Meet Our Global Team

Michelle McQuaid

Dr. Michelle McQuaid is a best selling author, workplace wellbeing teacher and playful change activator. With more than a decade of senior leadership experience in large organizations around the world, she’s passionate about translating cutting edge research from positive psychology and neuroscience, into practical strategies for health, happiness, and business success.

An honorary fellow at Melbourne University’s Graduate School of Education, she blogs for Psychology Today, hosts the top-rated weekly podcast Making Positive Psychology Work, and her work has been featured in Forbes, the Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, Boss Magazine, The Age and more.

Meet Our Global Team

Paige Williams

Determined to help leaders move beyond just the need for resilience so they can become anti-fragile, Paige Williams PhD teaches people how to leverage their energy, attitudes, and mindsets to benefit from the dynamic, complex, and uncertain environment in which most organizations now operate. A lecturer and researcher at the Centre for Positive Psychology at the University of Melbourne, Paige uses a potent blend of positive psychology, neuroscience, leadership research, and her years of international business leadership experience to provide practical, evidence-based pathways to help people and organizations thrive through change.

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Michelle Etheve

Committed to creating cultures of curiosity by teaching people to ask better questions and spark positive changes, Michelle specializes in enabling people to create purposeful, strengths-based change. With more than a decade in higher education organizations, and a Masters of Science in Coaching Psychology, Michelle designs and delivers Appreciative Inquiry experiences, leadership learning challenges, and wellbeing programs in workplaces, schools, and communities around the world.

“We now have a group of passionate wellbeing champions with a shared vision for our school’s future.”  – Erika, Footscray Primary School

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Louis Alloro

A champion of enabling change leaders to design and deliver positive change experiences that improve wellbeing, Louis Alloro helps schools, workplaces, communities, and cities to build their psychological muscles and rally together to be the change they want to see in the world. A social entrepreneur with a Masters in Applied Positive Psychology, Louis designs and delivers highly sought after, evidence-based wellbeing and positive change learning experiences around the world, and is currently pursuing his PhD in systems informed positive psychology and social impact evaluation.

“The wellbeing program, led by Louis Alloro, with Midland community leaders in 2018, was tremendously valuable to me personally and to our work together to help Midland be a place where everyone thrives.” – Mark, Sustainability Director and Community Leader

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Danielle Jacobs

Danielle is a registered Psychologist, flourishing leadership and well being specialist, speaker, trainer and coach.

When she is not volunteering with her rescue Labrador Henry at Palliative Care and nursing homes she spends her time using evidence based organisational scholarship and positive psychology practices within organisations across the country to help their people flourish, improve their mental and physical health and achieve peak performance, at the individual, team and organisational level.

Day to day she runs a variety of c-suite, team and organisational workshops and masterclasses to enable and extend practices that embed high impact individual, team and organisational flourishing & team cohesion. She also leads (for Australasia) the delivery of world renowned and high impact Potentialife leadership development program (the brain child of Harvard Universities positive psychology guru Dr Tal Ben Shahar), administers psychometric tests and coaches leaders (emotional intelligence specialty).

Danielle is an Assoc. MAPS, Affiliate member of APS College of Organisational Psychologists and has extensive combined leadership, executive and senior executive experience, working in a variety of fields (medium to large businesses/government departments & not for profits), on high profile and innovative projects.

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Alli Williamson

Passionate about improving the wellbeing of teachers, students, and whole schools, Alli Williamson designs playful, evidence-based learning journeys to help educational institutions navigate thriving and struggle. With more than 20 years as an educator in schools around Australia, Alli draws on her Masters of Applied Positive Psychology and her executive coaching certification to help schools and universities create long-term positive education strategies that deliver measurable results.

“Alli’s playful, engaging, and needs-based facilitation style thoroughly supported the wellbeing of our school. Alli emphasized the need to take small steps and build the program slowly in order for it to be authentic and long-lasting. You won’t regret engaging Alli to work with you on your organization’s wellbeing journey.” – Fahan School

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Laurice Temple

Authenticity. Value-Alignment. Wellbeing. Courage. These are some of the words people use when describing Laurice. Laurice has proudly worked in the construction and infrastructure industry most of her career and is now a non-executive board director and founder of her business consultancy, Ripple Affect Institute (RAI). Ripple Affect Institute incorporates “Wellbeing” and positive psychology as a foundation in assisting their clients in co-creating solutions to complex problems in order to flourish. The focus is on ‘positive societal shifts with our clients and community members to further develop their aspirations into purpose-driven, value-aligned and driving more sustainable outcomes that have identifiable and measurable impacts.’

Laurice has a Bachelors Degree in Construction Management, is an accredited Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM) Project Manager, has a Certificate IV in Front line Project Management and is a graduate of the Australian Institute Company Directors course (GAICD). As the construction industry has the highest suicide rate in Australia, she regards “Wellbeing” as a crucial part of the cultural transformation that needs to happen in the industry and as an overall societal shift.

As a part of her professional career, Laurice has presented to thousands of people and always embodies “wellbeing” and “psychological safety” as consistent themes, which has resonated with her audiences.

Meet Our Global Team

Leonie Hallam

Léonie Hallam is a brilliant people person having worked as a lawyer, risk manager, registered nurse, and silversmith. A strong devotee of positive psychology, Léonie’s incredibly diverse work experience has fueled her creative desire to establish well and flourishing workspaces.

