As a Burgmann College alum, Maddalena’s story is a powerful example of how community, courage and creativity can shape a miraculous life well beyond university. An ANU Law graduate, Maddi went on to found Future Swirl, an oat milk based ice-cream, during the uncertainty of the COVID19 pandemic, while also navigating a lifechanging Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis. Despite the profound physical and emotional challenges that followed, she continued to build a business grounded in joy, sustainability and purpose. Throughout this journey, Burgmann remained a fundamental part of her story as a place that provided grounding, confidence and enduring friendships, including meeting her partner, Mark. More than just a residence, Burgmann was a community that helped lay the foundations for the path Maddi would go on to forge. We were lucky enough to hear from both Maddi and Mark about their time at Burgmann and beyond.
Can you please tell us how you came to live at Burgmann College and share some fond memories you have of your time living here? What were you involved in? How did you enjoy your time at College?
I actually didn’t come straight to ANU. After finishing Year 12, I started a journalism degree at UTS because I was set on becoming a journalist. I only lasted one semester before realising that journalism is really something you learn by doing, not sitting in a lecture theatre. I wanted a degree that would give me an edge in that world, so I made the move to ANU to study law and that's what brought me to Burgmann.
Burgmann ended up being a really grounding place at a time when I was starting again in a brand new city. I made some great friends there, including Mark, which has obviously been pretty life changing.
A lot of my time during my early years at university was spent working on Woroni. Being an editor there was a bit chaotic at times, but it was a fantastic learning experience. It was my first real exposure to governance, to navigating personalities, and to the realities of working in media. It also led directly to my first proper job in media, which was in the parliamentary press gallery at Sky News.
Burgmann kind of sat in the background of all of that. It was where I came back to at the end of the day, where friendships formed, and where everything started to come together.
Congratulations on Future Swirl; what an inspiring achievement. Could you tell us how this unfolded?
Future Swirl came out of a pretty strange period of my life during COVID.
At the time I was working as a talkback radio producer at the ABC. I was answering calls from listeners who were scared or alone and looking for help to make sense of what was happening. At the same time, I was producing a live news show where government information was constantly changing and there wasn’t much room for error. It was meaningful work, but it was also really heavy.
I remember feeling quite overwhelmed by everything, especially climate change. When I started digging into it, I kept coming back to food. In Australia, agriculture accounts for a significant share of emissions, and livestock plays a big role in that. But beyond emissions, it was the scale of land clearing for cattle grazing, and the impact that has had on ecosystems and biodiversity, that really stayed with me.
It made me realise that what we eat is one of the most direct ways we participate in systems shaping the future of the planet.
But I also knew that telling people what not to eat, or making them feel guilty, doesn’t really work.
So I went in the opposite direction. I wanted to create something joyful. Something people would choose because they genuinely liked it.
That’s where Future Swirl started. I bought a food trailer and began experimenting with oat milk soft serve. It was a big shift from what I had been doing and I think a lot of people were confused at the time, but it felt right to build something that brought a bit of happiness while also moving in a direction that felt more impactful.
As an ANU Law graduate, what role did your university and college communities play in giving you the confidence to pursue Future Swirl?
Law gave me a way of thinking that has been incredibly useful. It teaches you how to sit with complexity and make decisions without having perfect information, which is basically what running a business feels like most of the time.
But a lot of the confidence came from everything around the degree. Being involved in Woroni, working in media early, and living at Burgmann meant I was surrounded by people trying different things and figuring things out as they went.
It made it feel normal to take a path that didn’t look completely straightforward.
How did your MS diagnosis change the way you approached your business and your future?
My MS diagnosis came completely out of nowhere.
It started with me feeling off balance doing something as simple as putting my shoes on, and then it progressed to the point where I lost mobility down my left side. My arm and leg just stopped working for a while, which was pretty confronting.
I also experienced a level of fatigue that I hadn’t understood before. It’s not just being tired, it’s a kind of exhaustion that makes just existing feel difficult. At one point I was sleeping up to 22 hours a day because that was all I could manage. I was doing everything I could to keep the business moving administratively, but it was hard. I was even too fatigued to doom scroll on my phone, which I think says a lot.
