By connecting companies with innovative, next-generation thinkers, Helen Baker wants to change young lives and solve real-world problems.

Helen Baker carries a little black book to jot down big ideas. She also keeps a “Peak Performance Tracker” spreadsheet to record her fitness and mothering goals, and a rejection folder so she can analyse her knockbacks. When developers gave her an unaffordable quote to build the Xolvit app for her start-up, tech-savvy Helen just figured out how to program it herself. In other words, she’s an entrepreneur with a can-do attitude and unstoppable drive. 

At the heart of it all is her urge to help young people: “It’s about making an impact,” says Helen. She felt she couldn’t do that in her strategy work at Deloitte, so she quit at the end of 2019 – and soon conjured up a new idea for her black book: a TED Talk for kids, by kids, called Spill the Beans. 

“I just wanted to help young people be empowered to create opportunities for themselves,” says Helen, who worked as a paralegal and recruiter before becoming lead client service director at Deloitte. “I didn’t have a business plan. It literally was just an idea in my head.” 

Helen organised the first Spill the Beans event at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre in early 2020, but the pandemic lockdown meant it pivoted into an online junior version of Shark Tank called Pitchfest, featuring the likes of Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph and billionaire entrepreneur Naveen Jain. 

Helen later turned the production into an educational resource, used in school workshops she ran to teach young people entrepreneurial skills. Kids wanted to solve real-world problems, particularly those related to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), so Helen decided to think bigger – to bring industry and students together on one platform. The result was Xolvit. 

Launched in early 2024, the Xolvit platform enables companies to post innovation challenges aligned with SDGs, with students to submit a solution video pitch. The winners have an opportunity to attend ideation workshops with the companies. Internships and prizes are also on offer. The companies get to solve problems, show social responsibility and raise brand awareness among the future workforce, while students improve their skills and showcase their employability to companies that align with their values.

While building the app in 2022, Helen was invited to become an Entrepreneur in Residence at Wade Institute of Entrepreneurship, and in 2023 enrolled part-time in University of Melbourne’s Master of Entrepreneurship program, co-delivered with Wade Institute. Due to graduate at the end of 2024, Helen has relished the chance to wrangle her ideas into a theoretical framework. 

“Typically, entrepreneurs are messy – they just throw things at the wall and hope they stick,” says Helen. “Sometimes it can take a long time to realise something. The Masters has given me a structure to work by, to validate my ideas. It’s opened my eyes up to different ways of thinking.” 

Working on the University of Melbourne Parkville campus and at Wade Institute has only expanded her connections, giving her a community to consult with. “The great thing about the Masters is they bring experts in,” she says. “Learning from those entrepreneurs was really instrumental in understanding how you scale, how you fail, market strategies, all kinds of tips and ideas.”

The entrepreneurial path can be hard-going but passion makes all the difference. Helen traces her resilience back to a difficult upbringing. Adopted from an orphanage in the Philippines as a baby, Helen grew up in a Gippsland country town, where she faced bullying and racism. 

Now she has her sights set on the next generation of students too often denied the opportunities they deserve. Like university students Mun Wai and Patrick, who recently won the Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre’s challenge to make it easier for students to research and compare courses. Awarded six-week paid internships, the students told Helen it was a dream come true.

“It’s just so beautiful to see you’ve created this thing that’s made someone’s life better,” says Helen. “That’s the most rewarding thing any entrepreneur can experience – and I want that a billion times over.”

This article first appeared on the University of Melbourne.