Meet the co-authors

Read more about each person below.

Rachael Dietkus, LCSW 📍USA

Rachael (she/her) is a social worker and designer with deep areas of specialized practice in trauma, systems, and social care mentorship, policy, and supervision. She has worked on cause-driven social justice work in the federal government, higher education, and social sector. Rachael is also the founder of Social Workers Who Design, where they work with organizations worldwide to strengthen ethical, responsible, and trauma responsive design research practice. Read more on Rachael’s website (Social Workers Who Design).

Morgan Cataldo 📍Australia

Morgan dedicates her professional life to developing and advocating for participatory practice and peer education as essential levers for creating true, lasting, powershifting systemic change in services for historically excluded communities. Bringing 15 years of experience, Morgan advises, coaches and consults with organisations across Australia and internationally who are seeking to understand the role of power in their everyday work and how they can design and shape more meaningful policies, programs, and services by partnering with people with lived experience relevant to their purpose. Morgan holds a degree in Social Science and serves on the Board of The Constellation Project. Find more about Morgan and her work here: www.linkedin.com/in/morganleecataldo/

Lucy Flores 📍USA

Lucy (she/her) is a design strategist and the founder of Studio Magic Hour, a collaborative design studio focused on advancing equity in the food system. Previously, she helped launch FoodCorps, a national nonprofit in the U.S. dedicated to cultivating joy, health, and justice for kids through nutritious food, in partnership with schools and community. She is a former Equitable Design Fellow at Hopelab, and a member of the Design Justice Network, Equity Army, and AIGA.

Nicole Barling-Luke 📍Australia

Nicole is an experienced strategist, designer and deliverer. She is the Portfolio Lead at Regen Melbourne, bringing a critical and joy-informed approach to activating organisations and citizens in Greater Melbourne. Nicole identifies as both a social innovation generalist and facilitation enthusiast. She has previously worked with global practitioners to improve the public sector's capability, creativity and courage.

Sue Muller 📍Australia

Sue (she/her) is the founder of The Better Together Collective and publishes With Us - a celebration of doing with, not for. She has worked in health, mental health and wellbeing for over a decade, in management, leadership, advocacy, and advisory roles. Her experience includes local health services, state bodies, federal government, national consultancies, private companies, university research projects, and joint ventures.

Leah Lockhart 📍UK

Leah (them/they/she/her) is a design researcher and facilitator living in Glasgow. Leah has worked with public services and community-based organisations across the UK for over 20 years. Leah is a worker/owner of fractals co-op, a small, playful and nurturing design collective.

Ang Broadbridge 📍UK

Ang is based in the North East of England and has delivered research and evaluation projects in the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector for over 15 years. She leads a maternal mental health project at Ways to Wellness and has many interests that cluster around social research, health and care, advocacy and peer research. In her spare time Ang is a mentor for young women at a local secondary school. Find Ang on twitter @angbroadbridge

Rusty Benson 📍Australia

Rusty is an experienced social designer known for his empathic, collaborative, and reflexive approach to designing with people. He's known as an exceptional facilitator and relationship builder who can connect with people at all levels of an organisation to drive change and champion design. As a process-driven designer, Rusty thrives in complex systems and environments, with a strong ability to connect the big picture and detail, people and systems, and identify levers for change. He has hands-on expertise in Service design, UX design and Co-design, with a passion for nurturing and developing design proficiency across individuals and teams. Rusty's reputation as a designer is built on consistently delivering outcomes that positively impact organisations, partners, individuals, and communities.

Maria Tchan 📍Australia

Maria (she/her) is an evaluator, facilitator, and clinician. As the founder of Iota Impact, she supports organisations and their people to measure and communicate their impact in a meaningful way. She has worked extensively with vulnerable and under-represented populations across metropolitan, regional, and remote Australia, and is passionate about community-led approaches to mental health and primary care programs.  Maria lives and works on Wallumedegal country. 

KA McKercher 📍Australia