She behind Chi.
Communicator. Creative. Solo mum. Someone who grew up in Bathurst, chased the city, and found her way back. Rae Nimmo has spent her career helping organisations find their voice. Chi. Connects is the first time she's found her own.
Tell us a little about yourself.
I'm Rae. I live in Windradyne with my son, and I've been back in Bathurst long enough now to call it home again – properly, this time.
I moved here when I was around seven and left at nineteen, following work and the particular pull that big cities have when you're young and restless. Queensland, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne. For the most part, I loved the pace, the networks, the sense of always being on the front foot of something.
When my son was born, I moved back to family, fresh air, a slower kind of life, room to breathe.
Photos credit: Meg Lynch
What's your background?
Communications, marketing, advertising, design – across more than 25 years and more sectors than I can list neatly. Government campaigns, university marketing, commercial studio management, crisis communications leadership, freelance consulting. I've led creative teams, built brands, run major campaigns, and managed organisations through significant change.
One of the things I'm most proud of is a creative business I ran with my sister, Meg – MRSista. Born here in the region, built on the kind of energy and local connection that only happens when you're doing something with someone you love and trust completely. It ran its course – the market was crowded and creative services are a tough sell – but that chapter taught me a lot about what it means to build something genuinely yours, in a place that's genuinely home.
The creative and digital thread has run through everything – photography, storytelling, strategy. Chi. Connects is built on all of it.
Where did the idea come from?
Honestly? It started with feeling empty.
Not in a dramatic way – just that slow, quiet depletion that creeps in when life feels loud. I’d catch myself scrolling, moving from page to page, post to post, and somehow feeling less connected, not more. I wasn’t just looking for what was on. I was looking for something to lift me a little from all the negativity in the world. To inspire me again.
The world feels heavy right now in a way that is hard to ignore. I kept coming back to this question: where do you go online when you just want to feel good about where you live and the people around you?
And yet, here we are in a region overflowing with good things. Food and wine. Local makers. Small businesses doing beautiful, thoughtful work. Women building extraordinary things in their corners of the Central West. A richness that deserves so much more than a scattered Facebook post or an algorithm deciding what we see.
That frustration – and that longing – was the seed.
I didn’t want another noisy feed. I wanted to build something that felt like a relief to open. Something grounded. Something that brought clarity instead of clutter. A place where women could find what’s on, what’s worth their time, and the stories of the people who make this region what it is. Not networking. Connection. Not content. Community.
And when the idea for Chi. Connects started forming, I did what any sensible woman would do – I called someone who had walked this path before.
I've always followed HerCanberra, founded by my deliriously talented old colleague and friend, Amanda Whitley – ACT Woman of the Year in 2016, and a woman who has inspired thousands through her work in storytelling, community building, and championing Canberra’s culture. If you’ve ever read her story, you’ll understand why she’s such a force.
So I poured a big glass of wine, jumped on Teams, and picked her brain. That conversation gave me the confidence to stop circling the idea and start building it. To trust that the Central West deserved something like this too – a place that feels like home, like clarity, like connection.
That’s when the idea stopped being a thought and started becoming a plan.
“Chi. Connects isn’t a platform that competes with anything – it’s just one that brings it all together.”
I ran a survey and sent it out to my trusted networks, who sent it to their trusted networks. Women across Bathurst, Orange, and Lithgow came back with the same things: everything is scattered, local pages are full of noise, I only hear about things after they've happened, I want something real and curated and mine. Around ninety percent said a resounding ‘yes, there's a gap’. That was all I needed to hear.
And the name?
The name took a while to find. She. was the first instinct – but it felt like a word that already belonged to everyone else. Chi. came later. Life force. Vital energy. Something that flows and connects – in every person, not just some of them. It was quieter and it meant more, which felt exactly right. Read the Chi. Story.
What's it like building something on your own, around everything else life demands?
Chaotic. Slow. Worth it.
And completely out of my depth in ways I did not see coming – AI, automation, platform building. The learning curve has been steep and occasionally humbling. But the tools available are amazing if you’re willing to learn them (and I am!).
There are nights I'm up well past when I should be, planning, building, writing – and my fingers seriously can't keep up with how fast my brain is going. So many ideas, so much to do, so much I can see is possible. But Chi. Connects is the first project in a long time that I've genuinely looked forward to working on. That feeling of building something that matters, that might actually help people – I hadn't realised how much I'd missed it.
I've also learned that slow and intentional is the right pace for this. Chi. Connects isn't meant to be built overnight. It's meant to be built well.
“I’ve been thinking about the legacy I want to leave. It’s not a business milestone, but a feeling… that I made something that mattered, here, in the place I came back to.”
What do you want Chi. Connects to mean – not just as a business, but for you personally?
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. About what fills my cup. About the legacy I want to leave – not in a job, but in the world, as me.
I see remarkable women every single day. Creative, successful, generous women – juggling everything, achieving quietly, showing up for the people and places around them. And so many of them don't know each other. Don't know what the woman down the road is building, or where she goes on a Sunday morning, or what she knows about this region that nobody else does.
I want Chi. Connects to be the place that changes that. Not a platform that competes with anything – just one that brings it all together. The stories, the places, the people, the ideas. A space women trust to come to for inspiration and information. A space where connection happens, where ideas are born, where the richness of this region is finally given the platform it deserves.
One thing you love about living in the Central West?
Stepping outside my front door to layers of countryside – earthy ochres, olives, warm browns that shift with every season. Sunsets that still make me want to stop and photograph. Kangaroos on your morning walks, and the distant sound of sheep in the paddocks down the road. It never gets old. Not even a little bit.
There's a stillness here that I didn't know I needed until I came back.
And the women. The women in this region are remarkable, I can't wait to introduce you to some of them.
