Peter Tregilgas

Peter Tregilgas is currently the Executive Officer Regional Development Australia Mid North Coast.
Peter has a wide-ranging experience in creative innovation including, arts management, festival coordination, capital projects and social enterprise. He is a former director of the Adelaide Festival Fringe (the formative years 1980-84), festival consultant to the Victorian Tourism Commission (including working directly with South Australia’s icon Don Dunstan), appointed as the inaugural Director of Tandanya the National Aboriginal Cultural Institute and Executive Director Arts Access SA (Arts & Disability).
Peter has extensive skills in business planning and the development of social enterprise for the “Not for Loss” sector. He authored a definitive booklet Social Enterprise in Australia and remains a champion for cause related programs.

Jo Barraket

Jo Barraket is Associate Professor of Social Enterprise at Queensland University of Technology, a position that is jointly supported by QUT and the Westpac Foundation. Jo has a PhD in sociology from the University of New South Wales and has been researching aspects of social enterprise and civil society for 15 years. Jo has been active as an initiator, manager and board member of several successful social enterprises.

Cindy Lesley

I am a Yuin woman from the lands surrounding
Wallaga Lake. I have family connections from the South Coast to the North Coast NSW, this is where I live and work within the Nations of Bundjalung, Yaegl and Gumbaingirr countries.

I lived on the streets from the age of 14, I was lost, I had lost my identity, lost who I was and what direction I was to go. I was an alcoholic by the age of 18, I have lived a very diverse and challenging life, I was illiterate until aged 29.
In 1998 I woke from the nightmare and began learning about me, regaining my identity, became stronger with the guidance of Elders, family and friends I became who I am today, determined to achieve in all aspects of life.

Since commencing my journey of learning I have been successfully completed several Certificate qualifications in the area of Social Welfare ranging from Certificate III to Diploma level courses and completing a Bachelors in Social Sciences – Welfare. I intend on continuing the journey of learning for life as it is through learning we become stronger and more determined to move forward and bring with us those who wish to share the journey.

I have over 20 years experience in Human Services Sector in a number of roles such as Frontline staff, Support worker, Management, Behaviour Management Programmer, Policy and Research. I was a counsellor for over 4 years where I worked closely with my communities in addressing various life impacting issues on both an individual and community level, supporting many to build and achieve their dreams. Organisations I have worked with include; Department of Community Service, Juvenile Justice, BALA Youth Work, Grafton Aged Care, Ageing Disability and Home Care, Personal Support Programme, Thungutti – Miindala Consultancy, Coffs Harbour Support Services and North Coast TAFE.

Ingrid Vet

Ingrid Vet’s professional career includes experience in teaching, nursing and social work. She has been involved in extensive formal studies in all these areas. Her work experience is both at the local level in Coffs Harbour, and internationally in Papua New Guinea, Marshall Islands, Hawaii and Taiwan. The main focus of her work is mental illness and the effect of trauma on child development. She currently supports children of parents in relationship separation or conflict. On a philosophical level she believes every child needs to be raised as part of a community. Social enterprise activities involving the community in supporting children provide positive social and learning opportunities that enhances the likelihood of positive identities and emotional resilience in children.

Cameron Marshall MC

Cameron Marshall has been with ABC Radio as a broadcaster and manager for the last twenty years in Broken Hill, Adelaide and the Mid North Coast. Cameron presents a daily Mid North Coast breakfast program and manages ABC Mid North Coast and Coffs Coast. Cameron is a graduate in business studies and tourism from Charles Sturt University and has studied acting, elephant handling and classical guitar-but not in that order. When not on air Cameron enjoys performing in the odd play or musical. Sometimes the plays are not that odd at all.

