Workshop Facilitators
Our Keynote speakers will be running workshops too, and, in addition, we are thrilled to introduce our amazing Lived Experience workshop facilitators for our Lived Experience Workforce Summit. The LEW Summit Working Group identified workshops that they feel would be relevant to today's LE workforce and then set about locking in these facilitators for our event. I am sure you will recognise a few faces amongst them.
These highly skilled Lived Experience Leaders will voluntarily and enthusiastically share their skills, knowledge, and wisdom from across the mental health, AOD, and suicide prevention sectors. In total, there will be eighteen workshops (more information on the workshops will follow). Over the two days, each participant will have the opportunity to choose and attend three of these 90-minute skills-based workshops. In the meantime, have a browse and read their bio's and be sure to say hello and thank you to them when you see them at the summit. These folks will be Powering Us Up, for sure.

Aimee Schoemann
Aimee is a Lived and Living Project Coordinator at QuIVVA. Aimee worked as a senior mental health peer for the Safe Space Network and in service delivery with Domestic and Family Violence and Multicultural Health before stepping in to her current role.

Amie Joseph
Amie Joseph is the Head of Peer Care Companion with Roses in the Ocean. She brings extensive experience in working with vulnerable people in the housing and homelessness sector, child and youth mental health and foster and kinship care sectors. Amie has dedicated her life to working alongside people while sharing her lived experiences, supporting people to find self-efficacy and purpose.
Amie has spent the last 7 years of her working career in leadership roles, where her passion lies in building a trauma informed, person centred workforce. The incredible experience of a Lived Experience Summit opened Amie’s eyes to the courage and commitment that Roses in the Ocean has to embedding a peer workforce and inspired her to pursue a career in suicide prevention.
Roses in the Ocean has enabled Amie to lead a dedicated and values aligned paid and volunteer workforce in delivering authentic peer-led services to people with a lived experience of Suicide.

Aunty Vicki McKenna
Vicki McKenna is a proud Yawuru and Bunaba woman from Broome in the Kimberley Region of Northwest Western Australia. As a devoted mother of five and grandmother to 18, Vicki’s commitment to her family and community is at the heart of her work.
Vicki has significant experience working in social and emotional wellbeing, cultural safety, suicide prevention, postvention support and care, and critical response work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Vicki is a trained Counsellor and Child Psychotherapist and currently the Head of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Lived Experience Centre where she utilises her invaluable lived experience which guides the development and implementation of crucial initiatives aimed at enhancing the Social and Emotional Wellbeing of First Nations peoples.
Specifically, Vicki is passionate about improving the shared understanding in the broader mental health sector of what Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Lived Experience expertise looks like, and how successful consultation with these voices can be achieved. Vicki mobilizes First Nations lived experience voices from local, state and National levels, amplifying their voices at higher level engagements with Government, National and International decision-makers, with the purpose of informing culturally safe, effective and respectful Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led suicide prevention and mental health wellbeing.
Recognised as a cultural leader and First Nations advocate, Vicki is an expert in suicide prevention, serving her community in the Kimberley and beyond. Her dedication and innovative approaches were acknowledged when she received the ‘National Innovation’ and ‘Priority Populations’ Excellence in Suicide Prevention LiFE Awards from Suicide Prevention Australia and Indigenous Allied Health Australia (IAHA)’s Lifetime Achievement Award in December 2024.

Brett Hodges
Brett is a passionate harm reduction advocate and works as an AOD lived experience educator with Insight. His recent work has seen the development of training packages to assist those bringing their lived experience in peer roles.

Brody
Brody (they/them) is a queer non- binary gender gremlin. They are a mental health and neurodivergent lived experience advocate living on Turrbul and Jagera Country. Brody is a firm believer in developing and sustaining grassroots communities in different ways. They are co-host on Queer Radio & Only Human 4ZZZ the chair on the newly formed LGBTQIA+ special interest group within the Mental Health Lived Experience Peak Queensland (MHLEPQ) and one of the organisers of the International Non-Binary Peoples Day Meanjin/Brisbane. Brody loves their greyhound Gretel, and they are also a huge fan of local music.

