This supervisor has been approved to provide supervision under the ACCESS TO SUPERVISION PROJECT.

Hi, I'm Sam. My pronouns are she/her. I am a sixth-generation queer settler-colonial Australian with English, Scottish and German heritage. I was born on Boonwurrung Country, and after several decades living interstate, I now live in a log cabin on Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung Country north of Naarm.

This supervisor has been approved to provide supervision under the ACCESS TO SUPERVISION PROJECT. If you are a supervisee who has received an approval email/letter from the CMHL you may contact this supervisor for supervision for this project, then follow the stated processes for supervision payment

I have worked exclusively in consumer-designated roles since early 2013 with consultants, government and non-government organisations and universities in NSW, ACT, Victoria and nationally. I am a lived experience educator and facilitator with extensive experience in consumer advocacy, peer education and consultancy roles in NSW, Victoria and nationally. I bring a consumer perspective and social justice approach to mental health education, co-design and research. My training in popular education as well as my own lived experience of complex trauma has taught me that healing and renewal are always possible. Having had others hold hope for me through times of mental distress, it is my honour to hold hope for others, believing that they too will navigate a path through their struggles, often in unexpected ways. I take a systemic approach to lived experience advocacy, pedagogy and governance. My perspective is informed by the elders of the international psychiatric-survivor movement and the emerging discipline of Mad Studies. Learning from people with a lived experience of mental distress globally, I highlight our strengths, our resilience and our recovery as well as our collective sites of struggle. I worked in the policy team at Being Mental Health Consumers NSW (2013-2014) and coordinated the co-production of adult education for mental health recovery at South Eastern Sydney Recovery & Wellbeing College (2015-2020). I have also been a member of statewide & national committees including the ALIVE National Centre for Mental Health Research Translation Independent Advisory Board (2021-2024), a national project to apply the NDIS Practice Standards in psychosocial disability services (2020-2021) and a pharmacotherapy in mental health advisory group (2013-2015). I led the co-design of the Distress Support Service Shepparton for Mind Australia & Primary Care Connect (2024-2025)

Director, Wellways Board (2025-)

Consumer Co-Chair, Lived & Living Experience Authority (Wellways 2025-)

Chair, Consumer & Community Advisory Committee (The George Institute for Global Health, 2023-)

Part-time Teacher, Certificate IV Mental Health Peer Work (TAFE NSW 2021-)

Teaching Associate/Consumer Academic, Faculty of Health (Southern Cross University 2019-)

Project Worker (inside out & associates Australia 2018-

I have completed Consumer Perspective Supervision training (2024) and the Consumers Leading in Governance program (2025). I have a Postgraduate Certificate in Mad Studies (2024), a Certificate IV in Mental Health Peer Work (2018) and a Master of Education in Adult Education (2005).

My vision for consumer perspective supervision is one in which power is genuinely shared, solidarity can be relied upon, self-determination is respected, social justice is achieved, and relationships are built on mutuality and reciprocity. I draw on collective survivor wisdom to work shoulder to shoulder with fellow consumer workers, based on our shared experiences of oppression.

I purposefully draw on my own lived experience of mental distress, suicidal ideation and being a member of the LGBTIQ+ community in my work. As a white person who has benefited from unearned privilege, I take an anti-racist stance in my work. Reflective practice is central to my development as a lived experience practitioner. I have been receiving external consumer perspective supervision since 2018.