Swathi shares inspiring everyday stories
CMY alum Swathi Shanmukhasundaram is a Lead Producer at the ABC. She has been in this role since 2022 and has heard many inspiring stories from young people across the country through the Takeover program. Before this, Swathi was CMY’s inaugural ABC Youth Intern.
In 2018, Swathi originally came across CMY when she was “randomly searching online” for volunteering opportunities. She was initially surprised that the organisation existed at all.
“I was just like, ‘What is this? There’s a whole organisation for multicultural young people and I didn’t know anything about this,’” Swathi says.
She then became part of the metro Youth Advisory Group (YAG), which is a move she still looks back on fondly. The YAG was an eye-opening opportunity for Swathi. She was able to meet many other like-minded young people passionate about leadership.
“It was one of the best experiences ever.”
“I’m still friends with some of the people from my YAG year.”
Every year, CMY’s metro YAG works on a project centred around a theme or passion area. Swathi’s group had an interest in mental health advocacy. The YAG developed and pitched their idea for a pilot project called Reverb to CMY’s Board. In 2025, Reverb 2.0 is in full swing, providing wellbeing workshops for schools and culturally responsive professional development workshops.
In 2020, as Swathi was completing her studies at uni, she reached a bit of a roadblock. When she was feeling lost, she was approached by a youth worker at CMY who put a job ad past her.
“He talked about this new job coming up. You might be really great at it. It’s temporary. Do you want to give it a go?’ [He] really encouraged me to apply for it. And that ended up being the intern position.”
The role was originally supposed to be a six-month position supporting two different projects with ABC and CMY, but the COVID-19 lockdowns extended the role. Swathi really enjoyed the structure of working between two managers or “two different minds.”
“It’s dubbed as an “intern” role, but I really did feel like you were empowered to give advice on things and that people really trusted your judgment. You were there for a purpose and people trusted you to do what it was,” says Swathi.
“From the outset, it felt like I was set up for success because I didn’t feel like I really needed to prove myself for even being there in the first place.”
After completing this role, Swathi worked for a stint with the Multicultural Youth Advocacy Network (MYAN Australia) before being offered a full-time position at the ABC and she “hasn’t left since.”
During her time at the ABC, Swathi has guided many young people to tell their own stories through Takeover, a storytelling competition and platform for young storytellers, where the selected winners work with ABC producers to tell their stories across various formats.
The memorable stories that stand out to her are Zac and his connection to Barkindji country, Essey and his experiences with music living in the North Melbourne housing towers, and Abby and her rural Cricket team in Mildura. Swathi is immensely honoured to give these stories that might “fall through the cracks” the spotlight they rightly deserve.
“[Zac is] still such a respectful and beautiful young person who’s very much proud of the story that he was able to share,” Swathi says.
“[Zac’s story is] such a beautiful example of someone who doesn’t really see themselves as someone who can take up space like this, and now I feel very proud to have been able to [help him] do that.”