Blog: My three favourite things about Jane Goodall

By Ondine Sherman, Voiceless Co-Founder, Voiceless

October 8 2025

In the last days, tributes to the indomitable Dr Jane Goodall, DBE, have overflowed. For the best reasons.

A pioneering primatologist and anthropologist, Dr Goodall was first renowned for her groundbreaking, decades-long study of wild chimpanzees at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, which revolutionised understandings of chimpanzee behaviour. With her innovative methods, she showed how chimps not only use tools but also possess complex social and emotional lives. To Jane, they were individuals, not numbers. Wanting to protect the animals and wildlife with whom she had become deeply connected from the terrible, looming fates of violence, death, and extinction, she founded the Jane Goodall Institute and Roots & Shoots. A global advocate for conservation, animal protection, and youth activism was born.

However, fewer people know that Jane also supported diverse people and causes, often quietly, which was how she came to be a Voiceless Patron, treasured by my father (and Co-founder), Brian Sherman and me.

I was fortunate to meet the tiny team of volunteers at Jane Goodall Institute Australia before they registered, and I became a founding member. My father and I first met Jane at an intimate dinner in a private house in Sydney: she had just flown into Australia, incredibly jetlagged, to continue a worldwide speaking tour. After dinner, we requested a private conversation; Jane had been awake for twenty-four hours at this point and looked on the verge of fainting from exhaustion, but she graciously agreed. We sat with her in a darkened room, as the light bothered her, away from the other guests. With her eyes closed, she listened carefully to the mission and vision for our organisation, Voiceless. She promised to help however she could—and she did, by becoming a beloved Voiceless Patron in 2011, together with Hon Michael Kirby AC CMG and John M. Coetzee AC FRSL OMG

Over the years that I had the pleasure of seeing her and exchanging emails, she defied the saying “never meet your heroes”. 

Here are three of my favourite things about our Voiceless Patron, Dr Jane Goodall...

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