Delia Donovan is the Chief Executive Officer at Domestic Violence NSW. She brings with her extensive experience in non-government and social services settings across Australia and the United Kingdom.

She has over 25 years’ experience in social work and social care settings spending the last 15 years in the domestic and family violence sector.

Delia has led three domestic violence charities covering a range of work including crisis response, prevention and policy and advocacy.

Delia has been recognised and awarded for her work in both the UK and Australia receiving several awards for her work to innovate and effect change, more recently winning the 2022 Impact 25 Award.

The Honourable Natasha Maclaren-Jones
– Member of the Legislative Council
– Shadow Minister for Families and Communities
– Shadow Minister for Disability Inclusion
– Shadow Minister for Prevention of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault
– Shadow Minister for Homelessness
– Shadow Minister for Youth

The Hon. Natasha Maclaren-Jones was elected to the NSW Legislative Council in 2011 and currently serves as Shadow Minister for Families and Communities, Disability Inclusion, Homelessness, Youth, and the Prevention of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. She has previously held ministerial office as Minister for Families and Communities and Minister for Disability Services, introducing key reforms in child protection and out-of-home care. Natasha has extensive committee experience and has led multiple parliamentary inquiries. Before entering Parliament, she worked as a Registered Nurse and then a policy and government affairs consultant to multinational companies. A long-standing Liberal Party member, she has also served as State President for the NSW Liberal Party.

Dr. Mary Jo McVeigh is the founder and CEO of Cara Consultancy. She is a proud Belfast Irish woman, a radical social worker and activist, a dedicated family member, and a friend. She is acknowledged as a committed supporter of young citizens who have endured violence, exploitation, abuse, and neglect and experienced the human rights violations inherent in these forms of violence. Since 1983, she has been a professional advocate for younger citizens and their families through her rights-informed interventions.

For her work, she was a finalist in the NSW Woman of the Year and Citizen of the Year awards in 2019, the Allied Health Social Worker of the Year award in 2019, awarded the Order of Australia medal in 2020, and the Australian Social Worker of the Year award in 2022.

After a lifetime of practice, she turned her gaze to academia and earned her Ph.D. in 2024, but her enduring love is still working with people who have survived violence, exploitation, abuse, and neglect, and supporting workers who do the direct work.

Vince Hurley has 35 years of experience in domestic and family violence, spanning academia, government and policing. He currently lectures in Criminology at Macquarie University on domestic and family violence and has done so for the past 16 years.

Before academia, Vince spent 29 years as a NSW Police Officer, 23 years as a Detective. During this time, he spent 2 years on secondment to the NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet developing and implementing policing reforms in domestic and family violence for the NSW Police Force. He later served as the Director of Domestic and Family Violence Policy for the NSWPF. He spent 3 years as a Detective in Child Abuse Squad, investigating sexual and non-sexual violence against children and 4 years as a detective investigating sexual violence against women and children across Sydney’s outer western suburbs.

He has spoken to an estimated 30,000 people across Australia on domestic and family violence at community, state, and federal levels, and has delivered violence prevention education to around 3,000 high school students aged 13–18. He is also an investigator with the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Dr Sabrin Farooqui OAM is a leading advocate for human rights, social justice and cultural diversity, and the Founder and President of Cultural Diversity Network Inc. (CDNI), an organisation supporting migrants and refugees to build belonging, independence and social inclusion.

She has extensive experience in domestic, family and sexual violence prevention, particularly within culturally and linguistically diverse communities. Through frontline support, policy advice and cross-sector collaboration, Sabrin works to strengthen women’s rights awareness, financial literacy, safety and access to essential services. Her programs at CDNI empower migrant and refugee women and engage men from CALD backgrounds to understand their role in women’s safety and contribute to positive, intersectional change.

Sabrin also supports women to build financial independence, helping them recognise and respond to financial abuse—a non-physical form of domestic and family violence—while increasing confidence and long-term security.
Her contributions have been recognised across both public and private sectors. She received the Local Women of State Government Award in 2018, and in 2024 was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for her service to community advocacy, higher education, research and policy.

Cat Gander has 40 years of experience in the Domestic and Family Violence and Social Justice Sector at a both a policy and practice level. Cat has held numerous advisory roles at the state and national level around reducing Family Violence and Homelessness.

Throughout the 1990’s Cat worked at the frontline as a Refuge Caseworker in Bega, Queanbeyan and the ACT and as Coordinator of the Women’s Resource Centre. Cat went onto work in the Law and Justice Branch for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) to establish the National Family Violence Prevention Legal Services. Between 2003-2012, Cat held the position as CEO NSW Women’s Refuge Movement.

In 2007 Cat was awarded a Churchill Fellowship and travelled to Canada, US, UK and Austria to investigate Children’s Domestic Violence policies and programs. For the past 8 years Cat has held the position as CEO of DV West, an innovative feminist Specialist DFV service that has operated in the Western Sydney and Nepean Blue Mountains area for over 40 years. In 2015 Cat authored the “Children and Young Person’s Framework for DFV Practitioners”. Cat is working on the Children and Young Person’s Training Framework which will be piloted early 2027.

