Presentations

Hanif Mohamed brings a wealth of experience to the disability employment sector, with a background spanning seven years in the criminal justice system, and a tertiary education in Law and Arts. His career began in offender-facing roles and working with prisoners on parole at the Department of Justice and Community Safety, before he transitioned into the courtroom as a prosecutor for Corrections Victoria. Driven by a passion for influencing positive outcomes for the often-disadvantaged clients of Corrections Victoria, Hanif sought to make an impact at a systemic level. This is when he discovered his love for learning and development—almost rivaling his love for the Collingwood Football Club! (Don’t hold that against him, though…).

Over the years that followed, Hanif honed his expertise in learning design, facilitation, procurement, evaluation, program management, and the formation and implementation of organisation-wide professional development strategy. He believes that Disability Employment Australia is now ideally positioned to drive the increased professionalisation of our sector, and this is what DEA’s Professional Membership Program has been designed to achieve. Hanif is eager to lead the industry towards practical professional standards that ensure the delivery of consistent, high-quality servicing for all of the people we support.

Kelly Treloar (she/her) brings deep experience in disability policy, advocacy, and systems reform. Kelly has over 25 years history in community services and advocacy, with the past decade predominately focused on advancing the rights of people with disability.

Kelly has led national policy and systemic advocacy work, built strong relationships across government, community, and the sector, and contributed to major reform including the Disability Royal Commission and Closing the Gap.

She brings her own lived experience to this work and is a strong advocate for ensuring people with disability are actively included in decision-making that affects their lives (preferably before the policy is already written!).

She is particularly passionate about highlighting intersectionality, including the experiences of First Nations people and LGBTIQA+ people with disability, and driving systemic change that reflects the full diversity of the disability community.

Her work is grounded in a human rights approach centred on shifting attitudes and challenging outdated assumptions so that people with disability are included, valued, and supported to participate fully in all aspects of life, including open employment.

She recently joined Disability Employment Australia to support its work in the NDIS space, drawn by DEA’s values-driven approach and commitment to building a stronger, fairer disability employment system. As DEA expands its focus in this area, Kelly is excited to help drive systemic advocacy that ensures more people with disability have the opportunities and support they need to pursue employment in ways that work for them.

Sally Karandrews (she/her) is a not-for-profit, community and disability sector leader with 2 decades experience in policy development, program design and delivery, community engagement and advocacy.

A neurodivergent and vision impaired leader herself, Sally is passionate about access and inclusion, and regularly writes or presents on the topics of disability leadership and inclusive education and employment.

Sally has recently completed an honours program at the University of New England where she researched problematisation in disability employment policy. She is acting in the role of Policy Manager at DEA and looking forward to continuing her research and work in the employment sector.