Australia Spatial Analytics (ASA) is becoming the poster child for social enterprises that are both innovative and commercially viable.
Launched in 2020 by White Box Enterprises, ASA provides professional data services and creates careers in geospatial and digital engineering for young neurodivergent adults.
In a few short years, it has created career paths for over 150 young neurodivergent adults and earned recognition as a finalist in The Australian Financial Review 2024 BOSS Most Innovative Companies awards.
But ASA’s journey has been anything but easy.
As White Box CEO Luke Terry recalls, “ASA didn’t just soar—it nearly fell over a few times. But we just kept going with it. We needed it to work. And it did.”
Humble origins
ASA’s origins trace back to the early days of White Box Enterprises. Co-founders Luke Terry and Lisa Siganto were given a makeshift office—a kitchen table— in a tech incubator at Queensland University of Technology (QUT).
Recognising there was a significant gap in the market and aware of Australia’s tech skills shortage, Luke saw the potential “to do something in tech” that could provide hundreds of jobs. Unlike typical social enterprises, which often focus on entry-level roles, this would be white-collar roles. When he spoke to the professors and industry experts he passed in the halls, they were quick to tell him it wasn’t how the tech industry works.
“Then I met George Curran, who is still an ASA board member today,” recalls Luke. “He said: ‘We can give you a contract for three people to be able to do spatial mapping’. I had no idea what spatial analytics was. But we tried to deliver this contract.”
George was brought on to manage the project and build a business case, with mentoring from White Box Enterprises’ then-Chief Entrepreneur, Alex McDonald. For a period of about a year, it went up and down, and then George left to do another job.
“I thought that was it,” Luke says. “George is gone, we can’t deliver the current contract that we have, how are we going to do this?
“And then Geoff Smith walked in the door.”
The perfect match
Geoff Smith is ASA’s inaugural CEO and Queensland's 2025 Australian of the Year.
A former executive in disability employment services, Geoff’s path to ASA began with a cold email to Luke.
“I started to learn about social enterprise when doing my masters. When I completed that, I wanted to run a social enterprise, so I literally emailed Luke saying, ‘you don't know who I am, but I know you're well known in the social enterprise world, and I'd like to be involved’,” Geoff says.
For Luke, it was serendipitous. Not only was Geoff interested in social enterprise, he had a background in data and spatial.
“I remember calling Alex McDonald and saying ‘this guy has just walked into our office and said, I’m really interested in social enterprise, I’ve got a background in spatial analytics, I don’t know if that if helpful to you at all’,” he recalls. “We hired him on the spot.”
Geoff says it seemed like a marriage made in heaven.
“We didn't have any staff or any customers, but we had a really good idea and the bones of a good business plan,” Geoff says.
“White Box had done the leg work of forming the entity, putting on some board members, although the board hadn't sat yet, and invested in some research into the market. I took a leap of faith.”
A rocky road to success
It marked a turning point for ASA, but it wasn’t an overnight success. It took nine months to secure ASA’s first paying client. ASA nearly folded several times.
“I remember having a conversation with Geoff about what he would do if it didn’t work out,” says Luke. “We looked into buying a steel stud wall framing business as a plan B, because we wanted to keep him.”
Geoff laughs at the recollection.
“I hardly knew anything about ASA, let alone building houses with steel. I didn’t even know they used steel frames to build houses, I thought it was wood,” he says.
“But I had a three-month-old baby, and we had moved back to Brisbane for ASA. It was like, ‘Oh, shit, this thing's actually not going to work’. They were hard times. But thanks to Luke and White Box, we stuck at it.”
Luke says that’s the magic of White Box.
“We all lean in,” Luke says. “We gave Geoff as much support as we could. I think he will agree, the key to success is we were able to pay his salary for two years and say run at it.”
Why ASA worked
Strong backing
For White Box, backing ASA meant more than just incubating a new business; it meant absorbing risk and creating the conditions for sustainable growth. From day one, White Box provided crucial support—not just funding, but also shared services like legal, HR, and marketing, and affordable office space. As ASA expanded, White Box relocated with them—from a co-working space at QUT to a 14-desk office, then to a 3,000 sqm facility secured through a partnership with Charter Hall, at a reduced rate of $40 per sqm (well below the market rate of $500).
As Luke recalls, “Securing lower rents in partnership with our corporates helped us both grow in those early days.”
