industry) comes in.
As Resource Hub grew from a solo operation, Lacey's challenge was clear: her 20 years of industry expertise resided in her head and on basic spreadsheets. To scale the business while maintaining consistency, she needed to capture that knowledge in a way that could empower her entire team, including less experienced members, to deliver exceptional results.
Working with SixPivot, Resource Hub developed Audrri in just seven weeks. The platform transformed everything:
The Results:
Report generation time cut from 60 hours to 12 hours
Profit margins more than doubled
100% revenue growth year-on-year while maintaining pricing as competitors raised rates
Working with 90% of waste levy zone facilities in Queensland, expanding across Australia
Created Australia's first best practice framework for waste management facilities
"I thought that was going to be a 12-month process," Lacey says of engaging SixPivot. "I did not think it would be a case of I got a proposal, we worked it out, and once the dev team started, seven weeks later, I had a working platform."
But Audrri achieved something beyond operational efficiency; it democratised expertise. People who were new to the industry or returning after career breaks could now deliver audits that met the same rigorous standards that had previously required decades of experience.
The platform didn't just make Resource Hub more efficient. It made expertise accessible, creating pathways for women to step into roles they might never have considered possible.
The Vision Ahead
"I want to see more young girls want to talk rubbish professionally, and they don't want to work in the back office," Lacey says. "I want to see women in more trucks, women in more machines, women with their boots on and their high VIS vests on because they want to and they don't know that there's a barrier."
Resource Hub's roadmap includes:
Audrri Onsite for client self-service
Versions for state regulators across Australia
A fully digital training program featuring diverse voices and leadership examples
Potential expansion beyond waste management into other industries
"I found out today that a business that I helped to scale had a billion-dollar offer last week," Lacey reflects. "And I've always been the person behind the person, so now I've decided to have a crack at doing my own thing and see if maybe one day I can have a billion-dollar offer, that'd be wonderful, we'll see how we go."
But that's not what drives the business. The driving force is more straightforward and more powerful:
"No woman should ever go to a job and say to her boss, I want this next role because that's the next job for me and be told it's not for you. It's for a man."
When Personal Tragedy Drives Purpose
While Resource Hub was challenging gender barriers in waste management, Shane Britten was confronting a different kind of systemic failure—one with life-or-death consequences.
"We had a tragedy in my family where my nephew attempted suicide as a result of cyberbullying," Shane shares. "And I decided to try and do something about it."
His background, fifteen years in covert counterterrorism, running joint operations with agencies like the CIA and MI6, seemed an unlikely fit for building a technology company. But it gave him something more valuable: an understanding of how to hold people accountable and a refusal to accept the status quo when lives were at stake.
Social Protect's mission is straightforward but technically complex: automatically detect and delete harmful content from social media in real-time, while maintaining evidence to an evidentiary standard that can hold abusers accountable.
"Someone puts a hateful comment on a social media post, and the comment gets deleted in real time. And then we keep it to an evidentiary standard to hold those people accountable for what they've said," Shane explains. "People who think they're anonymous, we let them know that we know who they are."
The platform works across Meta, X, TikTok, and Discord, recognises more than 100 languages, and uses AI-powered understanding to analyse context and intent. It also features an Education Hub, powered by OpenAI on Azure, offering users on-demand access to online safety guidance.
Impact That Matters
The numbers tell a compelling story:
4,000+ harmful comments deleted in just three weeks during an NRL trial
517 comments deleted per user per week on average
One user experienced 917 deletions in a single day
An Indigenous NRL player is relieved from 60+ racial comments daily
Two years of flawless live demonstrations
The international recognition validates what the numbers already showed. When Shane won the Technological Innovation Award from the International Policing and Public Protection Research Institute, the judging panel noted that Social Protect "is one of the only platforms of its kind that does not use scraping and legally connects with APIs from social media platforms such as X, TikTok and Meta."
Research suggests that up to 80% of public figures have experienced some form of online harassment. Social Protect is changing that reality, giving celebrities, athletes, and everyday social media users the ability to participate online without sacrificing their mental health.
