Kylie Matthews (right) with her mother, Rachel Thompson, her grandmother, Joan Thompson, and daughters, Skye (back) and Ebony (front).
KYLIE MATTHEWS – living life with a purpose Diocesan Old Girls’ League member Penny Tucker spoke with a fourth-generation Dio Old Girl whose sustainable business, AWWA, aims to tackle the harm disposable sanitary products are causing our planet.
Kylie Matthews is a successful entrepreneur, company director, extraordinary social advocate and mum who is proud to be a fourth generation Dio girl. Her great grandmother, stepgreat grandmother, grandmother, a great aunt, aunts and cousins have been through Dio. There’s sure to be a fair amount of blue, red and white in their family albums. Kylie’s family story weaves through Dio’s own journey like different but related threads in a piece of vivid and extraordinary fabric. She has a deep connection with the School, as does her much-cherished grandmother. And it’s mostly for that particular Senior Dio Old Girl and keen Dio Today reader that Kylie agreed to let the magazine focus on her considerable achievements.
are fortunate enough to be privileged, and if you wear that cloak of privilege, you owe it to other people to wrap them up in the warmth and support that the cloak provides. “It’s so much more fun to be standing at the top of the ladder with other people enjoying the view than to look down on people struggling to get a foot on the first rung,” she says. Kylie’s business ethic reflects this view. She sees no conflict between making money and making a measurable social difference. She refuses to conform to stereotypical business models where corners that are cut represent ‘efficiency without consequence’ (as if that’s objectively a good thing). She also believes that giving back to society isn’t about token gestures, it’s about something real.
Taboo subject no more Kylie is refreshingly able to articulate what her purpose means to her: If you 82
Kylie has taken an issue that many people still find challenging and hard
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