INSIGHT EXCHANGE TEAM
The Insight Exchange team consists of people living and working in urban and regional Australia and in Mexico. The team includes people who work with Insight Exchange and or collaborate with or supply services to Insight Exchange. On this page you can read an outline how people are involved in varied aspects of Insight Exchange and our enduring thanks to people who been involved in earlier iterations of the work.
Meet the team
- Sal Dennis - Director
- Danielle Allen CF - Ecosystem Responses
- Dr Leticia Funston - Participation and Ethics
- Louise Whelan - Libraries Lab
- Dr Tania Solorio - Responders Lab & Contenido en Español
- Dr Ghena Krayem - Responders Lab
- Judy Saba CF - Responders Lab
Collaborators & SME suppliers
- Louise Whelan - Collaborating Artist (Photo media) (2020 - Current)
- Guy Downes and Reilly Baker - Animations (2020 - Current)
- Guy Downes - Illustrator (2021 - Current)
- Reilly Baker (Producer) (2022 - Current)
- Mitchell Janson (Audio Engineer) (2022 - Current)
- Angus Bamford - User Experience / User Interface supports (2024 - Current)
Listening Leaders Scholarship Recipients
Explore more about the Listening Leaders Scholarship (and recipients) co-founded with Edie's Place.
Our enduring thanks
Insight Exchange would not be what it is today without the engagement, support and expertise of many people directly and indirectly involved. The work is enriched by all who generously participate in sharing lived experience insights and responses to the evolving materials, as well as former and new team colleagues, Associates, collaborators, in-kind supporters, individual contributors, and donors.
Scroll this page to see our list of thanks.
MEET THE TEAM
Sal Dennis
Director, Insight Exchange
Sal has worked in strategy and development roles in human services in London and Sydney. With colleagues and collaborators, she has been involved in the initial conception and ongoing evolution of Insight Exchange.
Insight Exchange centres lived expertise of domestic, family and sexualised violence. It is designed to inform and strengthen social, service and systemic responses to violence and abuse.
Insight Exchange was first established in 2017. It has been adapted, iterated and extended year on year through listening and responding to violence and abuse. Each month, hundreds of people view and share the insights and materials to uplift responses across the ecosystem. The full free (donated) library of insights and materials can be found here: www.insightexchange.net
Together, the work is created collectively, shared freely (donated) through the Insight Exchange website, video channel and facilitated initiatives. The team connect across urban and regional Australia and Mexico to share the insights and materials forward.
Sal is a member of the NSW Domestic and Family Violence and Sexual Assault Council. She is known for her strategic and purposeful approach to creating clarity and working together - connecting people to people, people to ideas, and ideas to ideas.
Danielle Allen
Ecosystem Responses
Danielle lives on unceded Wiradjuri lands and has worked in a diverse range of health and education settings in metropolitan, regional and rural areas in NSW. She has extensive experience in counselling, group work, advocacy, training, project and community development roles in the domestic, family and sexual violence in the women’s and children’s’ health sector.
Danielle holds a Bachelor of Social Work (University of Sydney), Graduate Diploma in Education (University of Sydney) and a Bachelor of Arts (Majors in Fine Arts and Psychology), (University of Sydney).
Danielle has led service improvement projects with the Western NSW Local Health District Prevention and Response to Violence Abuse and Neglect Service. She has conducted and published research investigating Health service responses in the area of strangulation – ‘Enabling emergency department (ED) staff to support domestic violence victim-survivors of strangulation’ Danielle was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship - read the report here Churchill Fellowship project and report
In FY22/23 Danielle led the Insight Exchange work focusing on Strangulation. In FY23/24 Danielle led the cross-sector Insight Exchange Creating Conversations and support for ecosystem responses across sectors and industries.
In FY24/25 Danielle continues to support ecosystem responses across sectors and industries, through the Hotels Lab, supporting the Libraries Lab and new Listening Labs and how we share the Voices of Insight Collection as a mobile gallery, and supporting understanding of and responses to Strangulation.
