TACSI

With a background in design anthropology, experience and spatial design, visual design, photography, and fashion design, lauren explores how human experience can be translated into design, and how to support people with lived experience to be co-leading the design process. lauren is committed to actively decolonising design research and practices and being led by the innovation of First Nations Peoples. Building networks to support systemic change has become one of lauren’s passions. Together with her colleagues, they have built networks focused on changing the Australian end-of-life system, creating better outcomes for people with chronic conditions, connecting change makers in the home and housing space and, most recently, supporting bushfire affected communities to grow their resilience through a strength-based, community-led approach.

At TACSI, Euan combines three of their passions — design, networks and social justice — to find better ways of working together to create real change. For him, the best part of the job is connecting the deep wisdom of people with lived experience with other rich evidence, and using the insights that emerge to imagine new possibilities for people and systems. Empathetic yet strategic, Euan naturally thinks in systems, and uses that ability to help other people build their own systems awareness and practice. Never one to rest on their laurels, Euan loves leaning into the discomfort of being a beginner, and strives to learn about the world through the eyes of others.

Aunty Vickey Charles is an Alawa/Mara woman from the Northern Territory who grew up in Adelaide from the age of 18 months, due to government policy at the time. She has spent her life raising awareness of Aboriginal Australia through her lived experience and work in government and not-for-profit sectors. Aunty Vickey has led TACSI on our cultural learning journey, to become a more culturally competent and culturally safe organisation. Her work includes taking new-starters through a cultural induction, developing the Cultural Canvas that ensures TACSI projects begin grounded in the cultural context, and playing a key role in TACSI developing a Reconciliation Action Plan.