"We created Social Protect to ensure all social media users can protect themselves and their followers from abusive comments," Shane explains. "Social Protect keeps full control in the hands of social media account owners—there is no need to share your passwords or credentials with it, it can't post as you or read your DMs, it just keeps you free from abuse."
After two years of live demonstrations, Shane can make a claim that seemed impossible during the early development struggles:
"I could put it up right now and show you comments getting deleted with absolute faith that they're going to get deleted."
A Pattern of Purpose-Driven Innovation
Step back from the individual stories, and a pattern emerges, one that challenges fundamental assumptions about how impactful technology companies are built.
Neither Resource Hub nor Social Protect initially received venture capital backing. Neither had technical co-founders at the outset. Yet both are now winning national and international awards, transforming their industries, and proving that there are multiple paths to building technology that matters.
A Timeline of Recognition
Late 2024: Social Protect and SixPivot place 6th in the AFR Innovation Awards, selected from hundreds of Australian technology companies
Early 2025: Shane Britten receives the Technological Innovation Award at the International Policing and Public Protection Research Institute ceremony in London, with judges calling Social Protect "a groundbreaking solution that not only meets but exceeds the standards for excellence in safeguarding digital spaces"
August 2024: Social Protect and SixPivot win a Tech Partner News Impact Award, recognising technology solutions that create meaningful social or environmental impact
September 2024: Resource Hub is shortlisted for the 2025 WIAR Workplace of the Year Award
October 2025: Resource Hub and Social Protect named State Finalists in the 2025 Telstra Business Awards
October 2025: Shane Britten included in The Australian's Top Innovators List
October 2025: Social Protect named a finalist in The Australia and New Zealand Sports Technology Awards (ANZSTA)
October 28, 2025: SixPivot, Resource Hub and Audrri expected to place highly in the AFR Innovation Awards
This isn't a one-off success story. It's a repeatable pattern of building technology that earns recognition because it solves problems that matter to judges, to industry experts, and most importantly, to the users whose lives and businesses it transforms.
What Success Actually Looks Like
The tech industry often measures success in binary terms: unicorn or failure, hockey-stick growth or irrelevance. But Resource Hub and Social Protect suggest a different framework.
Success looks like:
An industry where women see clear pathways to leadership and have the support structures to get there
Athletes who can participate in social media without facing racial abuse
An industry that finally has standardised best practices for compliance
Founders who maintain control of their vision and their businesses
Profitable operations that don't require constant fundraising
Technology that works reliably because it was built right, not rushed to market
National and international recognition for impact, not just innovation for its own sake
For Resource Hub, success is measured in the women who now see possibilities they couldn't see before. It's in Resource Hub's youngest team member, not perceiving the gender barriers that Lacey faced twenty years ago. It's in regional women attending industry events and building networks that were previously inaccessible.
For Social Protect, success is the Indigenous NRL player who no longer receives 60+ racial comments daily. It's in families who don't have to worry about their children's safety on social media. It's in the confidence online spaces can be safer.
Both platforms demonstrate there's room and recognition for technology that serves a genuine purpose. In an industry often criticised for building solutions that look for problems, Resource Hub and Social Protect demonstrate what's possible when founders start with a deep understanding of real challenges and build solutions that genuinely matter.
"Resource Hub are not directly saving the planet or the environment," Lacey explains. "We are the helping hands behind industry who are freeing up the resources for everybody else to go and do that incredible work."
And judging by the Telstra Award win, the other awards and recognition, and most importantly, the lives changed, and industries transformed, it's an approach that works.
Are you a founder solving real problems?
Both Resource Hub and Social Protect started with non-technical founders who had deep industry knowledge, personal motivation, and a clear vision. If you're facing a similar challenge, whether it's achieving gender equity, driving industry transformation, or creating social impact, let's discuss how the right development partnership can help you build solutions that earn recognition for their impact, not just innovation.
Contact us to discuss your challenge and explore what's possible.
