Insight with Karl Faase

It was four o'clock on a Sunday afternoon when Richard Grellman sat down to tell his wife, Suellen, that she'd be moving into aged care the next day. He had researched the conversation, written it out and memorised it - and got one sentence in before he broke down. It was Suellen, living with early-onset Alzheimer's, who comforted him: "Don't worry, sweetie, it'll be all right. You're doing the right thing."

In this episode, Karl Faase speaks with Richard about a life lived on both sides of success. He reflects on three decades at KPMG, and decades of chairing boards from AMP to Mission Australia. But the heart of this conversation is the nine years Suellen spent in care, the prayer Richard realised he had been getting wrong, and why he now faces his own cancer diagnosis convinced he "can't really lose."

It's a conversation about leadership, service, grief, perseverance and the quiet strength to walk beside someone you love all the way to the end.

About Richard Grellman:

Richard Grellman joined a nine-partner accounting firm at 17 and became a partner at what became KPMG just before turning 30. He spent most of his 32 years there in corporate recovery and turnaround work, rising to the firm's national management committee before retiring on his 50th birthday. He went straight onto the AMP board as a non-executive director for 12 years, served 25 years on the board of Sydney City Mission (which became Mission Australia), including 10 as chairman and spent 11 years chairing professional surfing's world body (now the World Surf League). Richard and his late wife Suellen have three children and seven grandchildren. He has since remarried and is currently facing a recurrence of Hodgkin lymphoma.

Key Moments & Highlights

Failing maths "with a big capital F" - then joining a nine-partner accounting firm at 17 and becoming a partner at what became KPMG before he turned 30

Thrown from a car at 15, praying mid-air - then opening his Scripture Union notes that night to a prayer about remembering "the vows I made on the night of my peril"

Going forward at a Billy Graham crusade at 19, and telling KPMG's managing partner up front that he was a Christian before accepting the partnership

Being frog-marched off the LJ Hooker assignment at 39 by a consortium of 72 banks - and the hard lesson in delegation that shaped everything after

A $120 million settlement cheque in his name, a phone call from the Reserve Bank governor, and a call from "Paul Keating from Castle Hill"

The slow, uncertain years before Suellen's early onset Alzheimer's diagnosis, and the bucket list they completed together before she couldn't

The Sunday afternoon conversation about moving Suellen into care - and how she ended up comforting him

A first-time preacher's sermon on perseverance that changed Richard's prayer from "take her" to "give me strength to walk beside her"

Restoring order to a chaotic world surfing board, leading the merger behind Mission Australia, and uniting the state Bible Societies into one

Facing Hodgkin lymphoma with the attitude that "Christians have an unfair advantage" - and the gift of remarrying a wife who says "we have cancer"

Find Out More

Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au

Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch

Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org

 

Special Thanks To

Excelsia University College

Christian Finance

Vision Christian Media

Sometimes in medicine, it's not just considering what you could do for a patient - it's also about what you should do. For renal physician Professor Mark Brown, this is how he looks at the decision of putting a patient on dialysis. It's not for everyone, he insists. 

In this conversation with Karl Faase, Mark traces the road from a working-class Sydney home, shaped by a sister with profound disabilities, to the forefront of kidney medicine. He talks candidly about a lonely year in a freezing Nottingham garage, a first marriage he wasn't ready for, a chance seat on a plane that led him to his wife Wendy, and the Sunday nights at a church car park that brought him back to faith.

It's a conversation about life and death, and what it means to care for the whole person.

About Professor Mark Brown

Professor Mark Brown is a renal physician (kidney specialist) who has spent his whole consultant career at St George Hospital in Sydney. He is an international authority on pre-eclampsia, has published around 350 peer-reviewed papers, and was recently made an honorary member of the Royal College of Obstetricians in the UK. With his wife Wendy, who has a nursing background, he also started a medical clinic for homeless men at the Mission Australia Centre in Surry Hills, which has since become St George's Homeless Health Department. 