Cherie McGregor
For over a decade Cherie has worked in identified Lived Experience roles in mental health treatment services; mainstream and peer operated community services; and academic institutions across regional Queensland. She is currently undertaking a PhD (with the Lived Experience Research Unit at the Australian National University) investigating the role of social change values in mental health Peer Support approaches across diverse settings in Queensland.

Donna Humphrey
Donna has been in lived experience roles for over a decade supporting workforce development and training frameworks. Arriving in Australia she changed career directions from Marketing Manager in Ireland to working with a peer-led community mental health organisation Brook RED.
At Brook RED Donna worked on focus groups, capacity building projects training programs and specific workforce development initiatives. Donna was responsible for launching and hosting Australia’s first National Lived Experience Workforce Conference “Dialogue” and successfully hosted it four times prior to changing roles.
Working with Peach Tree since 2020, Donna has designed and co-developed a perinatal mental health peer worker skill set training as well as influencing and contributing to organisational policy and procedure and frameworks tailed specifically for the lived experience workforce.
Donna appreciates how Lived Experience practice cultivates, inspires, and models healing and is grateful every day to be working in a role that aligns with her passion and purpose.

Helena Roennfeldt
Helena is a lived experience researcher and experienced peer worker. Her experience includes involvement with the development of the Queensland and National Lived Experience Workforce Guidelines and writing several articles on the Lived Experience workforce. She has trained in IPS and has qualifications in Social Work, Suicide Prevention, Forensic Mental Health and Mental Health Practice.
She is currently completing her PhD on subjective experiences of mental health crisis and crisis care. Helena is a proud member of the consumer movement and is passionate about the potential of consumer perspectives and peer approaches to hold and respond to the impacts of oppression, adversity and distress. She is committed to centring first-person perspectives and loves seeking creative projects involving avenues for greater connection and belonging.

Jen McCall
Jen is Senior Peer Trainer at Peach Tree having extensive experience in Peer Work and Leadership. Jen has worked her way up at Peach Tree, starting as a service user in 2012, moving to a volunteer and finally becoming a paid Peer worker in 2017. She has extensive experience in service delivery as well as supporting a perinatal mental health lived experience team.
In addition to her nursing background, Jen has completed a Cert IV in Mental Health Peer Work and Cert IV in Training and Assessor and has contributed significantly to building Peach Tree culture and reputation as a pioneering perinatal mental health organisation.
She now uses her expertise to ensure Peach Tree staff are highly trained and supported applying trauma informed approaches to building a confident lived experience workforce to deliver our specialised perinatal and infant mental health services to our community.

Jorgen Gullestrup
I have been lucky to be able to work for purposes and values I believe in for the past 29 years. I’ve dedicated the last 14 years to serving as a not-for profit leader in the field of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention.
My work has allowed me to be involved in establishing ground-breaking programming, pushing for a breakaway from the status quo towards more sustainable and holistic solutions in the area of suicide prevention and mental health while partnering with stakeholders from the construction industry, mental health and government to ensure effective strategy and program delivery. I’m a passionate and inclusive leader skilled in budgeting, customer service, coaching, and strategic planning.
A firm believer in blue-sky thinking and working solutions, I enjoy working backward from the blue-sky objective over a more conventional problem-solution focused approach.
A plumber by trade and a past union official with honed negotiation skills, I’m a current PhD candidate and Master of Suicidology.
I have had the privilege of serving on multiple Boards, Trusts, Reference Groups and Advisory Committees, as well as being invited to present keynote addresses on Suicide Prevention around the globe. I was also a 2017 Churchill Fellow and received the Suicide Prevention Australia LIFE Award for Sector Leadership in 2018.

Julia Ward
Julia has a passion for supporting individuals who access AOD services. This passion alongside her strong academic background enhances her role as an AOD lived experience educator with Insight. Julia’s goal is to help develop and deliver training packages to Queensland AOD services.

