Presentation by Westpac
Tracks
Ballroom 3: In-Person Only
| Wednesday, November 25, 2026 |
| 11:45 AM - 12:15 PM |
| Ballroom 3 |
Overview
Eman Maher & Tiffiny Lewin, Westpac
Speaker
Tiffiny Lewin
Westpac
Presentation by Westpac
Biography
Tiffiny leads Customer Vulnerability & Inclusion for Westpac Group, setting standards across Westpac’s ~40k staff and delivering critical insights to maximise financial safety and accessibility through fair product and service design. Tiffiny has driven the embedment of Safety by Design across Westpac, with over 1700 staff trained and the establishment of the Westpac Lived & learned Advisory panel. In November 2024, she launched the Financial Safety by Design Industry Toolkit in partnership with the Australian Banking Association, to enhance financial safety for all people regardless of who they bank with.
In addition to her role at Westpac, Tiffiny is a lived-experience advocate and a member of the Domestic, Family & Sexual Violence Commission’s Lived Experience Advisory Council, supporting the work of the Commission and National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children.
Tiffiny joined Westpac 11 years ago, and prior to Banking, had a 25+ year career in Senior Executive roles spanning diverse industry sectors across Australia and Asia. She is currently a Non-Executive Director and Audit & Risk Chair for Trajan Group Holdings, an ASX listed Life Sciences firm focussed on enriching wellbeing through scientific measurement.
Eman Maher
Senior Manager, Priority Assist and Community Advocacy
Westpac
Presentation by Westpac
Biography
Eman Maher leads Priority Assist & Community Advocacy for Westpac, overseeing specialist customer support functions that assist Australians experiencing financial hardship, vulnerability, domestic and family violence, financial abuse, loss of a loved one and other complex life events. Through her leadership, specialist teams support customers facing complex circumstances while building partnerships that extend support beyond banking.
With more than a decade of leadership experience in financial services, Eman has played a key role in developing initiatives that improve customer outcomes, strengthen community partnerships, and enhance support pathways for vulnerable Australians. Her work is driven by a belief that financial services can play a meaningful role in improving wellbeing, resilience, and economic participation.
Having lived, volunteered, and worked across multiple countries, Eman brings a unique global perspective to leadership, inclusion, and advocacy. As a refugee who arrived in Australia more than 30 years ago, she is passionate about creating opportunities for others and ensuring services are designed with dignity, accessibility, and inclusion at their core.
Drawing on both her professional expertise and lived experience, Eman is committed to ensuring people facing adversity have access to the support, understanding, and opportunities they need to move forward. She believes that strong partnerships between industry, community organisations, and government can play a powerful role in creating lasting social impact.
Dr Kellie Mcglynn
Senior Lecturer
Deakin University IC Building SoE
The Second Violence: When Systems Reproduce Harm After Family Violence Disclosure
Presentation Overview
When a person experiencing family and domestic violence asks for help, the first institutional response can shape what happens next. It can support safety, trust and recovery, or it can leave a survivor feeling dismissed, disbelieved, delayed or further burdened.
Drawing on my recent open access article in Public Health in Practice, this presentation introduces the concept of “the second violence” to name the further harm that can occur after disclosure, when systems designed to protect people reproduce fear, procedural burden or loss of safety. The presentation argues that police responses to family and domestic violence should be understood not only as legal or procedural encounters, but as public health issues because they can affect survivor wellbeing, help-seeking and trust in systems.
This is not an argument about individual blame. It is a systems-focused analysis of how rules, routines, cultures, thresholds and professional practices shape what happens to survivors in moments of vulnerability. Using a survivor-led and trauma-informed lens, the presentation considers how first response can become a critical point for systems transformation.
The presentation will offer practical implications for policy and practice, including the need to reduce repeated retelling, strengthen warm referral pathways, prioritise safety and recognition in the first minutes of response, and evaluate family violence systems not only by whether procedures are followed, but by whether survivors are made safer.
The central question is: how can systems be redesigned so that first response interrupts harm rather than reproduces it?
Drawing on my recent open access article in Public Health in Practice, this presentation introduces the concept of “the second violence” to name the further harm that can occur after disclosure, when systems designed to protect people reproduce fear, procedural burden or loss of safety. The presentation argues that police responses to family and domestic violence should be understood not only as legal or procedural encounters, but as public health issues because they can affect survivor wellbeing, help-seeking and trust in systems.
This is not an argument about individual blame. It is a systems-focused analysis of how rules, routines, cultures, thresholds and professional practices shape what happens to survivors in moments of vulnerability. Using a survivor-led and trauma-informed lens, the presentation considers how first response can become a critical point for systems transformation.
The presentation will offer practical implications for policy and practice, including the need to reduce repeated retelling, strengthen warm referral pathways, prioritise safety and recognition in the first minutes of response, and evaluate family violence systems not only by whether procedures are followed, but by whether survivors are made safer.
The central question is: how can systems be redesigned so that first response interrupts harm rather than reproduces it?
Biography
Dr Kellie McGlynn is a Lecturer in the School of Education at Deakin University. Her research examines systems, trauma-informed practice, institutional change and lived experience, with a focus on how services respond to people in moments of vulnerability. Kellie’s work draws on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, feminist autoethnography and systems approaches to understand how institutional practices can reproduce or interrupt harm. Her current research program, The Second Violence, explores family and domestic violence response, first response, survivor safety and public health. Her recent article in Public Health in Practice introduces the concept of “the second violence.”
