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.

Sam thrives in the chaos and messiness of complex systems, finding calm in transforming them inside out. Driven by a passion for centering lived experience, working authentically and in relationship with organisations, Sam applies design thinking to imagine and illuminate new possibilities. 

At LELAN, Sam works closely with nonprofits and government departments to align their ways of thinking, being, and doing with the collective lived experiences of the people they support. In her PhD at the Adelaide Business School, she led design processes with young people, influencing youth mental health efforts across Australia, the UK, Europe, and the US. 

Outside of work, you’ll find Sam hidden behind a camera, capturing the sights and sounds the oceans and mountains have to offer.

Tanya is a values driven leader guided by humility, transparency and above all else compassion. Her experiences of forced treatment shaped her ‘why’ for advocacy, she believes that informed consent and offering genuine choice are central to delivering trauma informed care. She is passionate about showing people their power within and how to find your voice when the system has tried it’s hardest to take it away from you.

Across her career Tanya has worked to demonstrate that peer led alternatives are transformative both for those who access services and those who deliver them. Her career has involved helping establish new services both in youth mental health and in walk in spaces and she has helped organisations embed lived experience through being the first peer hired. She combines this on the ground knowing with systems work including LELAN’s Embedding Alternatives to Suicide project and co-developing a South Australian Lived Experience Workforce Framework as Consumer Consultant at the Office of the Chief Psychiatrist.

Tanya takes a responsibility to approach to her leadership, remembering to decentre her own voice to make sure that the diversity of voices can truly be heard. She believes that we are all accountable to both ourselves, and our communities.

Outside of work Tanya finds safety in green and blue spaces, whether that’s her home in the Adelaide Hills or the ocean she recently left behind. She is a proud Mum, a diehard Crows supporter and the world’s biggest LEGO fan.

Her leadership philosophy is simple, ‘To inspire others, don’t show them your superpower – show them theirs.’

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 Training Coordinator after completing his role as Peer Project Worker for LELAN’s LEDGE project. Prior to this he worked as a Peer Educator teaching in the Certificate IV in Mental Health Peer Work, as a Community Peer Worker, and as a provider of Peer Supervision. 

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.

Kelly Millar is a lawyer, experienced policy advisor and lived‑experience advocate committed to systemic advocacy and creating safer, more inclusive workplaces and environments. Kelly is dedicated to volunteering in Peer Facilitation, Psychological First Aid, Emergency & Incident Management and has experience working across diverse sectors including emergency services, disability and social services, mining and energy and non-for profit. 

Driven by a deep personal understanding of lived experience, a neurodiverse brain and a passion for people and animals, Kelly lives by her core values of respect, empathy, authenticity and shared decision‑making. She is dedicated to elevating lived‑experience leadership, challenge harmful systems, and create environments where people feel heard, safe, and supported and is grateful to be a part of the LELAN Board. 

Jadee’s background is in lived experience and peer work, with a strong focus on systems advocacy, workforce wellbeing, and creating safer, more ethical environments for people with lived experience. She has experience across frontline peer roles in crisis settings, peer supervision, and organisational change. Jadee is especially passionate about centering dignity, transparency, and care in the way this work is done.

Jadee currently works for Roses in the Ocean, Australia’s leading lived-experience suicide prevention organisation. She regularly co-facilitates community consultations, creates training materials for lived experience workers, and provides mentoring to peers across the country.

In addition to her role as Secretary on the LELAN Board of Directors, Jadee regularly participates in advisory and research opportunities across the mental health sector, including the SA Office of the Chief Psychiatrist’s Lived Experience Advisory Group (LEAG), Embolden’s DFSV Lived Experience Advisory Network (LEAN), and Lived Experience Australia.

As a peer worker, lived/living experience advocate, and survivor of significant adversity, Jadee is passionate about system reform and strives to speak up for people whose voices remain unheard. 

I bring to lived experience advocacy a depth of personal insight shaped by lifelong encounters with distress, recovery, and care systems. My lived experience includes childhood adversity, long-term mental health challenges, late-diagnosed autism, and parenting neurodivergent children.

I hold particular sensitivity to forms of distress that are often harder to see and name — masked, dissociated, or quietly endured. I recognise how easily these experiences can be overlooked or misinterpreted, especially when someone appears calm, compliant, or “coping.” This perspective enables me to give voice to experiences that are frequently dismissed, and to advocate for deeper understanding of less overt presentations of distress.

I offer integrity, reflective depth, and the capacity to speak to complexity with clarity and compassion. My aim is to contribute to advocacy that centres lived reality, honours nuance, and supports people to be genuinely heard and respected — and to the broader shift that recognises lived experience not as anecdote, but as essential knowledge.

Alex is a queer, autistic Lived Experience professional with nearly five years of experience in mental health service provision. Their professional endeavours are shaped by various knowledges, perspectives, and values drawn from their diverse range of Lived Experiences. With particular interests in Lived Experience research, policy, and governance, Alex aims to explore how the social construction of knowledge shapes the sector. 

Their approach is guided by core values of empathy, humanity, equity, community, and mutual growth. Through this, Alex endeavours to use their voice to facilitate meaningful change by drawing attention to the priorities and challenges identified by individuals and communities whose voices often go unheard. 

With the belief that quality service provision should be bottom-up, Alex is passionate about addressing barriers to the meaningful integration of Lived Experience across all levels of service provision. On an individual level, they strive to do this through practicing authenticity and purposeful vulnerability in professional spaces, challenging exclusionary ideas around professionalism. 

Alex hopes to bring goofiness, empathy, frustrating degrees of optimism, curiosity, and a ‘taxonomically ambiguous creature that just crawled out of a swamp’ vibe to all endeavours. They are excited to connect with, and give back, to the Lived Experience community through their work with LELAN.