Dr Leticia Funston
Participation & Ethics
Dr Leticia Funston (she/her) currently lives and works on the stolen and unceded lands of the Bidjigal peoples of Eora Nation.
Leticia is a qualified social worker and researcher who is committed to centring the lived expertise of victim-survivors of domestic, family and sexualised violence. Leticia is also passionate about decolonisation and anti-racism.
Leticia completed her PhD degree under the supervision of Dr Lesley Laing and Dr Margot Rawsthorne with the Education and Social Work Faculty at Sydney University. Leticia’s thesis ‘In the Business of Trauma: An intersectional-materialist feminist analysis of ‘trauma informed’ women’s refuges and crisis accommodation services in Sydney and Vancouver (2019)’, considers the capacity for human services to respond to gendered violence and housing injustice in the context of settler-colonialism and neoliberalism.
Leticia leads the Insight Exchange Be a Participant opportunity and published Voices of Insight. Leticia’s work focuses on how lived experience insights can inform ecosystem responses across sectors and industries. Leticia is also involved in the co-facilitating of cross-sector, Hotels Lab and Insight Exchange Creating Conversations.
Louise Whelan
Collaborating Artist & Libraries Lab
Louise is a visual artist with photo-media base. Her multidisciplinary approach spans photo-media, projection, video art, public, installation and curation. Much of her practice draws inspiration from environmental and humanitarian issues, and her interest in the aesthetics of memory.
Louise is widely published and exhibited. She photographs for the state libraries of NSW, WA and the National Library of Australia. Louise has more than 30 national and international awards to her name.
Louise complements her photographic works with the State Library of NSW in the oral history discipline. The UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Committee has collected some of her oral histories as a documentary heritage to the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register. Explore Louise Whelan's Portfolio at https://australiansall.photoshelter.com/about
Since September 2020, Louise has been a collaborating artist with Insight Exchange and an Associate listening and responding to victim-survivors who are silent or silenced by violence and abuse. Explore the evolving collections in the Arts Lab including ‘Voices of Insight’, ‘No Hidden Door,’ ‘Strangulation’, ‘Working with distressing content’ and more.
In FY24/25 Louise’s work continues to support understanding of and responses to violence and abuse through the Arts. In particular, through the inception and development of the Libraries Lab and how we share the Voices of Insight Collection as a mobile gallery, and as an Artist in residence at Edie’s Place.
Dr Tania Aguirre Solorio
Responders Lab & Contenido en Español
Tania has a Master’s Degree in Family Therapy, is Certified in Response-Based Practice, and has a Doctoral Degree in Women and Gender Studies focused on sexualised violence.
Tania has 13 years of international experience working with individuals and couples focusing on violence and abuse. She has a private practice in México. Her work contrasts academic notions that fail to explore and understand personal, relational, and contextual meanings and practices of sex and sexuality.
Tania’s work focuses on how people, institutions, groups, and communities, are social responders and that their responses are crucial for the ongoing creation of social and personal safety and dignity.
Her academic research centers on the exploration of resistance, sexuality, and bodily experiences as intentional ethical responses for safety and dignity. She is the founder of ECOS: Prácticas-Basadas-en-la-Respuesta uplifting responses in Mexican and Latin American contexts.
Explore Insight Exchange (Contenido en Español)
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Dr Ghena Krayem
Responders Lab
Ghena is a Associate Professor with over 20 years experience in researching, teaching and writing in the areas of public law, multiculturalism, family law and family violence. She is also a registered Family Dispute Resolution Practitioner.
Ghena is a regular commentator on the Australian Muslim community and her research has focused on Muslim Women in the family law context. She has authored several books and peer reviewed journal articles including Muslim Women and Agency in the Australian Context (2021). Her research has always sought to centre lived experience as a key part of her research methodology.
