About Jude Ellen
I work at the edges where ideas spark, where businesses can shift, where systems intersect, and where change is ready but not yet clear.
Trained in economics, public health, and management, my work bridges structure, strategy, and creativity. Grounded in the belief that people and ideas can flourish, even in complexity.
My career spans social advocacy, public health, aged care, technology, entrepreneurship, and the creative economy. I’ve co-founded businesses, led over 200 consulting projects across Australia measuring corporate impact and performance, advised ministers, run a co-working space, and helped shape regional innovation ecosystems.
What I enjoy most is working with people to turn early sparks into grounded, working business.
what holds it all together is how I work:
- Strategic sharpness with systems thinking and operational expertise
- Deep listening and radical honesty
- Holding complexity, making sense of it, and moving
I work with people who are bold, intentional, and willing to disrupt. People on the cusp of navigating complexity and uncertainty: ideas people, entrepreneurs, leaders, and community builders. Readying for action.
about Rust490
Rust490 is my business and platform. It began as a co-working space in Darwin, Unit 4 Number 90, but the name held because it also held meaning.
Rust is what endures: its a patina, weathered, real, full of character. 490 signals structure 4, transformation 9, and infinite potential 0.
Rust490 is now a strategy and advisory business supporting
- entrepreneurs with complex, high-stakes ideas
- organisations seeking reinvention or resilience
- people working across innovation, culture, creativity, technology and systems
Rust490 has grown into this moment.
why now?
We’re living through colliding systems changes, exponential volatility, fragmentation, uncertainty, human harm, ecological strain. Its our zeitgeist.
Yet there are emerging green shoots. This moment demands clarity, grounding, shared thinking, and well-placed action.
Rust490 exists to support that.