I have set my goal to work in remote and rural Aboriginal communities in WA to help improve and implement health strategies. This includes primary health care and prevention of chronic health disease, by using education to empower and facilitate good health attitudes. One of the communities that I am keen to work in is Lombardina near Broome, which I have family connections. My motivation to complete the bachelor degree in nursing so that I can assist Aboriginal women to stay on country during the birth process and be there to support the women during this. Therefore helping them with their spiritual and cultural journey and keeping iwht their health belief model and their connection to country. As the first person in my family and extended family to go to university and the first Bindjareb women to enrol in the nursing degree I hope to inspire and motivate many other young Nyungar women to follow my lead so that they can excel and be stronger person within their communities and families.

I am a young person with lived experience of psychosis and other mental health challenges. It is these experiences that have lead me to work and advocate in the mental health space. I have volunteered for batyr as part of their University of Technology Sydney chapter, have been a youth ambassador for ReachOut and have been on both the national Youth Research Council and Youth Advisory Council for Orygen.

Alysa Bachmann, who earned her Bachelor of Psychological Science with First Class Honours from CQUniversity in 2020, is a passionate advocate for mental health. Her professional journey as a Provisional Psychologist involved conducting assessments for children as well as supporting individuals living with psychosocial disabilities. These experiences have contributed to her interest in researching mental health challenges.

Caroline Donovan is a Clinical Psychologist and Professor within the School of Applied Psychology and the Centre for Mental Health at Griffith University. She has received over $9 million worth of funding throughout her career and has published 13 book chapters and 95 peer reviewed journal articles. She is an Associate Editor of Anxiety, Stress and Coping, and is currently on the Editorial Boards of Child Psychiatry and Human Development and Australian Psychologist.

Govind is a clinical psychologist and senior academic at the University of Southern Queensland and a member of the Manna Institute (Regional Mental Health Research and Training Institute). He has over 15 years of experience in child and youth mental health services in both private and public settings. Govind’s research focuses on improving equity and access to mental healthcare for priority groups of children, youth and their families.

Dr Talia Carl is an early-career researcher and Lecturer at the School of Psychology, University of Sydney. Her doctoral research involved experimental and longitudinal studies examining the relationship between moral development, parenting and context on children’s lie telling and problem behaviours. She has also managed a number of large-scale clinical trials evaluating the efficacy of interventions for children’s mental health. Her research aims to understand the factors that impact child emotional and behavioural problems, and treatment response, in order to facilitate the development and implementation of interventions. She is also passionate about increasing access to evidence-based interventions to improve the mental health and wellbeing of all Australian children.

Professor Jennie Hudson is the Deputy Director and Director of Research at the Black Dog Institute and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia. Jennie’s research focuses on understanding the factors that contribute to children’s mental health and working to improve the services available to children experiencing anxiety and other related disorders. Jennie has authored over 200 publications in the field of child mental health.

Dr Lara Farrell is a Clinical Psychologist and Professor within the School of Applied Psychology, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Mental Health, Griffith University, Gold Coast Campus. Dr Farrell conducts clinical research in the field of childhood anxiety and obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders. Her work has involved numerous highly cited clinical trials for child anxiety/phobias and OCD, including group treatments, intensive treatments, digital and virtual reality interventions, and novel pharmacological augmentation of CBT.

Dr Sophie Li is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Clinical Psychologist at the Black Dog Institute, University of New South Wales. Her research and clinical expertise are in youth depression, anxiety and sleep disturbance and the development and evaluation of digital mental health interventions.

She currently leads a program of research examining digital technology as an emotion regulation strategy and its role in youth depression, anxiety, and sleep disturbance.

Dr Lucy Tully is a Senior Lecturer and Senior Supervising Psychologist in the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney. She has over 20 years of clinical and research experience, with expertise in child mental health, father engagement, and evidence-based parenting and family interventions. She also she works clinically as a psychologist delivering evidence-based intervention to families of children with emotional and behavioural problems at the Child Behaviour Research Clinic (CBRC) at the University of Sydney.