About The Purpose Agents
Anna Forster
Founder & CEO
Anna founded The Purpose Agents in 2018 after a decade of building e-commerce businesses, most recently as GM of Operations at one of Australia's largest online retail groups, where she ran operations, warehousing, purchasing, and the international supply chain.
That operator background shapes how she works with clients. Sustainability strategies are only useful if the operations team can actually execute them, and disclosures are only defensible if the people writing them understand the operational underpinnings of the numbers provided. This is why The Purpose Agents work exclusively with retail and e-commerce.
In the current era of sustainability work, often driven by reporting and compliance, Anna also brings the expertise and accountability AI tools alone cannot provide.
She holds an MSc in Business from the University of Mannheim and a Certificate in Business Sustainability Management from the University of Cambridge, where she also mentors in the CISL accelerator programme. She is a co-founder and board director of Leaders for Climate Action Australia, and a regular speaker and commentator on sustainability in retail.
Alice Kuepper
Co-Founder & Strategic Advisor
Alice co-founded The Purpose Agents with Anna in 2018 and continues to provide strategic counsel from her in-house role leading sustainability at a major Australian retailer. Her perspectives from working at the front line inside a large retail organisation continuously shape The Purpose Agents’ client engagements.
Two decades of leadership experience spanning retail, e-commerce, and marketing activation give Alice a particular understanding of how sustainability translates from boardroom strategy into operational reality. She has implemented complex sustainability programmes across some of retail's most pressing environmental and social issues, and brings that practitioner lens to the firm's advisory work.
She holds Sustainability Certifications from the University of Cambridge (CISL) and Harvard Business School, and a Master of Sociology from the University of Munich. She is a Non-Executive Director of the Coalition for Sustainable Solutions and a contributor to the Circular Australia Industry Taskforce.
