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.
My career spans public health, technology, entrepreneurship, innovation policy, and the creative economy. I’ve co-founded businesses, supported over 200 consulting projects across Australia, advised ministers, run a co work space and helped build innovation ecosystems, And I love transforming ideas into 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, and systems
It’s real, not glossy. Grown into this moment.
why now?
We’re living through colliding systems changes, exponential volatility, fragmentation, uncertainty, 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.