Steve Lawrence

Steve Lawrence AO is Chief Executive of the Australian Social Innovation Exchange, created to support the search for fresh solutions to Australia’s key social challenges through cross-sector collaboration. He is Chair of Bonnyrigg Management P/L, a Public Private Partnership body bringing together the capabilities of four organisations to redevelop the public housing estate in South West Sydney for the NSW Government over the next 30 years. Steve also consults in Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

After starting his career with NSW Government, Steve spent 29 years until late 2008 as Founder, CEO and Social Entrepreneur with WorkVentures, an entrepreneurial community economic development agency, based in Sydney. Steve led WorkVentures from a $3000 startup in 1979 to annual revenues of $20million. WorkVentures was Microsoft Australia’s first community partner, won the PMs Community Business Partnership Award in 2005 and is now Microsoft’s longest standing community partner worldwide.

Steve was appointed an Officer in the Order of Australia in January 2010 for ‘service to the community through leadership roles in the development and implementation of non-profit ventures to create social change, particularly for youth and the long-term unemployed’. Steve was selected as Social Entrepreneur of the Year for NSW/ACT in 2004 in Ernst & Young’s global program.

Over the last 30 years Steve has played a leadership role in creating over 13 new non-profit organisations, most of which are still operating. They include Job Futures, United Way Sydney, Jobs Australia, Social Ventures Australia, School for Social Entrepreneurs Australia

Nic Bolto

Nic Bolto has been working in the field of mental health and employment since the late 1980’s and was awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 2009 that explored the use of social enterprise in reducing levels of reoffending amongst vulnerable citizens. Nic founded Ostara Australia Limited in 2001. The company has turnover of approximately $20m and delivers employment support services to people with mental health issues in 114 sites around Australia.

Dea Morgain

Dea is the Manager of the Workplace Supports Program at Social Firms Australia. In this capacity she works with Social Firms and other workplaces to develop systems and processes to effectively support employees with mental illness.

Dea has more than 20 years experience in casework with disadvantaged people, community development and the management of nonprofits agencies. Dea has a BA in psychology and Graduate Diploma in employee relations.

Michael Newman

Mike has worked in the field of adult education for more than forty years and, amongst other things, has been, a community education worker in the sometimes mean streets of inner London, and a national trainer with the Australian Trade Union Training Authority. He retired from his post as Senior Lecturer at the University of Technology, Sydney in 2001. He has written a number of books on adult education and social action, his most recent being Teaching Defiance: Stories and Strategies for Activist Educators, (Jossey Bass, San Francisco, 2006. (You can find slightly more information about Mike and his writing, and download three of his books free of charge, at http://www.michaelnewman.info/ .)

See Dr. John Tickell on ACA

See Dr. John Tickell on A Current Affair

Tracy Grimshaw's exclusive interview with television's Dr. John Tickell, who in this clip was fighting for his life after being diagnosed with brain cancer.

Donnie Maclurcan

Donnie Maclurcan is a social revolutionary. He celebrates thinking ‘big’, whilst keeping grounded with ongoing questions, projects and a spot of gardening. He is the Founder and CEO of the community development organisation Project Australia and a founding member of the Growthbusters – a global network inspiring and equipping people everywhere to make the well-being of people and the planet our most urgent priority, without relying on growth to make it happen.

His unique insights come from an unusually diverse career, having worked as an exercise physiologist and telephone counsellor, coordinator of a lobby group for Aboriginal justice and a team assisting Sydney’s homeless, a journalist from the World Social Forum in Kenya, an English and mathematics teacher in South Korea and event manager for The Great Australian Bike Ride.

