BRAIN INJURY AUSTRALIA LIMITED - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- BIA Director
- Chairman of the Australian Institute of Health
- President of the Australian Medical Association
Dr Mukesh Haikerwal is Chair of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. He is also Chair of beyondblue's National Doctors' Mental Health Program and serves as a Director of the Cancer Council of Victoria. Dr Haikerwal is a former Chair of Council of the World Medical Association and Federal President of the Australian Medical Association. He was also National Clinical Lead at the National e-Health Transition Authority. In 2008, Dr Haikerwal sustained a severe traumatic brain injury after being assaulted in Melbourne.
Former Federal President of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Haikerwal sustained a severe traumatic brain injury after being assaulted in Melbourne in 2008.
Job Titles:
- BIA Director
- BIA Director and Company Secretary
Dr Goldsmith's professional practice is in risk management and strategy, with a focus on sustainability and innovation. She developed a keen interest in risk and decision-making from her work in environmental engineering, encompassing health and safety concerns. Read more…
Dr Goldsmith's professional practice is in risk management and strategy, with a focus on sustainability and innovation. She developed a keen interest in risk and decision-making from her work in environmental engineering, encompassing health and safety concerns. Dr Goldsmith has also been a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne where she developed new courses in business risk, management practice and entrepreneurship and innovation. Her research interests span environment, regional productivity and social inclusion. Dr Goldsmith has served previously as Independent Member on the Audit Committee for Transport Safety Victoria and is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. She has lived experience of brain injury.
Leanne Togher is the Conjoint Professor of Allied Health at The University of Sydney and Western Sydney Local Health District. She is also the Professor of Communication Disorders following Traumatic Brain Injury and serves on the Leadership Group of the Sydney School of Health Sciences and is a member of the Leadership Team of the Brain and Mind Centre at The University of Sydney. Leanne has published 4 books, 20 book chapters and 200 papers, attracted over AUD$32million in external grant funding and, in 2018, was awarded the NHMRC's Elizabeth Blackburn Investigator Grant Award as the highest-ranked female research fellow applicant in the field of Clinical Science and Medicine. Her communication treatments for people with brain injury and their families, carers, service providers and community agencies include TBI Express and TBIconneCT. She is Director of the Acquired Brain Injury Communication Lab and Director of speechBITE, Honorary Professor at City, University of London and Visiting Professor, the Education University of Hong Kong. She is the International Board Member for the Journals Board of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) in the United States, Chair of the Editorial Board for Brain Impairment, and Editorial Board member of Brain Injury, Aphasiology and the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. She is also Vice Chair of the International Brain Injury Association.
Job Titles:
- Executive Officer
- Representative
- BIA Executive Officer
- Executive Officer / Brain Injury Australia 's Executive Officer since 2008, Nick Sustained a Severe Traumatic Brain Injury As a Result of a Bicycle Accident in 1996. Read
Nick Rushworth has been Executive Officer of Brain Injury Australia since 2008. He was also President of the Brain Injury Association of New South Wales between 2004 and 2008. In 1996, Nick sustained a severe traumatic brain injury as a result of a bicycle accident. Before joining Brain Injury Australia, Nick worked for the Northern Territory Government setting up their new Office of Disability. Formerly a producer with the Nine Television Network's "Sunday" program and ABC Radio National, Nick's journalism has won a number of awards, including a Silver World Medal at the 2003 New York Festival, a National Press Club and TV Week Logie Award.
Nick's current primary focus is facilitating a national "community of practice" in brain injury for the National Disability Insurance Agency, being piloted in Sydney - regular meetings of Local Area Coordinators and Agency planners with senior Agency staff, a Clinical Lead and allied health representation. (This will be followed by Brain Injury Australia's delivery of a national training package in brain injury for Agency staff and Local Area Coordinators, also to be piloted in Sydney.) The community's core purpose is to optimise both needs ascertainment and plan fidelity for NDIS participants with a brain injury.