As the Director of Wellness and Happiness, an innovative evidence-based wellness consultancy, Léonie, provides inspired solutions for leaders to motivate and advance the best of business talent. When Léonie is not consulting, she is outdoors walking in nature or indoors creating jewellery pieces.

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Sian Mertens

Siân is a university educated coaching psychologist with close to twenty years’ experience in Human Resources and Organisational Development roles across the industrial, manufacturing and FMCG sectors with strategic HR and change management expertise backed by solid business acumen. Most recently she was head of Talent & Organisational Development for Australia & New Zealand at Kimberly-Clark and prior to this the head of HR for Hasbro Pacific.

She has designed and facilitated talent and leadership development programs, built high performance cultures, driven employee engagement, led organisational restructuring, and partnered with business leaders to drive change and develop and support business strategy.

Siân is pursuing her passion for making development matter by harnessing the untapped potential in those she works with. This often involves a focus on individual and team mindset, improving self-awareness, broadening perspectives, whilst helping the team appreciate and understand the system in which they are operating.

Siân is passionate about the application of evidence-based positive psychology coaching methods and frameworks, and her facilitation and individual coaching practices are founded on these approaches. She is a strong advocate for bringing the human back to leadership; investing in one to one conversations, building relationships and trust, and a focus on wellbeing to assist with navigating change and stress at work and in life.

Siân has a Master of Science in Coaching Psychology from Sydney University, a Post Graduate Diploma in Human Resources from Deakin University and a Bachelor of Social Science majoring in Psychology from the University of NSW. She is accredited in the use of a range of psychometric assessments including the Mental Toughness Questionnaire (MTQ) and Myers Briggs Type Indicator Personality Assessment (MBTI).

Meet Our Global Team

Kasey Lloyd

For 15 years Kasey worked in mostly therapeutic settings, as a registered psychologist, counsellor, group facilitator, and case worker. During this time, she constantly encountered high-functioning people who felt ‘blah’ – either unfulfilled, stuck, lost, or languishing. Kasey related to these people, and through researching the best ways to support them (and herself!) she discovered Positive Psychology – the science of optimal functioning and what makes life worth living.

Fascinated, she trotted off to the UK to study with renown researchers and practitioners at University of East London, the world’s first (and currently only) university to offer a Master of Science in Applied Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology, from which Kasey graduated with Distinction in 2018.

Now, it’s Kasey’s mission to spread the word of Positive Psychology. Through workshops, consulting, and coaching Kasey skilfully combines humour, authenticity, and empathy to assist organisations to enable their leaders and employees to thrive both at work and in their private lives. Kasey wholeheartedly believes that the most valuable assets in any organisation are its people, and with experience in government, non-government, and private sectors, is well-placed to provide actionable, evidence-based strategies to improve wellbeing, boost engagement, and create positive relationships at work.

Meet Our Global Team

Nicole Jordan

Nicole is an experienced trainer with over 25 years career experience across numerous industries. With a Bachelor of Applied Science (Human Movement) and further qualifications in Positive Psychology, Wellbeing and Mental Health, Nicole has a wealth of knowledge to offer your organisation.

Whilst working in teams and managing staff she discovered a passion for educating the community and more specifically workplaces on the importance of employee mental health & wellbeing. Nicole understands the pressures of balancing work and family, the challenges of presenting as ‘fit for work’ when there are struggles in life and the importance of self-care and optimum wellbeing. Working with organisations on how to improve the psychological safety of their environments and how to train their staff in not just the technical skills of the job, but skills to manage and build their staff wellbeing using evidence based tools is what she loves.

An engaging and adaptable presenter, Nicole delivers training with a positive and realistic approach, adding a splash of humour to have participants at ease and making the training enjoyable. Thrilled to be a licensee of The Wellbeing Lab, Nicole would love to meet with you to design the best fit training to support the wellbeing of your team.

Meet Our Global Team

Anna Broadhead & Kristy Duffy

Joining forces after almost 20 years within the corporate Human Resources world, Co-founders and Directors Anna Broadhead and Kristy Duffy have a united passion and mission to create a positive impact in their community and with this started Awareness Co. Their mission is to build strengths-based workplaces that allow people to thrive and flourish.

Anna is a HR and organisational change consultant, workplace trainer and mindfulness facilitator. Kristy is a qualified Strengths Practitioner, facilitator and culture and leadership expert. Along with their Senior HR Leadership experience, their specialisations include, leadership and management development, emotional intelligence, communication and connection, teamwork and development, change management and building holistic wellbeing and resilience.

Along with their team, they have a unique model whereby they blend their corporate experience to provide practical application of HR, change and wellbeing strategies to a range of clients across corporate and not for profit sectors. Their point of difference is connecting to what motivates and matters to individuals and helping them translate their learning into action to enhance performance and support wellbeing.

Their experience is supported by University qualifications in Human Resources and Marketing as well as qualifications in Organisational Change Management, Positive Psychology and Wellbeing.

Meet Our Global Team

As demand for our content has continued to grow, it’s become impossible to meet this alone. In addition to our co-founders Michelle McQuaid and Paige Williams, we are now joined by an amazing team of collaborators – all wonderful researchers, strategists, facilitators, and coaches in workplaces who have been there and done that – to design and deliver our playful, scientific, actionable programs that help leaders and their teams thrive, even in uncertain times.

Click the speaker image to see their bio and to learn more.