My Story & Lived Experience
Long before I entered the sector professionally, I knew what it meant to support someone you love. Growing up, my mother struggled with an extremely complex medical history, including severe mental illness. Until the day I left the family home, I was her unofficial primary carer. I managed complex, unpredictable needs behind closed doors, without support, without a roadmap, and without anyone asking if I was okay.
That experience shaped everything. It still does. It also sits alongside my identity as a queer woman, and my own journey of receiving an AuADHD diagnosis at 58, after decades of navigating a world that had consistently misread me.
Finding My Place
After graduating as an Enrolled Nurse, I landed a role at the Austin Hospital as an ICU Respiratory Tech. It lasted six weeks. I couldn't stand watching people stripped of their humanity, reduced to numbers and bums in beds. So I went straight back to my previous role as House Supervisor at VASS (Ventilation Accommodation Support Service), and I knew, clearly and for good, that my work belonged on the ground, in people's homes, where relationships are the whole point.
That belief didn't change when I moved into coordination and management roles. If anything, it sharpened. Learning the complex machinery behind funding systems from the inside gave me something I couldn't have got any other way: a clear view of how these systems are supposed to serve people, and exactly where they don't.
I spent years managing the intricate rostering and compliance requirements for TAC and WorkCover clients, and later led a dedicated team of Aged Care Package Care Managers. That back-of-house experience never pulled me away from the ground. It just meant I understood the whole picture.
Building Something Real
I have been a passionate advocate for the NDIS since its inception, fully convinced of its power to give disabled people genuine choice and a self-directed life. That conviction was the driving force behind launching CoAbility: a fierce desire to build something more personalised, more human.
But building a business without yet knowing I was neurodivergent meant I made mistakes. Some were significant, and they had a real impact on both my life and CoAbility. I don't shy away from that. My leadership today is built entirely on what I learned from those hard, real-world missteps, not in spite of them.
Bramble Support is the natural next step. After years of seeing what was missing in the sector, I wanted to build a dedicated support service around one non-negotiable principle: support must be driven by real human relationships, not a corporate checklist. That's how the neighbourhood team model came to life, not as a reinvention of anything, but as a direct response to a need I kept seeing, over and over again.
Am I launching at the right time? I ask myself that often. But I always come back to the same answer: Bramble is my way of protecting the original promise of the NDIS. Choice, connection, and true belonging.
Our Team
At both CoAbility and Bramble, I am just as committed to nurturing our team as I am to delivering high-quality support. We have built a collaborative, safe environment where no one is just a number, not our participants, and not our staff. When our people feel genuinely valued and supported, they show up with clear boundaries and real commitment. That's not incidental to good support. It is good support.
My mission is to build a community where disability, access needs, and neurodivergence are seen for exactly what they are: a natural, valuable part of what makes us human.
Beyond the Work
My world outside work revolves around my family. I've been happily married to my wife for over ten years, and together we share four adult children and three beautiful grandchildren, with more on the way.
You won't find an MBA on my qualifications list, and for a long time, imposter syndrome told me that was a problem. But I didn't learn to lead from a textbook. I learned it in people's living rooms, in the hard reality of running a sector business while navigating a late diagnosis, and through the kind of mistakes that actually teach you something.
I've come to understand that what looks like a gap is often the thing that lets me show up as a real person. Someone who listens to you as a human, not just a client.
To ensure Bramble is built on both lived experience and structural depth, I've studied what genuinely interests me and rounds out my practice:
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