When Lived Experience Leads: Palatability, Power, Neurodivergent Leadership and Wellbeing
Tracks
Prince Room - In-Person Only
| Tuesday, September 29, 2026 |
| 11:20 AM - 11:50 AM |
| Prince Room |
Overview
Den Abreu, Haven Psychology Centre Pty Ltd
Key Learnings
1. Recognise palatability as a cultural demand that restricts lived experience leadership.
2. Identify how professional norms can reinforce masking, exclusion, and burnout at the cost of organisational culture and team wellbeing.
3. Generate one concrete commitment to shift how you listen, lead, or design participation in your context
Speaker
Mx Den Abreu
CEO and Principal Psychologist
Haven Psychology Centre Pty Ltd
When Lived Experience Leads: Palatability, Power, Neurodivergent Leadership and Wellbeing
Presentation Overview
This short session delivers a focused provocation on lived experience leadership as a driver of change and how to ethically disrupt the status-quo, lowering barriers and improving wellbeing for all.
Lived experience is increasingly welcomed into professional spaces—as long as it remains digestible, grateful, and non-disruptive. When lived experience challenges power, questions norms, or demands accountability, it is often reframed as “too intense,” “too political,” “unsafe," or "unethical." This session names that pattern directly: palatability as a cultural demand that constrains who can lead, whose knowledge counts, and the impact on organisational culture and wellbeing.
In 25 minutes, this presentation focuses on a single question: What becomes possible when lived experience is allowed to lead rather than merely inform? Drawing on lived experience and executive leadership, it explores how systems inadvertently reward masking and penalise directness, complexity, or difference—and how this shapes belonging, burnout, and wellbeing.
This “how to” session is a reflective intervention designed to create ethical clarity and actionable self-reflection. Participants are invited to consider how they listen, lead, and design participation within their own contexts, and what accountability looks like when inclusion moves beyond representation toward shared responsibility. Frameworks to guide how to disrupt the status quo and systemic barriers ethically, and operationalise inclusion and wellbeing at all levels of governance will be provided.
Lived experience is increasingly welcomed into professional spaces—as long as it remains digestible, grateful, and non-disruptive. When lived experience challenges power, questions norms, or demands accountability, it is often reframed as “too intense,” “too political,” “unsafe," or "unethical." This session names that pattern directly: palatability as a cultural demand that constrains who can lead, whose knowledge counts, and the impact on organisational culture and wellbeing.
In 25 minutes, this presentation focuses on a single question: What becomes possible when lived experience is allowed to lead rather than merely inform? Drawing on lived experience and executive leadership, it explores how systems inadvertently reward masking and penalise directness, complexity, or difference—and how this shapes belonging, burnout, and wellbeing.
This “how to” session is a reflective intervention designed to create ethical clarity and actionable self-reflection. Participants are invited to consider how they listen, lead, and design participation within their own contexts, and what accountability looks like when inclusion moves beyond representation toward shared responsibility. Frameworks to guide how to disrupt the status quo and systemic barriers ethically, and operationalise inclusion and wellbeing at all levels of governance will be provided.
Biography
Den Abreu (they/them) is a multi racial NeuroQueer person of colour living on the unceded lands of the Turrbal and Yagara peoples on Meanjin land. A member and ally of the LGBTIQAPSB+ communities and multiply neurodivergent, Den brings lived experience with clinical understanding into conversations about wellbeing, power, and belonging. As CEO of Haven Psychology, Den works across sectors to bridge insight and impact—challenging systems that prioritise status quo over care and exclusion over access. Through public speaking, leadership, and education, Den invites collective responsibility for neurodivergent wellbeing grounded in ethics, inclusion, and cultural transformation.
