Here’s what I am investing my love and energy in at the moment…
👉🏾 - Supporting the growth of an innovative, national peer workforce - in my predominant role as a Lived Experience Workforce Partner at Mind Australia.
🟩 - Being a National Youth Board Advisor to headspace’s (Australia’s National Youth Mental Health Foundation) Board, to help improve outcomes for young folks across our national network & with a focus on refugee and migrant-background young peoples’ experiences and communities. This includes chairing their inaugural Multicultural Practice Strategy Advisory Group.
✊🏾 - Supporting multicultural culture-oriented mental health advocates & professionals by co-chairing Solis - Culture & Mental Health - a capacity-building support network and Think Tank with the wonderful Dr. Judy Tang. This includes the development & refining of a Culture & Mental Health Toolkit; a resource list related to living, being and working in the multicultural mental health space.
📣 - Using my lived and professional experience to speak and consult on mental wellbeing, agency, self-determination, culture & identity - including in the following groups & projects:
As a mentor for the Yale Program for Recovery & Community Health’s Lived Experience Transformational Leadership Academy (LET(s)Lead)
As a Technical Expert for the development of a state-wide Lived Experience Leadership Strategy & Implementation Plan with Vic’s Lived Experience Branch, SHARC & EY
Ngalaiya Boorai Gabara Budbut Research Governance Group
Victorian Transcultural Mental Health (VTMH)'s Community Engagement Resource Project Advisory Group
Migration Council Australia’s Refugee & Migrant Mental Health Partnership Advisory Council
And a number of other avenues of engagement :)
🔬 - Two terms as a Commissioner on the National Mental Health Commission’s Independent Advisory Board & providing advice to the Federal Government on ways to continuously improve the mental health system and suicide prevention in Australia.
❤️ - Developing a stronger sense of self and working toward being just a little kinder, more compassionate & self-aware than I was yesterday. Working toward the integration of systemic contexts into practice - through a consumer, practitioner and advocate lens.
🎓 - I hold degrees in Biomedical Science, Commerce, Psychology and Social Work.
🕰 - You can also read more about my work & volunteering history here.
🖥 - This is where I mostly post Insta stories about my Mini Dachshund Milo.
✈️ - Blessed to have visited 32 countries.
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