Lorna Downes
Lorna has been working as a Family/Carer Lived Experience Worker for over twenty years. Lorna’s work focusses on supervision, training and support for Lived Experience workers and on collaborative projects the centre family/carer perspectives. Currently Lorna is working with others to understand and document the family/carer worker experiences in Victorian and Queensland mental health services, researching the conditions that support authentic co production and co facilitating eCPR workshops and communities of practice.

Katherine Reid
Katherine Reid has over 20 years’ experience in direct practice, teaching, and research. She is a lecturer in the School of Health Sciences and Social Work at Griffith University. Katherine's specific expertise is in the area of recovery-oriented policy and practice with children and young people experiencing mental health challenges, working alongside and partnering with carers and families. Katherine completed her Phd thesis in 2021, focusing on a recovery-oriented policy analysis and a qualitative analysis of therapeutic interactions with children who experience mental health concerns and their caregivers. Her award-winning thesis exposed the complexities of working with children and their families and has influenced policy and practice in the field. She has also worked as a policy officer and co-developed the Queensland Government’s Consumer, Caregiver and Family Participation Framework (2018), which guides mental health service provision in Queensland.

Louisa Dent Pearce
Louisa is a Social Worker with Lived Experience of recovery from schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder. Her career includes work as a researcher, peer worker and trainer for Voices Vic (Prahran Mission); National Consumer Consultant for Healthscope (Australia-wide); Operations Manager and trainer for Peer4Peer (Sunshine Coast); and counsellor/trainer in her private practice, The Voice Sanctuary. She is the author of “Spirit-Gnosis: Hearing Voices” and “The Little Girl that Nobody Wanted”. Louisa has a particular interest in the craft of storytelling as a means to healing.

Mandy Long
Amanda (Mandy) has been volunteering and working in private practice and community settings since the mid 1990’s. Her multiple decades, lived experience background in eating disorders, family breakdown and trauma, informed her heart for humanity, advocacy and personhood. Amanda has been at Eating Disorders Queensland (EDQ) for 8 years in numerous roles, including Peer Mentor, Senior Mentor, Lived Experience Worker, and Psychosocial Recovery Coach (NDIS) and more recently Lived Experience Team Coordinator and Cairns Hub oversight. Loving people and story, Amanda believes that is recovery is possible, and the outworking is modelled in everyday life. She enjoys family time, walking with coffee, reading and writing along with wandering through markets, thrift and antique shops.

Manna Murrell
Manna is Project and Policy Lead at Queensland Injectors Voice for Advocacy and Action (QuIVAA). In her role she finds clever and kind ways to collaborate and create change activating spaces for people of lived and living experience to be visible and valued through creative and narrative practices.

Michelle Van Eps
Michelle moved into the profession of lived experience work just over three years ago, inspired by a desire to give back, connect on a human level, and reduce stigma of mental health and be apart of positive systemic change. She worked in general and acute mental health before moving into her special interest area of eating disorder recovery. Michelles tertiary education in the visual arts and work experience in medical administration brings creativity, organisation, good communication and insights to her lived experience work. Michelle is Eating Disorders Queensland (EDQ)’s lived experience speaker Program Coordinator, contributes to carers workshops and feels passionate about one-on-one client work. She particularly enjoys public speaking, delivering workshops and presentations and supporting the lived experience workforce.

Niki Parry
Niki is a leader in the AOD harm reduction sector, working at QuIHN. She also is a director at QuiVVA, Queensland drug user organisation. Niki is passionate about the health and human rights of people who use drugs, drug law reform and supporting organisations to do good practice in AOD harm reduction peer work.