Donnie’s outputs have resonated throughout Australia and the world, leading to his appointment as a Fellow of The Royal Society of the Arts. His PhD was one of the world’s first, comprehensive investigations of nanotechnology’s possible global consequences, resulting in two book contracts and over 20 translations of his work. In 2006, he co-developed an award-winning case study for Australian high schools about the drowning of 353 asylum seekers on their way to Australia. He also founded Australia’s first professional speakers’ bureau for younger people, is one of the youngest to have competed in the Sydney Hobart Yacht Race and, at age 20, achieved the Guinness World Record for the fastest journey on foot across Australia, raising over $35000 for The Fred Hollows Foundation, for whom he remains an ambassador. Visit PROJECT AUSTRALIA

May Lam Social Traders

May Lam - Policy and Strategy, Social Traders
Dr. May Lam joined Social Traders in 2010. May has worked in senior policy and research roles in Australia and the UK over the last 17 years across the community, private and government sectors. She worked with Jobs Australia for 12 years and with the Brotherhood of St Laurence in social inclusion project design. She is particularly interested in citizen engagement and participation in the design of social and employment services, how social enterprises can create employment, learning and social inclusion opportunities in various communities and contexts, and how social impact and social value can be measured and reported.

Professor John Mendoza

Professor John Mendoza is a Director of ConNetica after a career that has seen him hold several executive positions including the inaugural Chair of the Australian Government’s National Advisory Council on Mental Health, CEO of the Mental Health Council of Australia and CEO of the Australian Sports Drug Agency. John’s professional appointments, including:* Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health Science, University of the Sunshine Coast* Adjunct Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Sydney* Deputy President, Alcohol and Other Drugs Council of Australia John has authored or co-authored dozens of reports and submissions to public inquiries on mental health and suicide in the past five years. His most recent reports include a Sector Development Strategy for the Victorian community mental health sector and a seminal report on suicide, Breaking the Silence.

John Allsop

John graduated from the University of NSW (Batchelor of Social Work) in 1990 and worked as a social worker with the Hunter Area Health Service from 1991-1997. During this time he was employed as a social worker in a surgical ward at the John Hunter Hospital for two years and then worked as a community health social worker at Port Stephens Health Services for four and a half years. John took a break from SW when his eldest daughter was born and returned to the Hunter Area Health Service in 2000 where he did a 12 month stint as the Intensive Care Social worker at the ICU at John Hunter Hospital. Following this he relocated to the Port Macquarie region where he worker as a Renal Social Worker based at Port Macquarie Community Health Centre. John joined Centrelink in 2004 and worked at both Port Macquarie and Kempsey customer Service Centres for approximately 18 months- following this he transferred to Darwin and worked there for two years where he was involved in the establishment of a remote servicing team which provided Social Work service and support to remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory-this role involved regular visits to remote Indigenous communities in the top end of the Northern Territory (eg. Maningrida, Tiwi Islands, Nhulunbuy). He returned to Port Macquarie Call Centre in 2008 and worked at the Port Macquarie Call Centre for two years. In mid-2010 he commenced a role with the Centrelink Rural and Community Practice SW Team which is responsible for the provision of SW service & support to disadvantaged and vulnerable Centrelink customers who reside in rural and regional areas throughout the eastern states. The Rural and Community Practice SW Team are also focussed on community engagement activities with an emphasis on developing and maintaining close collaborative relationships with a variety of Government and non Government agencies and services operating in regional and rural Australia.

Professor Barry Golding

Professor Barry Golding is a vocational, adult and community education researcher in the School of Education at the University of Ballarat in Australia. Barry is Vice President of Adult Learning Australia and Patron of the Australian Men’s Sheds Association. Professor Golding has extensive education and research experience in school, vocational education and training, adult and community education and university sectors spanning 30 years. His education-related research in the past fifteen years has focused mainly on vocational and adult education, with a particular emphasis on: access and equity in vocational education and training; Indigenous vocational education and adult and community education. In recent years he has focused on studies of learning in voluntary community settings that are inclusive of men. Several of his national studies have been published by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER). His increasingly international research has increasingly gravitated towards issues associated with how adults, particularly men not in the workforce, connect to learning through participation in diverse and less formal community contexts. In 2009 he completed research in four Australian States in twelve sites for the Western Australia Department of Education & Training and also for National Seniors Australia Productive Ageing Centre.
Read more about Professor Barry Golding HERE