Key Moments & Highlights

Facing West Indies fast bowler Andy Roberts in the nets 

Why a mind trained in maths, and a sister with profound disabilities, may have led him into medicine

One sentence from a respected professor – "I think you would make a really good physician" – that turned a future surgeon into a kidney specialist

Growing up with Jenny, and what her years in psychiatric institutions taught him about disability

A winter in Nottingham: a building marked for demolition, a converted garage and a heater that ran on fifty-pence coins

Mark is honest about a first marriage he wasn't mature enough for, and how a lonely year abroad finally made him reflect

Picking up his stepson from church on Sunday nights, and the preacher who connected the Bible to real life

Why people of faith tend to face dying with more peace, and the patients who survive when medically they shouldn't

Building renal supportive care with Frank Brennan: from being told he could be "accused of murder" to winning over the same room years later

What he discovered treating homeless men in Surry Hills: "the reason for homelessness is not the absence of a roof over your head. It's your childhood."

His three foundations for life: good relationships, doing things for others, and spirituality

Find Out More

Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au

Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch

Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org

 

Special Thanks To

Excelsia University College

Christian Finance

Vision Christian Media

Wendy Simpson was running a school for troubled teens, earning $36,000 a year and fielding the occasional death threat, when she flew to Connecticut and stayed in the homes of millionaire business leaders. She came home, looked at her husband Jeff and said, “I reckon if I really wanted to, I could have a go at that.” His reply: “Well, why don't you?”

In this episode of Insight, Wendy traces an unlikely path from a humble Baptist church in Melbourne's northern suburbs to the corporate boardrooms of Australia and the negotiating tables of Shanghai. Along the way she talks about community living shaped by liberation theology, fostering 13 teenagers, pioneering Australia's first small business awards, and the day she was told she couldn't be a “Young Lion” because she was a woman.

She also speaks openly about three cancer diagnoses, a first-in-human clinical trial, and the words she believes God spoke to her at her lowest point: “You can live in fear or you can live in faith.” This is a conversation about calling, courage, and seeing God's image in everyone, whether that's in a boardroom or among the homeless people at her local church.

About Wendy Simpson

Wendy Simpson is a Member of the Order of Australia, has been nominated to the Australian Businesswoman Hall of Fame, and was named one of the Australian Financial Review's 100 Women of Influence. The daughter of a low-paid railway worker, she studied at RMIT and Melbourne University, taught at what was then considered Australia's most disadvantaged school, and ran a school for juvenile delinquents before moving into policy roles with the Victorian government under Premier Joan Kirner. Her corporate career took her through QBE Insurance, TNT and Alcatel, including seven years based in Shanghai leading work across 17 Asian countries. With her husband Jeff she bought and ran an engineering business and now works in commercial property development. She serves on boards, sits on the Sydney Prayer Breakfast Committee, and is helping start Redemptive Ventures Australia.

Key Moments & Highlights

Growing up in Melbourne's northern suburbs with op-shop clothes, no car and no phone, and a dad on one of the lowest wages in the Victorian railways

Earning as much at 15 in the fruit-and-veg section at Coles as her father did, and learning the logistics lessons that shaped her career

Reading The Female Eunuch alongside the Bible, discovering the Christian women who fought for the vote, and leading 100 students in a lunchtime Bible study after John Smith's God Squad came to her school

Why liberation theology led her, in her mid-20s, to teach at a school for juvenile delinquents, where she received death threats

Helping launch Australia's first community-funded youth homelessness program, and she and Jeff fostering 13 teenagers so they could stay at their local schools

Friends warning that a Rotary business exchange to Connecticut was “going to the dark side,” and the wrestle to follow what she believed was God's call anyway

Prayer, a sense that small business owners felt unappreciated, and pitching the first small business awards to Premier Joan Kirner, then pulling off the night with Kirner and Jeff Kennett both on stage mid-election

Being told she couldn't join QBE's “Young Lions” because she was a woman, and bringing the CEO to Telstra to start championing women instead

A three-week trip to fix a telephone factory in Shanghai that became 18 months of internet negotiations at the table with China's top three leaders

Losing 70% of their new business's staff in one morning when immigration officers arrived, after a con artist had taken the workers' money for visas

Three cancer diagnoses since 2010, a first-in-human clinical trial, and the moment she heard God say: “You can live in fear or you can live in faith”

Her hope for redemptive entrepreneurship

 

Find Out More

Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au

Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch

Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org

 

Special Thanks To

Excelsia University College

Christian Finance

Vision Christian Media

Tom Price was as far from Christianity as he could get - trying to cope with life by self-medicating and intentionally distancing himself from the religion of his parents. That was until a choking uncle and some late-night advice sent him down a path that led, eventually, to lecturing at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.

