Yarraka Bayles is a proud and passionate First Nations woman from the Eora Nation (Sydney/Warrang), born and raised in the heart of the Aboriginal community of Redfern which has shaped her to be the staunch social justice advocate she is today.  

Now living on Yuggera Country (Brisbane/Magandjin) with her children and grandchildren, Yarraka draws on the strength of her elders and honours the legacy of her ancestors while forging her own path deeply rooted in self-determination.  

A fearless survivor advocate, Yarraka transforms pain into power as she courageously shares her lived experience, weaving cultural knowledge with deep respect for those who paved the way before her to empower others and ignite positive change, creating a more equitable, inclusive and sustainable future for the greater good of humanity. 

Jonty has a 20+ year career history in making sure people can navigate government and social services, ensuring they have a voice and can participate in the decisions made for them and about them.

Jonty’s specialisation is criminology – following the homicides of her sister and father she focused her career towards community safety and victims’ rights. In 2000, Jonty joined the Queensland Homicide Victims’ Support Group and was promoted to Chief Executive Officer in 2007, where she was awarded in 2009 as Young Australian of the Year.

Jonty’s most recent career prior to politics was working within the Department of Justice and Attorney General in the area of victims’ rights and support. She has a Master of Criminology and Criminal Justice from Griffith University,has worked on Ministerial taskforces, was appointed to Queensland’s inaugural Sentencing Advisory Council and has continued to work and support government and community organisations with evidence-based strategies that reduce crime in the long-term, and uplifting the voices of victims throughout the criminal justice process.

In 2020 Jonty was elected to the Queensland Parliament, and appointed to the Legal Affairs and Safety Committee, and was appointed Deputy Chair of Queensland’s Select Inquiry into Youth Justice and Victims Support.

Along with her partner Matt, Jonty continues to raise her daughter and three stepdaughters. She is a lover of the great outdoors and is regularly trekking through Brisbane’s hiking trails in addition to taking on the big walks including Kokoda and Mount Kilimanjaro.

Michelle has worked in the housing, homelessness, and community development space for 20 years.

Michelle believes that this escalating social challenge can only be tackled through the community working collectively together. A shared belief in the power of a community working together to make a difference to the people that need it most, “As soon as I heard about the idea behind The Shelter Collective, I knew that we would have to be a part of this; making a difference through working collaboratively to attract investment directly into projects that aim to tackle homelessness head-on”.

After an extensive public policy career, Mary became the Executive Director of the Victorian Women’s Trust at the end of 1996. She has designed and led ground-breaking community engagement initiatives, such as the Purple Sage Project and Our Watermark Australia. These were two early examples of the Trust’s Kitchen Table Conversation model which has have since become a nationally lauded approach to democratic engagement as exemplified in the successful application of the model in 2012/2013 which saw the election of Independent Cathy McGowan to the seat of Indi.

Mary has led other major Trust initiatives including the exhibition, Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Lives; the development of Here She Is! as a register of women; the Breakthrough for Gender Equality Conference in Melbourne in November 2016, the largest feminist gathering on record; the research and publication of About Bloody Time: The menstrual revolution we have to have; the creation of the Rosie website for girls; and the development of Club Respect as a harm-prevention initiative for community sports clubs across the country.

In 2012, Mary authored A Switch in Time – Restoring Respect to Australian Politics which was distributed widely across Australia. She also authored the Trust’s publication of a one-page advertisement in four national newspapers called Credit Where Credit is Due, which paid tribute to the leadership and capacity of Julia Gillard as the nation’s first female prime minister.

In June 2012, Mary was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia, for her distinguished services to public policy and advocacy for the advancement of women. In 2016, Mary won the Public Policy category as part of the AFR/Westpac’s 100 Women of Influence for her years of work in shaping public policy in Australia.

David has over 40 years of experience in the building and construction industry with a particular focus in the power, chemical and process plant sectors, and delivery of major infrastructure projects across Australia. Experience in Senior Management, Business Operations, and delivery of multiple major projects simultaneously.

Dave has a passion for community, organisational and regional development, providing skill shortage solutions, training and upskilling, leadership development, and collaborative leadership, bringing people, business, and industry together to help solve community issues working together. "I became involved with the Shelter Collective because I believe that as part of a regional community, we must help solve our current community issues by our people in our community"

Beck O’Connor is Queensland’s first Victims’ Commissioner and a long-time advocate for victim-survivors of crime. She has extensive experience leading health, mental health, child protection, and domestic, family, and sexual violence service responses across Australia. Prior to her appointment, Beck was CEO of DVConnect, where she led key initiatives including the launch of VictimConnect, a 24/7 support service for victims of violent crime, and early intervention for people using violence in their relationships. A passionate survivor leader, Beck was a founding member of the National DFSV Lived Experience Advisory Council and co-founder of the LGBTQ Domestic Violence Awareness Foundation. In her role as Victims’ Commissioner, Beck will chair Queensland’s Independent Sexual Violence Review Board from May this year. 

Victoria Parker’s career began at the Queensland Department of Housing, where she saw firsthand the transformative impact of safe, stable housing. Her experience launching social and affordable housing and collaborating with community providers deepened her commitment to solutions that change lives. She further honed her expertise at Brisbane City Council, the Urban Development Institute of Australia, and Logan Together, where she championed place-based, intergenerational approaches to community development.

Before joining The Lady Musgrave Trust, Victoria led her own consultancy focused on social impact and community engagement, and founded two successful businesses. Her work has earned national recognition and multiple awards.