Rahim Mohammadi
Salam! I am Rahim, an embodiment of my name which means merciful in Arabic. I arrived to Australia as a refugee from Afghanistan. I am a relentless advocate for change and am determined to impact the world around me positively. I bring enthusiasm and energy to every endeavour I make, and I hope we can all work together to create a brighter, more inclusive future for all. I believe in the sanctity and value of life, and I do everything I can to improve people’s lives.
I am a Psychology graduate from QUT who utilises my lived experience and expertise with mental health to drive systemic change. I am involved with over 20 organisations via advocacy and advisory groups across Australia. Through these organisations, I devote my time to important issues such as mental health and suicidality, CALD representation, youth representation, refugee and disability rights, child and family safety, and youth justice. I am committed to enacting change by engaging with local parliament members, government departments, and other key stakeholders.

Sanam Ahmadzada
Sanam Ahmadzada is a PHD candidate in the School of Public Health at the University of Queensland (UQ) studying mental health stigma in refugee and migrant communities and co-designing a Mental Health Promotion Framework. She holds a Master of International Public Health and a Bachelor of Science majoring in Biomedical Science from UQ.
Sanam is a former refugee from Afghanistan and has a strong interest in health equity and justice, diversity and inclusion, transcultural mental health, health promotion, and mental health stigma reduction. She has been a refugee health consultant (G11 member) with the Refugee Health Network of Queendland since 2020. She also spent over five years at the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research (QCMHR) as a research officer, working on several projects, including evaluation of the Multicutural Psychological Therapies Program at the World Wellness Group (WWG) and an evaluation of the Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) suicide Prevention Project developed by the Queensland Transcultural Mental Health Centre (QTMHC) She is a board Director of the Queensland Program of Assistance to Survivors of Torture and Trauma (QPASTT). She also has experience sitting on several working groups, committees and councils, including the Queensland Mental Heal and Drug Advisory Council, Brisbane South PHN Community Advisory Council and UQ Cultural Inclusion Council.
Sanam is passionate about transcultural mental health, primarily focusing on refugees and migrants, health equity, mental health promotion, stigma reduction, suicide prevention, and using community-centered approaches. She advocates for tackling systemic issues and leads her work using a sociopolitical determinate lens. Sanam also has extensive experience in promoting diversity and inclusion in her places of work and education through her involvement with different councils and committees. She draws on her lived experiences to advocate for change.

Scotty Rees
Scotty is a dedicated advocate for the Lived Experience Workforce in Australia, emphasizing the transformative power of peer relationships. With over 35 years of navigating both sides of the mental health system, Scotty has first hand insights of the complexities of mental health having experienced various challenges, including diagnoses, addiction, incarceration, and being part of the hearing voices community.
In 2014 Scotty completed the Intentional Peer Support (IPS) Core training which opened new perspectives on connections and understandings his own experience. Since then, he has applied IPS principles in community mental health, the justice system, allied health and addiction services/ Becoming an effective facilitator of Intentional Peer Support, Alternatives to Suicide and SMART Recovery groups.
Now residing in Hervey Bay, QLD, Scotty is passionate about building community and fostering resilience through Lived Experience consultancy, peer supervision and group co reflection particularly in regional and rural parts of Australia. His work is driven by profound commitment to honoring human experiences and creating positive change through connection and support.

Trish Tran
Beginning her career with hospital-based training in nursing, she then moved through various admin roles with Health spanning across emergency departments, wards, and outpatient services in both children’s and adult hospitals. Eventually, her journey led her to discover her true calling in peer support work, where she progressed from a peer worker in government mental health services to an executive position overseeing a peer workforce. It is there, she recognised a critical gap in peer supervision of peer workforces. Trish has now developed and implemented Western Australia's first Peer Supervision course, which she has been successfully delivering for Consumers of Mental Health for the past four years. She currently holds roles across multiple organisations, including the WA Mental Health Commission, Curtin University, WA Recovery College and Shelter WA. Her contributions have been recognised with two team awards: the 2023 Silver Award for Nurturing Wellbeing and Purpose in Education and the 2017 Excellence in Innovative Practice Award.
A certified Alternatives to Suicide trainer and facilitator, Personal Medicine Coach and Trainer and eCPR educator, Trish's approach is rooted in the power of deep listening and desire for genuine connection.