In this conversation, Tom talks with Karl Faase about why he thinks the New Atheists were never a serious intellectual movement, what's really behind Richard Dawkins' talk of being a “cultural Christian,” and the uncomfortable questions apologetics now has to answer in the wake of high-profile church scandals - including the one that engulfed his own organisation's history. He also charts his personal journey of finding faith after adding Philosophy to his university study.

About Tom Price  

Tom Price is an author, lecturer, and speaker with the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics (OCCA). His PhD examines how popular film shapes the ideas people carry into everyday life, and his work takes him into schools, universities, workplaces and churches, helping people think through faith questions. Tom became a Christian while studying computer science and philosophy at university, after years estranged from his own churchgoing parents.

Key Moments & Highlights

Tom argues the New Atheists were never a serious academic force - just "angry atheism" that helped people justify their hurt with the church

Why Richard Dawkins calling himself a "cultural Christian" is about more than nostalgia for carols and candles

Inside the ARC conference: a packed, mostly non-Christian room warming to the idea that the West needs to “recapture” Christian values

The real founding story of OCCA at Wycliffe Hall, and why the organisation is now completely independent of Ravi Zacharias

Betrayal trauma theory: psychology borrowed from research on domestic abuse survivors that explains why churches almost always get their first response to scandal wrong

Tom's own admission that he took a paycheck, stayed quiet, and regrets not resigning during the crisis at OCCA

Growing up hyperactive and disconnected, dropping out of school at sixteen, and performing the Heimlich manoeuvre on his choking uncle at Christmas lunch

A drunken piece of late-night advice from that same uncle sends Tom into a philosophy degree — and, eventually, toward Jesus

The prayer he prayed alone in his room, with no "churchy" language, that he still describes as the start of being "reconciled" to God every day since

Years of estrangement from his parents, and the slow, mutual forgiveness that followed

 

Find Out More

Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au

Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch

Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org

 

Special Thanks To

Excelsia University College

Christian Finance

Vision Christian Media

At just fifteen, Noah Brierley watched a video he'd made - a lighthearted challenge asking baristas for 10% off, just to practise getting over the fear of rejection - get reposted by a huge Instagram meme page. The comments were filled with mockery. He messaged them, begging them to take it down. They didn't.

Years later, that same account messaged him again: “congrats on the growth, man.”

It's a small window into the ride Noah has been on since he started posting on TikTok during COVID lockdown as a schoolboy with a side hustle and no plan - a ride that took him to 1.8 million followers by 17, a business managing accounts with a combined reach of around 4 million, and a decision to turn down Oxford University altogether.

About Noah Brierley:

Noah Brierley started building an audience on TikTok as a UK schoolboy during COVID lockdown, documenting side hustles like car washing and reselling on eBay rather than chasing dance trends. By 17 he'd reached 1.8 million followers, and he has since turned that following into a business managing content for clients, with accounts under his company reaching a combined audience of around 4 million. Rather than follow his parents - both Oxford and Cambridge graduates - to university, Noah left college to go all-in on social media full time. 

Key Moments & Highlights:

- Turning “no” into fuel: the door-to-door car-washing mindset that taught Noah to treat every rejection as one step closer to a “yes”
- Taking a £20 loan from his younger sister to buy car-washing supplies — and feeling he had to make it back
- Deliberately skipping TikTok's dancing trend to build an educational, “document the journey” niche instead
- Hitting 80,000 followers at 15 and getting invited to a cinema's opening night — the moment it first “felt real”
- Getting mocked by a major Instagram meme page at 15, getting emotional about it, and years later receiving a congratulations message from the same account
- The friction at home and school when Noah told his parents and his old teacher he wouldn't be going to university
- Helping his dad grow a TikTok account to 100,000 followers within weeks, while Noah was still in school
- Learning not to tie his happiness to view counts: “as long as I'd posted a video that day, I was happy”
- Marrying Phoebe, his partner since age 11, at 20 and designing their business around the life and family they want
- A wild prediction for AI and content creation: kids asking an app to generate a custom animated show on the spot

 

Find Out More

Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au

Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch

Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org

 

Special Thanks To

Excelsia University College

Christian Finance

Vision Christian Media