Now CEO of The Lady Musgrave Trust, Victoria calls this her dream role: leading Queensland’s oldest charity to deliver safe housing and support for young women and children facing homelessness, mostly due to domestic and family violence. The Trust, operating since 1885 without ongoing government funding, relies on strong partnerships to provide life-changing opportunities and break the cycle of disadvantage for generations.

Sue Pope is the Chief Executive Officer of Common Ground Queensland, a Tier 2 community housing provider dedicated to delivering supportive housing solutions for Queensland’s most vulnerable populations. With over two decades of executive experience across the non-profit housing, health, and community sectors, Sue has led transformative initiatives in policy, advocacy, and frontline service delivery.

Her cross-sector expertise spans supportive housing, mental health, alcohol and other drugs, primary healthcare, family and parenting support, and community capacity building. A champion of person-centred system and service design, Sue is deeply committed to co-design principles, ensuring the voices of those with lived experience drive quality improvement and innovation in housing and human services.

Through her leadership, Common Ground Queensland continues to shape a more inclusive, responsive, and compassionate housing landscape.

Professor Susan Harris Rimmer focuses on international human rights law, climate justice and gender equality in the Griffith Law School in Brisbane (Meanjin), Australia. 

She led the independent review of the Queensland Human Rights Act 2019 in 2024, and the report was tabled in March 2025. Sue leads the Climate Justice theme of the Griffith Climate Action Beacon. She is the founder of the EveryGen coalition which seeks to amplify the voices of current and future generations and highlight the long-term impacts of today’s policy decisions. 

Susan provided the independent Human Rights Assessment for the successful FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia and New Zealand 2032 Bid in 2020 and was the Human Rights Adviser to GOLDOC for the 2018 Commonwealth Games. 

Susan is the editor of Climate Politics in Oceania (MUP 2024 with Caitlin Byrne and Wes Morgan), Futures of International Criminal Justice (Routledge 2022, with Emma Palmer, Edwin Bikundo and Martin Clark), the Research Handbook for Feminist Engagement with International Law (Edward Elgar 2019, with Kate Ogg); and author of Gender and Transitional Justice: The Women of Timor Leste (Routledge, 2010) and over 46 refereed academic works in leading journals. 

Prior to joining Griffith, Susan was the Director of Studies at the ANU Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy and a Non-resident Fellow at Chatham House. Prior to academia, Sue was the Advocacy lead at the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) and has also worked for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the National Council of Churches and the Australian Parliament. 

Geoff is the CEO at Aged & Disability Advocacy (ADA) Australia, a Queensland based advocacy and human rights service.  

Geoff’s career spans more than 40 years and includes senior and executive roles in the Queensland Government and the NFP sectors. Geoff is currently Chairperson of the Queensland Public Trustee Advisory and Monitoring Board, member of the Queensland Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board, and a member of the Australian Health Protection Committee Aged Care Advisory Group. 

Geoff is a Churchill Fellow having been awarded the prestigious Paul Tys Churchill Fellowship to examine world’s best practice in preventing and responding to elder abuse in aged care and the community. Geoff traveled to the UK, Canada, USA and New Zealand to complete his fellowship. 

He has a strong interest in human rights, social justice and systems advocacy. 

Luke established White Box Enterprises (WBE) in 2019 in Queensland to systematically address the constraints he routinely confronted when launching social enterprises: access to affordable space, access to catalytic capital, and access to partnerships that would help bring jobs-focused social enterprise into the mainstream fabric of employment in Australia.

With more than 15 years’ experience in the social enterprise and not-for-profit sectors, prior to launching WBE, Luke founded Vanguard Laundry and had been integral in the start-up of several
large-scale employment-focused social enterprise projects that have created meaningful work pathways for people facing barriers to employment here and in the UK. To date WBE has enabled 1000+ new jobs, launched four social enterprises, and raised over $51M in blended capital for jobs creation projects. Luke is a dynamic thought leader with a bias for action. His demonstrated ability to deliver large-scale employment-focused initiatives that leverage commercial opportunities is recognised through previous start-ups and multiple national awards.

Christine a Wakka Wakka woman, is a respected social change agent, social worker, public speaker, educator and leader; working with young people, families and First Nations communities shaping services, navigating complex systems, addressing structural inequities and responding to adversity and harm for 27 years.

Christine is dedicated to working across all levels of community in the pursuit of social justice and healing; working on local, national and international levels in the areas of anti-racism, human rights and peace initiatives.

As CEO of the Cygnet Centre for Peacebuilding and Transformation, Christine leads initiatives that centre healing, justice, community engagement and self-determination with strength, integrity and grace. She’s known for her ability to connect big-picture strategy with grounded community-led practice. Whether working at the boardroom table or in circle on Country, Christine brings clarity, care and an unwavering belief in our collective capacity to heal, transform and lead together.

Luke was appointed as Principal Family and Child Commissioner of Queensland in January 2022. In this role he has led critical reviews of the residential care system, use of watchhouses for young people, and produced significant child death cases. During his early years, Luke’s parents fostered a number of children and the lived experience of his foster brothers and sisters has profoundly shaped the perspectives and passion he brings to his work. 

Luke’s career spans more than 20 years across the Commonwealth, New South Wales and Northern Territory governments in the areas of child safety and youth justice reform, research and evidence, integrity, audit, governance and complaints management. He has led critical reforms of systems and their legal frameworks and has extensive experience monitoring the performance of the systems designed to keep children safe and preserve family wellbeing. Luke has presented critical testimony that has shaped several Royal Commission outcomes.