Ellie is a nationally recognised thought leader on lived experience-led transformative systems change and founder of LELAN (South Australia’s peak lived experience consumer organisation). She combines her personal, professional and socio-political worlds to do this, with a focus on innovation, social justice and leading together. Through LELAN Ellie has visioned, led and partnered with others on numerous cutting-edge projects to strengthen lived experience leadership and reshape systems to better meet the needs and preferences of people most impacted. This has included the development of the Model of Lived Experience Leadership, the Lived Experience Governance Framework and a working partnership with Mind Australia on the co-design of the Healing Place, a peer-led residential service, which was a recommendation of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System. Ellie has completed the Company Directors Course and is an individually appointed member of the legislated South Australian Suicide Prevention Council. Ellie was previously the Lived Experience Advisor (Consumer) with the SA Mental Health Commission and had her own Private Practice as a Therapist & Consultant. She also loves cheese, particularly the stinky oozy kind.

Phoebe Holdenson Kimura is GP at the Hornsby-Brooklyn GP Unit and a lecturer at the University of Sydney. She has an interest in mental health, perinatal health and integrated models of care. She works with the e-Mental Health in Practice team at the Black Dog Institute and is a Clinical Adivsor at the Australian Commission for Safety and Quality in Healthcare.

Also works as an Carer Peer Network Faciliator at Mental Health Carers NSW

Cartoonist and community program provider

David is a retired psychiatrist with 30 years in voluntary suicide prevention work. His charity won a 2024 award with the App he will be co-presenting with Prof Sharon Lawn.

Natalie leads the mental health and addiction service monitoring work within Te Hiringa Mahara (the New Zealand Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission). She joined the Initial Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission in 2020, which then became the permanent Commission in February 2021. She has a background in data, particularly mental health data, and is passionate about contributing to improved mental health outcomes for people in New Zealand Aotearoa.

Deborah Howe has worked for many years in the mental health sector, making substantial contributions in clinical, operational and policy roles and leading statewide reform initiatives. Most recently at the Agency for Clinical Innovation as the Mental Health Network Manager, Deborah led the development of the Trauma Informed Care: Framework for Change, aimed at transforming mental health services across NSW and the NSW Suicide Care Pathway, designed to improve care for individuals at risk of suicide. She has also held senior positions in the areas of Perinatal, Child and Youth Mental Health in NSW Health. In addition to her leadership roles, Deb has a significant background in research and evaluation with numerous peer-reviewed academic publications. Her extensive experience and keen interest in system reform underscore her commitment to advancing mental health services and policies in NSW.

Louise is a Senior Project Manager and Policy Officer (Lived Experience) at the WA Mental Health Commission. As a systemic advocate, Louise is responsible for ensuring there is lived experience perspective embedded in the development strategic policies and programs of the Commission. She has been instrumental in leading the co-design of policies such as Commission’s Paid Participation Policy, State-wide Engagement Framework and the Lived Experience (Peer) Workforce Framework. Louise has had a long history of involvement with the Lived Experience (Peer) workforce both personally and professionally.

Tania has worked in rural, remote and very remote communities in QLD & NSW for more than 10 years. Leading a team working remote and re-imagining how service delivery can work in these communities drives her work.

Charmaine is a Kuyani from the Adnyamathanha people – She is a muthuri, a woman of the South Wind. Her mother is from the Flinders Ranges – the rock/hill people of South Australia. Her father is of the Arabunna, Yankunytjatjara, and Arrernte people. Her ancestors are from the North and to the West of South Australia, extending into the Northern Territory. Charmaine had 10 siblings and comes from a very large family. She has 2 children and 8 grandchildren but also acknowledges all the other grandchildren through kinship - she has lost count as there are too many. Charmaine loves to visit the lands of her ancestors – as it replenishes her and keeps her spirit and mental health intact. Charmaine’s career started when she worked as an Aboriginal Health Worker at a small Aboriginal community, going onto completing the Enrolled Nursing course, before graduating as a Registered Nurse over 21 years ago. She has post grad qualifications which she completed at the Murdoch and Curtin Universities at Perth, WA. Her career spans across a wide field including health, welfare, research, education and training, policy development to make system change and management. Charmaine had gained a wealth of experience working in South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

Emanjilli works in a designated Consumer Senior Project Officer role with the Victorian Department of Health, Lived Experience Branch, Lived and Living Experience Workforce (LLEW) team. The LLEW team works with organisations to provide development opportunities for LLEWs in the mental health, alcohol and other drug (AOD) treatment and harm reduction sectors.

