our people

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, 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 and leading the advocacy for and work to systematically embed the Alternatives to Suicide approach across South Australia.

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.

Brett has had a varied working career including jobs as a charter boat deckhand, Hydrographic Surveyor, gravedigger, and a Beneficiary advocate. For the past 30 years he has worked in the health field including 20 years in the Mental Health Sector.

Brett has a Diploma of Nursing, Post Graduate Diploma of Community Services Management and a Bachelor of Applied Management

His lived experience has included two extended breaks from his profession to deal with his mental health challenges. Brett credits the power of supports from peers as fundamental to his recovery both during these periods and as an ongoing source of inspiration and support.

Brett is passionate and committed to placing the person and their rights at the centre and actively working to change the system to ensure this is a reality not a slogan.

Jess has two decades of experience in public policy, campaign management, and community building roles in the public and for-purpose sectors. Working in state and federal politics, she advised Labor Governments in South Australia on workplace health, safety, and wellbeing, then later the Victorian Greens Party Room on environment, climate, energy, water, and national parks.

Outside of politics, Jess has held roles in the trade union movement as well as at Amnesty International, Oxfam, GetUp, and The Australian Centre for Social Innovation. Her career highlight is co-creating the campaign that helped win fair pay for the inaugural AFL Women’s League. She is also a Fellow of the Centre for Australian Progress and has her Bachelors, Honours, and Masters in public policy.

Jess is finally thriving with the diagnosis and treatment of her Autism and ADHD, after prolonged mental distress that caused career disruption, severe trauma, and countless inpatient/outpatient admissions. She found recovery through the support of her community and by making meaning from her lived experience, so now she is passionate about walking alongside others on the same journey.

Amy is a dedicated qualitative researcher whose primary focus is valuing people with lived experience as authorities and key informants in regard to their health, wellbeing and social positioning. Through her extensive academic work as a researcher and lecturer, Amy fuses her knowledge of systems, theoretical and pragmatic practice with radical change advocacy that centers lived experience at the core of truth and knowledge from diagnostic criterion to treatment practices.

Amy’s academic career began in the field of education and segued through her postgraduate study pursuits to health promotion and education, fueled by her own and witnessed lived experience of treatment practices and persevering dogma. This work has extended from  university setting to communities, where Amy has spent nearly a decade of consultancy and health education and promotion on health issues steeped in shame and stigma, where she has sought to shed light through authentic portrayals of illness and living.  

Through her work Amy aspires to promote and contribute to meaningful change that promotes the care of all people who experience illness or disability while maintaining their dignity and autonomy. Amy lives passionately with acceptance and a compassionate regard toward her own experience as a woman with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Severe and Enduring Anorexia Nervosa. She endeavors to contribute lasting impact for people who understand what it means to feel ‘different’ or ‘other’ to in the world, and acknowledges her own privilege to do so.

Dinah is a passionate advocate and expert in maternal mental health, peer support, and early childhood development, with a career spanning over two decades across Australia, France, and the UK. Her extensive experience in the not-for-profit, government, and corporate sectors has equipped her with a unique ability to navigate and influence diverse environments.

Dinah’s journey into community development and advocacy is deeply personal. As a migrant mother who faced postnatal depression and suicidal feelings, she transformed her hardships into a powerful force for good. This personal experience led her to establish Villagehood Australia, a grassroots charity dedicated to supporting mothers and their children during the critical early years.

Through Villagehood Australia, Dinah has facilitated workshops, developed essential resources, and built strategic partnerships to address the mental health and wellbeing of mothers from diverse backgrounds. Her lived experiences fuel her passion for advocating systemic change and amplifying the voices of marginalised communities.

Over the years, Dinah has demonstrated her dedication to empowering communities and supporting families with culturally sensitive and innovative solutions to enhance their participation, connection, and overall wellbeing.

Dinah was born and raised in Morocco, spent her student years between France and North America, and later moved to London, UK, for work. She migrated to Sydney, Australia, in January 2011 and has been living on Kaurna Country with her Noongar husband and two children since 2016.

Sam is a youth mental health researcher, with a portfolio spanning across not-for-profits, government, and academia, and involvement in global initiatives across UK, Europe, and US. She embodies authenticity, humor and crazy ideas in her research and prides herself on creating environments where young people connect through their lived experiences, are empowered to take action, and are having a good time while contributing to systems change. 