Dale Towns is a Bundjalung Woman, who has lived off Country all of her life on Wongaibon & Wiradjuri Country in Western NSW. She has Diplomas across Management & Community Services & has over 25 years’ experience working in the Central and Far West NSW Region, Managing programs connected to homelessness & the safety of women, children and families.

Dale is responsible for the Management of Mission Australia’s Early Intervention, Child Protection, Domestic & Family Violence and Specialist Homelessness Programs, including three Women’s Domestic & Family Violence Safe Houses and two Men’s Crisis Residential Services in Western NSW. Over the past 25 years Dale has been responsible for ensuring collaborative approaches to service delivery and business development. Her passion relates to women and children’s safety, trauma informed practice & focussing on opportunities to build an optimistic outlook for Regional communities.

Sam Alderton-Johnson is a Yuin and Djaara man and the Managing Director of Impact at Impact Policy, an Aboriginal-owned consultancy specialising in systems reform, co-design, research, and evaluation.

Drawing on lived experience and professional practice, Sam works alongside the public sector and communities to design policies and reimagine systems that shift power, strengthen self-determination, and improve outcomes for Aboriginal people.

Sam recently led significant research for the NSW Department of Communities and Justice exploring Aboriginal-led approaches to preventing domestic, family and sexual violence. The research challenged conventional prevention models, demonstrating that culture, healing, community governance, and self-determination are not complementary to prevention – they are central to it.

Sam is also recognised for his work on healthy masculinities, advocating for approaches that engage men through culture, accountability, and healing rather than blame. As a survivor of child removal and family violence, he brings a unique perspective that bridges lived experience, policy, and practice, with a commitment to creating safer families, stronger communities, and lasting systems change.

Kate is the CEO of Barnardos Australia. Whatever position she has held, from junior sexual assault counsellor with NSW Health to the most senior lead practitioner in the largest child protection and out of home care system in Australia, she has stayed true to her values, championing the rights of children to safety, love, culture and belonging. Kate’s award, in 2019, of the NSW Public Service Medal for ‘outstanding public service to family and community services’ is testament to her achievements.

Kate is a Social Worker with a Masters in Couple and Family Therapy. She has recently completed a PHD at Melbourne University with publications in international journals. Her research investigated the attitudes of the child protection workforce toward domestic violence, determined the impact of worker attitudes on their assessment of children’s safety, and found that combining a therapeutic approach for understanding domestic violence with a standard safety assessment, significantly reduced the likelihood of children being removed from their mothers. In 2010, Kate was awarded a Churchill Fellowship and travelled to the U.K, Norway and the USA researching child protection systems.

Terrieanne is a strong proud Wiradjuri woman who has been raised and lives on Dharug land, with over a decade of experience in Aboriginal program management.

As the Manager of Aboriginal Services and Development at DV West, Terrieanne plays a key role in shaping strategies for reconciliation and cultural understanding for DV West, is the driving force on improving cultural competency, develops policies and oversees the service delivery of Wirrawee Gunya services of crisis accommodation, transitional housing and outreach supports for Aboriginal women and children impacted by domestic and family violence.

Jade Parker (they/them) is the Team Leader – Sexual, Domestic and Family Violence Programs at ACON Health. They lead a dedicated team delivering statewide health promotion initiatives to support LGBTQ+ communities across New South Wales. Jade holds qualifications in criminology, and is a proud non-binary queer person with a passion for research they bring deep community insights and a strong intersectional feminist lens to their leadership, research, and advocacy work.

Dannielle Miller OAM is an educator, author and social innovator who has spent more than three decades working with young people, schools and communities to create positive change.

Beginning her career as a high school teacher, Dannielle went on to develop innovative programs supporting young people at risk of disengaging from education before co-founding Enlighten Education in 2003. Today, Enlighten is recognised as Australia’s leading provider of in-school wellbeing workshops, with evidence-based programs reaching hundreds of thousands of students across Australia.

Dannielle is also Director of Education and Special Projects at Women’s Community Shelters, where she created Walk The Talk, an innovative program connecting schools with local women’s shelters to inspire young people to take action against gender-based violence. She has also developed corporate domestic and family violence literacy programs that centre survivor voices and encourage meaningful workplace change.

A sought-after speaker, Dannielle has presented nationally and internationally on education, leadership and social change. She is the author of five books and was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 2021 for service to education, women and youth

Andrew Collins is Co-Founder of The Digital Safeguard Centre (DSC), a Canberra-based organisation specialising in technology-facilitated abuse (TFA) detection. Since 2022, DSC has conducted hundreds of digital safety audits supporting dozens of domestic and family violence agencies, with case findings contributing to active police investigations. Its tools include Joliro, a trauma-informed digital safety platform developed with case workers and survivors of TFA; and ChainFS, tamper-evident evidence preservation infrastructure with patents pending in Australia, the US and the EU.

