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I am a lawyer, board director and mother of three teenagers.  I am committed to human rights and inclusion of people with disability, especially in relation to media and cultural representation as well as education.

  • Founder and Director of Starting With Julius, a not for profit organisation committed to promoting the equal representation of people with disability in advertising, media and education.
  • Co-founder of All Means All – The Australian Alliance for Inclusive Education, a not for profit multi-stakeholder organisation working for the implementation of an inclusive education system in Australia and the Australian Coalition for Inclusive Education (ACIE), a coalition of 25 not-for-profit organisations with a combined total of more than 1.2 million members.
  • Co-founder of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (GADIM), an international organisation incorporated in the United State of America, working to increase and improve representation of people with disability in the media.
  • Past Director for over 10 years of Down Syndrome Australia the peak national representative organisation for people with Down syndrome and their families.
  • Past Director of the Attitude Foundation, a not for profit organisation working to  relieve the discrimination experienced by people with disability in Australia by increasing their inclusion and integration into every aspect of political, social, economic and cultural life.
  • Past Deputy Chair of Down Syndrome WA.

I am currently undertaking a doctoral degree with the Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin University, Western Australia, and I am an External Affiliate Member of the Centre for Inclusive Education at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT).

Awards and Recognition

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I am proud of the work of Starting With Julius with Australian brands such as retail giants Kmart and Target, companies such as ANZ and NAB as well as as ABCME, Northern Pictures and others to embed disability representation in their work and help develop sustained approaches and policies to support diversity and inclusion.  Click here to watch Catia speak about inclusive advertising in Wesfarmers’ Corporate Sustainability video.

I also work to promote widespread recognition of the right to inclusive education as a fundamental human right of all children and the evidence-based benefits of students with disabilities being educated in regular classrooms together with their same-age peers.  I have led a range of advocacy efforts to support the implementation of inclusive education in Australia and I am a co-Founder of All Means All – The Australian Alliance for Inclusive Education.

I was honoured to speak about inclusive education at the United Nations in New York in March 2019 and to present in 2020 on a panel about inclusive education at the Conference of State Parties to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities.  I also spoke about inclusion in advertising and media at the United Nations in Geneva in March 2016 and at the United Nations in New York  in October 2016.