Emrys is a proud autistic trans man who is neurodivergent and living, working and thriving on unceded Kaurna land. The lived experience sector has been an area of passion for him since before he knew that it had a name.

He has been an involved community member with LELAN for years and is now a Peer Project Worker for the LEDGE project. Prior to this he worked as a Peer Educator teaching in the Certificate IV in Mental Health, as a Community Peer Worker, and as a provider of Peer Supervision. Emrys also sits on the Mental Health Coalition SA’s LEWP (Lived Experience Workforce Program) reference group and the State Autism Strategy Committee.

Emrys is passionate about neurodiversity affirming practice and destigmatising being neurodivergent. As someone who spent most of their life not knowing he was Autistic he still experienced significant harm based on his autism traits.

The areas of lived experience that Emrys has expertise in feels endless to him at times however some key areas would be complex trauma, suicide, human rights violations under the mental health act and detainment, psychosis, childhood trauma, abuse and leaving a spiritual cult. Emrys has witnessed the power of lived experience as a community, as a movement, and as a way of healing, growing and thriving alongside experiences that will never leave him.

Chloe is a lived experience advocate and disabled activist living gently on unceded Kaurna Land. In 2023, Chloe joined the team as a Peer Educator Intern after connecting with LELAN in 2021, undertaking LEDGE Governance and Leadership training and later that year, co-designing LERN (now LEARN) as an organising committee member and regular co-facilitator.
Suicide has impacted her from an early age and continues to drive her volunteer work in various prevention spaces and projects. As an Alternatives to Suicide trainer and regular group facilitator, she feels most empowered when connecting with fellow neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and/or disabled community members and peers. As an Intentional Peer Support arts-based practitioner, Chloe has long been a champion of arts in health and regularly co-facilitates online Peer Art Therapy groups for queer, disabled and neurodivergent community members.

Since 2020, Chloe has advocated both nationally and internationally for arts and peer support in therapeutic spaces. She co-organises BPD Awareness Week, a national mental health campaign, as a consumer consultant, copywriter, editor and social media contributor. Chloe’s background is in the arts, education and retail. When not advocating, volunteering or working, she loves reading, artmaking and spending time with their family, friends and two pets, Molly and Riff Raff. 

Brooke is a lived experienced leader who is passionate about making lasting systems change. Brooke has been actively involved in various lived experience representative roles including peer work across Queensland and South Australia for around 13 years now.

Brooke has experienced first hand being disempowered, having her rights violated and feeling totally marginalised. This is why Brooke is passionate about systems advocacy, working to improve and change the systems that cause this harm and distress daily. Brooke believes that no one persons voice will be able to create the changes that are necessary, and that it is as a collective voice that we will influence the biggest change.

Brooke strongly believes in upskilling and supporting the community to be able to effectively advocate for themselves and ensure that their human rights are not being violated by the systems we interact with.

Kat (pronouns they/them) has been working in Lived Experience roles (paid and unpaid) for over a decade, and in this time has balanced this work with study, creative pursuits and activism. Their lived experience is varied and holds great importance to them – they have succeeded because of the things they have lived through, not despite it. Their work with their community has centred around amplifying voices and improving how our work impacts systems by building relationships that allow for curiosity and gentle challenging while reducing power dynamics whenever possible.

Outside of their role with LELAN they work part time with a NGO in a lived experience leadership position, perform in burlesque shows for fun and are a devoted dog parent to Stanley, a 48kg Mastiff cross who sleeps on the bed (photos available upon request).

Stephanie Touzeau brings many years of lived experience accessing alcohol and other drugs services, the LGBTIQ+ community and caring for family members who live with a disability and mental health issues.

Her desire to use her lived experience to improve service outcomes for others, led her to become involved with LELAN. She been involved in the co- planning, co-design, co-facilitation, and co- evaluation of the LEDGE project. She continues to be involved as a member of the LEDGE program advisory group and as a co-chair of (LERN) lived experience reflection network set up as a Lex/advocacy support group.

Debra brings her lived experience to LELAN both personally and as a carer. She has worked for many years in designated and non-designated roles in mental health, and currently runs her own mental health-focused NDIS business, HeartSpace Support Solutions. She brings a compassionate,  human rights approach to her endeavours,  drawing on her survival through trauma, abuse, mental ill-health, battles with suicide and homelessness. 

Debra has vast experience in community engagement and events management, including co-creating community music festivals, collaborating with local, interstate and international artists and producing 2 albums of original music.