She has always had a strong focus on women’s issues, particularly Australian Muslim women.
Ghena has always been a passionate advocate for women’s rights and has explored the experience of family violence in many aspects of her work. Her philosophy is that those with a voice must hold the space for others – understanding each other’s narrative can only happen when we allow everyone to have a chance to be heard.
Judy Saba CF
Responders Lab
Judy Saba CF; FRSA, is a cross-cultural psychologist, diversity trainer, public speaker and story teller, with lived and learned experience gained from working within the areas of education, counselling, refugee and torture trauma, critical problem analysis, community development and the applied training and enhancing of diversity capability in policing.
Having developed approaches to understanding mental health within cross-cultural and cross-spiritual frameworks as well as training mental health and other service providers in diversity assessment, managing bias, working with interpreters and other applications, Judy has also developed and implemented a valuable approach to applied diversity skills training which is tailored to, and drawn from the realities of human interaction, lived experience and a thirst to engage the world through the many diverse lenses of others. Her work has its foundations in both human rights and her own lived experience as an Australian born - Lebanese.
Judy is also a recipient of a 2010 Churchill Fellowship to pursue a lifelong dream of researching and developing the Australian brand of cross-cultural capability (within policing) and this stems from not only a commitment to human rights but also the journey of my parents and grandparents which was gifted to me through story and has its roots in Lebanon, America and Australia. Judy holds a vision of a world where culture, ethnicity, religion age, gender identity and sexuality are seen as gifts and not barriers to human interactions, and where all people have a voice and all people live with dignity and agency.
Our thanks
2021 - 2024
Our thanks to people who have been involved in an Associate capacity in different focus areas within the period of 2021-2024: Andrea Salamanca, Arely Carrion, Carrie Lumby, Jo Campbell, Kaylene Edson, Kimberly Chiswell, Dr Linda Coates, Luke Addinsall & Dr Skye Charry. We also thank former Assistant Director and collaborator Rebecca Glenn (Founder and CEO of Centre for Women's Economic Safety).
2022 - 2023
Our thanks to the International Advisory Group meeting monthly in the period of Sep 2022 - Aug 2023 (Dr Tania Solorio, Andrea Salamanca, Dr Shelly Dean, Kel Forrest, Kimberly Chiswell, & Sal Dennis) supporting the development of two materials in the Spanish (Mexico) portfolio.
2020 - 2012
Our thanks to Tom Martin Audio Engineering.
2017 - 2019
Our thanks to Gavin Blake Digital Facilitation (2017-2018) and Clay Fisher Videography (2017-2019).
Founding Collaborators - Launched in November 2017, Insight Exchange was designed by Domestic Violence Service Management (DVSM), in collaboration with Dr Linda Coates and Dr Allan Wade from Centre for Response-Based Practice Canada.
Extended thanks (donation and/or in-kind support)
2020 - current
- Illustrator and Animator Guy Downes (and team) for extending the rights in perpetuity (as a form of donation) for work developed in the Insight Exchange animations and illustrations.
- Producer Reilly Baker and Audio Engineers Mitchell Janson. Tom Martin for donated rights in perpetuity for Insight Exchange productions
- The team at RMK for reducing their commercial rates (as a form of donation) to assist in producing the voice overs for the Insight Exchange animations.
- Supplier Barcodes Limited for donation of static QR Codes for Insight Exchange resources
- Probono support with Voice Over (Spanish): Juan, Johnathan, Nuria, Sara, Sara and Samantha
2017 - 2023
- The team at L,E.K. Consulting for the generous pro bono support (2021) 30+ consultants to review 150+ websites and the development of short guides featured in the No Hidden Door project resources & (2022) 30+ consultants supporting industry mapping for engagement strategies
- Support with design files Janet Chapman (2018 - 2023)
- Support with copy Rachael Cann (2021)
- The team at Salt and Fuessel for digital SEO support (2020)