Trevor manages a project team in the Lived Experience Branch of the Victorian Department of Health and oversees the implementation of lived experience services and entities. His team strives toward the principles of coproduction and lived experience leadership in all aspects of their work.

Kim Huynh is Deputy Director of the ANU Humanities Research Centre and Senior Lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations and is currently writing a book entitled Caring: A story about my old man and me. Along with his mum and son, Kim cares for his dad who has dementia, cancer, is vision and hearing impaired, survived strokes, wars, and a perilous escape by boat from Vietnam, but is otherwise doing well. Kim is also an ABC Radio Canberra presenter who has produced a series of interviews with carers. These provide unique and valuable insights into what it is like for women to care for their husbands who have dementia, how a First Nations man uses music to sooth his chronically ill wife, for a boy to look after his older brother who has cerebral palsy, and for parents who support their children through their psychosis, rare behavioural conditions, and who regard caring as their life’s work.

Jemima is a survivor of Childhood Trauma, Mental Health Issues, Addiction, Domestic Violence, homelessness and Suicidality. She is passionate about structures of support that hold space for making-meaning, such as Intentional Peer Support, Open Dialogue, Mad Studies, Hearing Voices and Alternatives to Suicide and the integration of peer work into clinical mental health services. Her pronouns are "she" and "her".

Dr Leila Jameel is a Trial Co-ordinator and Research Therapist on the AMETHYST trial of therapies for hearing voices. She is also a member of the Swinburne University Voices Clinic team. She holds a research PhD in Clinical Psychology and trained as a Clinical Psychologist in the UK. Leila previously worked at the world-leading PICUP therapy clinic for people living with psychosis in London, and has been therapist on a major national trial of trauma-focused therapy in the UK National Health Service.

Nina Joffee-Kohn is a Consumer Academic at the Centre for Mental Health Nursing with research interest in mental health law, anti-discrimination law, inclusive education, and genocide prevention.

Nicole is a passionate, and dedicated leader committed to the principles of equity, participation, quality, safety & good governance while inspiring and nurturing great culture and engagement. Nicole demonstrates in action her commitment to social justice principles through both her long term clinical work and senior leadership and board experience across youth and adult mental health, trauma, suicide prevention and workplace postvention, and community health and sub-acute services across the Government & NFP space for 30 years. Nicole is a qualified social worker and has an MBA from Curtin Graduate School of Business, she is also a graduate and member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Nicole is particularly proud of her role in implementing lived experience workforce during her time with headspace Early Psychosis and in her current work at Neami as Director Integrated Support. Nicole is committed to embedding both lived experience and consumer, carer, family and friend participation purposefully across all facets of service delivery.

Rowena has served people living with mental health issues and disability, and their families, in the not-for-profit, community and government services sectors for over 14 years. Rowena currently works as a senior peer advisor for Wellways nationally, is a family/carer peer researcher and provides family/carer peer supervision to workforces in Victoria. She is a recent appointment to the Interim Regional Body of Hume, tasked with setting up regional Mental Health Boards in Victoria. Rowena is a devoted advocate for driving legislative and social change to ensure people can exercise their human right to fully participate in communities of their choice.

I am a highly experienced mental health professional with over 20 years of experience, including national-level policy, strategic thinking and planning, and leadership of high-performing teams across primary health, social services and mental health sectors. My passion is driven by being part of many of Australia's major mental health reforms over the past 15 years, including Partners in Recovery, PHN stepped care mental health approaches and more recently, Head to Health. I have considerable policy knowledge and expertise having worked with the National Mental Health Commission on system reform approaches including some of the early scoping of the National Suicide Prevention Office. I have also worked extensively with people with disabilities, carers, First Nations individuals and organisations, CALD individuals and organizations. I have worked in roles that have provided policy advice to the Department of Health as well as being selected by the Department to lead a collegiate approach that supported all 31 national PHNs towards the design and delivery of the five-year mental health regional plan process. I am a highly skilled facilitator and educator having designed, implemented and trained thousands of unique participants in my career and am a Master MH First Aid Instructor with 14 years’ experience in delivering this course and am the current chair of the National MHFA instructor reference group.