Nick serves as a consumer representative on: the Australian Trauma Quality Improvement Program Steering Committee; the Victorian Neurotrauma Advisory Council; the Neurotrauma Evidence Translation Steering Committee of the National Trauma Research Institute; the Executive of the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Directorate of New South Wales Health; the Victorian Transport Accident Commission/ Monash University Institute for Safety, Compensation and Recovery Research Behaviours of Concern Project; the Steering Committee on Guidelines for the Pharmacological Management of Neurobehavioural Symptoms Following Traumatic Brain Injury (and co-chairs, with Malcolm Hopwood Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne, its Consumers and Carers Subcommittee); the Lifetime Care and Support Authority of New South Wales' Behaviour Management Working Party; the Vocational Intervention Program Steering Committee of New South Wales Health; the Expert Advisory Board of the Moving Ahead Centre of Research Excellence in Brain Recovery; the Slow Stream Rehabilitation National Advisory Group; the Monash Epworth Rehabilitation Research Centre Advisory Board; the Disability Advisory Committee of the Australian Electoral Commission; and the Department of Social Services' Disability Employment Services Consumer Advisory Group and Telstra's Disability Forum. Nick is also a Director of the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations, and is an Ambassador for the National Organisation for Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders and the Queensland Brain Institute's concussion research.
Brain Injury Australia's Executive Officer since 2008, Nick sustained a severe traumatic brain injury as a result of a bicycle accident in 1996.
Job Titles:
- BIA Director
- Executive Chairman of Conrad Capital
Richard McKinnon is Executive Chairman of Conrad Capital, an international strategy and advisory company. Read more…
Job Titles:
- BIA Director and Vice Chair
Natalie brings 30 years of expertise in healthcare research, communication, project management, and education and training, as well as the experience of a parent whose son's recovery from a "mild" Traumatic Brain Injury was prolonged and complicated.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Neuroscience
Professor Roger Chung is Professor of Neuroscience and Associate Dean (Research and Higher Degrees Research) in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the Australian School of Advanced Medicine at Macquarie University. Professor Chung's research has had two major themes - traumatic brain injury and understanding the basic biochemical, molecular and cellular mechanisms that underpin how neurons respond to injury or disease.
Since 2014, Professor Chung has overseen the recruitment of five teams to establish a new Motor Neurone Disease (MND) research group at Macquarie University. This multidisciplinary group integrates genetics, biochemistry, cell biology and animal models of disease with direct access to MND clinics, forming a critical mass of expertise in MND research.
Leanne Togher is the Conjoint Professor of Allied Health at The University of Sydney and Western Sydney Local Health District. She is also the Professor of Communication Disorders following Traumatic Brain Injury and serves on the Leadership Group of the Sydney School of Health Sciences and is a member of the Leadership Team of the Brain and Mind Centre at The University of Sydney. Leanne has published 4 books, 20 book chapters and 200 papers, attracted over AUD$32million in external grant funding and, in 2018, was awarded the NHMRC's Elizabeth Blackburn Investigator Grant Award as the highest-ranked female research fellow applicant in the field of Clinical Science and Medicine. Her communication treatments for people with brain injury and their families, carers, service providers and community agencies include TBI Express and TBIconneCT. She is Director of the Acquired Brain Injury Communication Lab and Director of speechBITE, Honorary Professor at City, University of London and Visiting Professor, the Education University of Hong Kong. She is the International Board Member for the Journals Board of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) in the United States, Chair of the Editorial Board for Brain Impairment, and Editorial Board member of Brain Injury, Aphasiology and the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. She is also Vice Chair of the International Brain Injury Association.
Professor Roger Chung is Professor of Neuroscience and Associate Dean (Research and Higher Degrees Research) in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the Australian School of Advanced Medicine at Macquarie University. Read more…
Job Titles:
- BIA Director General Manager - Services, Acquired Brain Injury Services