From a business perspective, everything stopped. At that stage, Future Swirl was very physically demanding. I was making the product myself, supplying stores, working on the trailer. Suddenly I couldn’t do any of that.
What I was incredibly lucky with was the support around me. The retailers we were working with were understanding and gave me the space to pause, which I don’t take for granted. But more than anything, I couldn’t have gotten through that period without Mark. It was a very emotional time and he was incredible. He helped me through the recovery and quietly picked up the slack with the business when I couldn’t. I feel very lucky to be engaged to him.
It changed how I think about building a business. I’m much more conscious now of creating something that is sustainable in a broader sense, not just environmentally, but in how it actually operates day to day.
Has living with MS changed the way you think about leadership, empathy, or accessibility?
It has, in a very real way.
It’s one thing to understand accessibility as an idea, and another to experience what it feels like when your body doesn’t do what you expect it to. Losing mobility, even temporarily, and dealing with fatigue made me realise how much of the world isn’t set up for that.
It’s made me more aware of what people might be carrying that isn’t visible. It’s also made me think more carefully about how things are designed, whether that’s workplaces or everyday environments.
What advice would you give Burgmann students facing uncertainty or unexpected setbacks in their own journeys?
Don’t let other people’s idea of who you are box you in.
A lot of people knew me as someone on a very specific path, and starting a food business probably didn’t make much sense from the outside. But if you let that shape your decisions, you can end up staying somewhere that no longer fits.
Most things don’t unfold in a straight line anyway. The pivots are usually the interesting part.
Mark's Q&A:
Can you please tell us how you came to live at Burgmann College and share some fond memories you have of your time living here? What were you involved in? How did you enjoy your time at College? As an alum, how do you reflect now on your College experience?
I moved to Burgmann from regional Victoria straight after finishing high school. I’d heard good things from a few alumni when I visited ANU in Year 12, and it felt like the kind of place where you could land on your feet pretty quickly.
I started out studying Engineering and Commerce and was keen to get involved in whatever I could. Burgmann made that easy. I had a solid group of friends pretty much straight away, and I ended up joining a few sports teams and music groups. Some of my best memories are just the energy around that, training during the week, performing or playing on weekends, and having the whole college show up and get behind you.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing. There were definitely moments at uni that pushed me outside my comfort zone, but looking back, that was a big part of the value of the experience. Having people around you who had your back made a real difference, and it helped me build a bit of resilience that’s stuck with me since.
When I think about Burgmann now, it feels like more than just where I lived. It was a community that supported you when things were going well and when they weren’t, and it set me up in ways I probably didn’t fully appreciate at the time.
And of course, the highlight was meeting Maddi. We’ve been together since first year, and all these years later I still feel very lucky that she said yes when I proposed in December last year!
Watching someone you love navigate uncertainty while building something ambitious can be challenging. What moments have stood out to you as signs of Maddalena’s confidence or strength?
Watching Maddi build Future Swirl has been pretty incredible. I’ve seen firsthand how much thought, effort and persistence has gone into it, from figuring out the product itself through to turning a single food trailer into something that’s now gearing up to expand more broadly. She cares deeply about what she’s building, and that really comes through in everything she does.
What’s stood out most to me though has been how she handled her diagnosis. It was a really confronting time, and there were moments that were genuinely scary. But even through that, she stayed focused on what mattered to her and didn’t lose sight of where she was heading.
I think what people don’t always see is the quieter kind of strength, the ability to keep going when things are uncertain, to adapt, and to keep backing yourself even when things don’t go to plan. That’s something she’s done consistently.
I’m incredibly proud of what she’s built so far, and I have no doubt Future Swirl is going to become something a lot of people know and love in the years ahead.
Is there anything else you'd like to share:
I’m really grateful for my time at Burgmann and the role it played in my uni experience. It was a great place to meet people, make friends, and figure a lot of things out along the way.
Most importantly, it’s where I met Maddi, which obviously changed everything for me.
I still look back on those years really fondly and feel lucky to be part of the Burgmann community.
