A woman with shoulder-length dark hair, wearing a gray button-up shirt, sitting at a wooden table in a bright room with large windows and white curtains, smiling and looking to the side.

My story

The short story

I am a veteran of community legal centres, where I advocated as a lawyer for social justice, supporting people navigating systems not built for them. Over time, I have expanded my energy toward environmental justice. My work with the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment, and Water and my studies in Environmental Management at the University of NSW led me to Deep Ecology, and in 2023 I began working closely with John Seed, the ‘Australian Father’ of Deep Ecology. I now serve as a Director of the Institute for Deep Ecology, contributing to the organisation’s mission to advance ecological consciousness, community practice, and transformative education. As a facilitator, I have led more than 20+ Deep Ecology workshops in Sydney, Hobart, Perth, Zaragoza (Spain), and the USA, supporting participants to reconnect with Earth, each other, and our ecological identity.

The long story

My vocation sits at the intersection of activism, social justice, and ecological (re)awakening. Originally trained as a lawyer in commercial litigation, I later moved into advocacy and communications roles with community legal centres, supporting people navigating systems not built for them. I volunteered as a lawyer with Redfern Legal Centre, providing free legal advice, and worked with Inner City Legal Centre (an LGBTIQ rights advocacy centre) as their communications advocate during pivotal moments including the 2017 same-sex marriage equality campaign and the establishment of Australia’s first free Transgender Legal Service in 2018. During this time, I worked and spoke alongside the Honourable Justice Michael Kirby (Australian High Court Judge and international jurist) and Honourable Chief Justice Lucy McCallum. Alongside this work, I spent several years as an international conference producer, travelling across Australia, the USA, and South Africa.

Yet, throughout this time, there were what the poet David Whyte calls these “questions that have no right to go away,” and for me, there was one question that would not leave me; a quiet whisper of my heart: How can I live a life of meaning and purpose?

In 2019-20, after the dystopian-like bushfires in Australia and the death of some 1.25 billion animal kin, something in me shifted. I turned my attention toward biodiversity conservation and took on a role within the NSW Government environment sector. In 2023, I began my Master of Environmental Management at the University of NSW. That same year, I was offered a role as a casual teaching assistant (one of the many positions I still hold today). It was through UNSW that a visionary Professor, Tema Milstein, a leader in ecocultural communication and transformation, invited and introduced me to a Deep Ecology workshop at Narara Ecovillage. It was the first time I came across the work of Deep Ecology and John Seed - and I felt a deep gratitude for what felt like an invitation from life itself, inviting me to step into co-creation and participation with Gaia. It was sitting in the Truth Mandala for the first time that I experienced what I would describe as “my awakening”, and the quiet whisper of my heart grew louder - the questions of belonging, ecological longing, and a search for deeper meaning became hard to ignore.

I often describe this period as the moment I “stopped sleepwalking through my life.” Three months later, I would co-facilitate my first Deep Ecology workshop. A year later, in 2024, I immersed myself in a 10-day Vipassana silent meditation, and the quiet whisper of my heart became even louder. Professor Arne Naess, Professor of Philosophy at Oslo University, who coined Deep Ecology, gave only one definition of Deep Ecology: It was to ask deeper questions. My question was no longer simply, 'how can I live a life of meaning and purpose?' rather, it deepened to ask: “how can I live a life of meaning and purpose in a time of spiritual, social, and ecological crisis?”

Since then, I’ve continued to reorient myself toward ‘answering’ that question that would not go away; I began to peel back the layers of coping and conditioning shaped by a dominant culture that prioritises economics over nature. Later that year I travelled to Colombia and undertook plant medicine and womb healing ceremony. For the past 3 years, I have worked closely with John Seed, attending over 20 workshops and facilitating a dozen of those. I now serve as a Director of the Institute for Deep Ecology. I have facilitated Deep Ecology workshops and immersive group processes across Sydney, Hobart, Perth, Zaragoza (Spain), and the USA, supporting participants to reconnect with Earth, each other, and their wider ecological identity. I’ve also been an active organiser with Rising Tide (a people-led movement to stop the largest coal port in the world) and, more recently, focused on ending native forest logging with the Bob Brown Foundation and forest protection with the Rainforest Information Centre.

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