Andrew brings more than 25 years of experience across defence intelligence, cybersecurity and senior technology leadership. He founded the precursor to the Australian Cyber Security Centre and has held CIO and CTO roles spanning the healthcare, commercial and government sectors in Australia and New Zealand. He is a Member of the Australian Computer Society and serves as a technical expert with Standards Australia and ISO. With DSC co-founder Rose MacDonald, he received two 2024 AIIA national IT awards, along with the InnovationAus 2024 Software Platform of the Year award and the Embracing Innovation award at the ACT Telstra Best of Business Awards.

Courtney is a project officer at Women’s Health NSW. Her work focuses on supporting the women’s community health sector to implement best practice through capacity building initiatives and data-driven decision-making. She is currently delivering the statewide Sexual Violence Recovery and Healing project, alongside capacity-building work within the women’s community health sector such as the Women’s Health Database update and the WHNSW Learn at Lunch program.

Courtney also led the development of the WHNSW AI Position Paper, Integrating AI into a feminist model of care, and delivered the Pathways Project which focused on improving local capacity to respond to strangulation, sexual choking and brain injury. Her passion and unique understanding of the gendered nature of violence was gained from her work within the international humanitarian aid sector and project implementation in countries suffering from violent conflict, including Iraq and Yemen.

Maria Losurdo is the manager of The Women’s Cottage, a front-line feminist women’s crisis and domestic / family violence centre that operates in Richmond NSW. Maria has worked for over 45 years, as counsellor, advocate, mentor, trainer, team leader and service manager in family crisis work, domestic violence, social justice, women’s services and community development. Maria was instrumental in the design and development of the Reducing Intergeneration Violence (RIV) Project which commenced in 2024. Maria has also provided management support and clinical supervision to domestic violence, homelessness and other trauma response related workers across NSW for over 15 years.

An Le is the DFV Clinical Lead at Bonnie Support Services. Her professional journey is rooted in her commitment to fairness, equality, and social justice. Early on, she explored these values through work in pharmacy and visual design, focusing on communication and media, and seeking meaningful ways to support and advocate for people. While those experiences were valuable, she wanted to connect more deeply with individuals and their lived experiences, leading her to pursue a career in social work.

An has worked across domestic and family violence, child protection, and mental health, bringing experience in direct practice, clinical leadership, training, and consultation, with a particular focus on supporting culturally and linguistically diverse communities. Her approach is grounded in cultural responsiveness and a commitment to centring the voices, strengths, and choices of victim survivors. Throughout her career, An has contributed to the development of programs, therapeutic interventions, and collaborative initiatives that strengthen support for victim survivors. She also works with practitioners and organisations to build confidence and capability in responding to diverse experiences of communities impacted by domestic and family violence.

An is a member of the NSW Domestic Violence Death Review Team (DVDRT), where she brings frontline practice insights to support the examination of systemic responses, identify opportunities for improvement, and strengthen prevention, intervention, service coordination, and community safety.

Yang is a lived experience advocate whose path to safety reflects the resilience, courage, and determination required to navigate domestic and family violence alongside Australia’s complex immigration system. As a former visa client, she spent 5 years navigating the visa process while working to rebuild safety and stability for herself and her young son.

When she first sought support through Bonnie Support Services, her son was just four months old. Today, he is 13 years old – a reminder of the years it has taken to reach a place where she feels ready to share her story publicly. Her experiences, including navigating the Ministerial Intervention process (a last-resort visa pathway in exceptional circumstances), have given her unique insight into the barriers faced by migrant women’s experiences and the critical impact of compassionate, responsive support.

After many years of processing her experiences, Yang has chosen to share her lived experience in the hope that it will contribute to better understanding, influence system improvement, and strengthen responses for women and children affected by violence. She believes that lived expertise is essential to creating services and policies that are safe, inclusive, and responsive to the realities of those they are designed to support.

I have been working with WDVCAS in the Central West for five years and have been a Multicultural Focus Worker for the past four years. I am very passionate about my role and committed to providing the highest level of support to victim-survivors from multicultural communities. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak again and raise awareness of the challenges that multicultural clients face every day.

Mallory Siemsen is the Senior Manager, Strategy and Practice Development at Youth Off The Streets. She has worked across the community services and government sectors for more than a decade, with extensive experience in domestic and family violence, trauma-informed practice, and complex case management. Prior to joining Youth Off The Streets, Mallory worked with government agencies in delivering interventions and support for individuals with complex needs, including adults who use violence. Her professional interests include forensic mental health, minority populations, and building workforce capability to respond effectively to domestic, family and sexual violence. She is passionate about recognising and empowering victim-survivors and strengthening collaborative, person-centred responses that promote safety, recovery and long-term wellbeing.