“It was off the back of this work, that Naomi Milgrom offered WBE and ASA a similar opportunity to launch in Melbourne in the old Cremorne power station at the beginning of 2023.”
With this support, Geoff was able to focus entirely on building the business. Geoff says ASA wouldn't have existed without White Box.
“There's no way I would have jumped over to run a new social enterprise unless there was some guaranteed salary,” he says.
“Feeling the love from Luke and the team from day one and knowing, no matter what happens, it would be okay. We're not on the hook for anything. That's like an incubator on steroids.
“Then there was the network of other social entrepreneurs to lean on when times were hard. It feels like White Box knows every social entrepreneur that's ever existed.
“Thirdly, is White Box’s shared services support to get us off the ground. I didn't need to work out how we would run payroll or sign a commercial agreement or find a template for a master service agreement. That services arm is really important to a young social enterprise.”
Timing and luck
The timing also played a role. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in global supply chains, increasing demand for local data processing.
“I say this a lot, it wouldn't have worked if COVID didn't happen. It may have worked eventually. But that kickstarted it,” Geoff says.
ASA was able to position itself as a domestic alternative, offering a reliable, strengths-based workforce at a time when organisations needed it most.
A strong business model
ASA’s real strength lies in its business model: aligning a clear social mission with a real market need.
“There were customers. Lots of customers,” says Luke. “It was a greenfield market and it was perfect for neurodivergent adults.”
Geoff agrees, it matters what you sell.
“You can’t try and forge a market when it's not there just because it's a really good cause,” he says.
The direct link between what they do and who they hire has also been a key ingredient.
“Our service catalogue is inherently linked to the strengths of the team that we're pulling out of disadvantage,” Geoff says.
“It’s such a straight line. We never have a first meeting with a customer who says ‘that sounds like the dumbest idea, that's not going to work’. It's always, ‘yeah, I see that there's probably strengths there’.
“There is research that shows there's interest in technology from young, neurodivergent people, and these are technological jobs. There's certainly a will to learn. There's loyalty, and generally, better than the average Joe at pattern recognition, which is most the work we do.”
What makes ASA special
The people
Geoff says it is the people that really make the social enterprise special.
“Our employees are our only asset really, because we don't really own anything else,” he says. “It's all on the computer. There's no value attached to anything other than the strengths of the team. So that's what makes it special.”
ASA has built a culture of optimism and learning around the team. Employees are encouraged to grow, develop skills, and then transition to roles beyond ASA when they are ready.
“That's what sets us apart, I think,” says Geoff. “We are not trying to exclusively retain our IP, we want our staff to go and succeed elsewhere, and that's a big difference for us.”
A focus on skilled roles
Another point of different is the type of work. Unlike many other jobs-focused social enterprises, ASA creates skilled white-collar jobs.
“I guess when it comes to comparing us with other social enterprises, it's unusual to have a white-collar professional services vocation, and that gives a bit of hope to young people who are unemployed. There are other avenues,” Geoff says.
What would ASA do differently
ASA’s success hasn’t been without missteps. Geoff reflects that the enterprise could have set clearer expectations around staff transitions from the outset.
“We got too big for our boots,” he says. “We went you know what, you can stay here as long as you want analysts, we've supported you out of unemployment. You're doing fantastic. We're growing.
“But the operating model expects outcomes through transition into mainstream employment. So we should have set the expectation that we support you to learn on the job and then support you into another job. It means that we didn't go to the market initially and say, are you interested in some of our team, as well as the services we can provide.”
He also regrets not forming earlier partnerships with other neurodiversity-focused organisations. And he points to ongoing challenges around the industry’s need for qualifications.
“We're kind of renegades in the fact that we don't accept that you need bachelor’s degrees to be able to do the work that we do,” he says. “We train you on the job. But the world's become so professionalised that a lot of our team are ready to transition skill set wise, but they don't have the piece of paper and it still matters. There's a middle ground we need to find there.”
Why ASA’s story matters
With the right mix of vision, adaptability, and strong support, ASA has proven that a focused mission can drive meaningful change.
ASA has not only created jobs but also challenged perceptions about neurodiversity in the workplace.
As the jobs-focused sector continues to grow, it’s a great case study of how a social enterprise can thrive by aligning commercial strategy with a clear social mission.