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Founded by a person with disability for people with disability, Adapt Virtual Assistance exists to provide an inclusive and accessible platform for people with disability (and other minorities) to take control of their career prospects and learn the foundational skills in becoming a virtual assistant, and for entrepreneurs to seek trustworthy, inclusive assistance for their business.
We firmly believe that everyone deserves a safe and inclusive pathway to meaningful employment. In a country with approximately 4.4 million people who identify as disabled, where only around 39.8% of them are employed, we see an opportunity to make a positive impact.
At Adapt Virtual Assistance, we believe in fostering productive partnerships that benefit both founders and virtual assistants, creating a harmonious and efficient business environment for all involved.
Ebe is an award-winning community engagement and inclusion practitioner creating lasting change through evidence-based approaches that move beyond compliance to genuine inclusion.
Working with government, education, community, and private sector organisations, Ebe combines lived experience as a neurodivergent person with disability with extensive professional expertise across public, private, and community sectors. Her goal is shifting the dial towards a society that naturally accommodates and celebrates the identities and experiences of all people.
Ebe offers services across three key areas:
1) Training - Delivering tailored, evidence-based training that creates lasting change including neurodiversity in the workplace, disability confidence and accessibility, inclusive communication, LGBTQIA+ inclusion, and Universal Design for Learning. All training moves beyond generic awareness-raising to provide practical strategies teams can implement immediately.
2) Facilitation and consultation - Expert co-design facilitation, stakeholder consultation, focus groups, and program evaluation using inclusive engagement practices. Extensive experience working with people with disability, children and young people, and traditionally marginalised communities in groups ranging from one-on-one to several hundred participants.
3) Event and speaker services - Thought-provoking keynote presentations, engaging event hosting and MC services, and authentic lived experience perspectives for panels and discussions. Topics include creating inclusive workplaces, implementing Universal Design principles, and amplifying marginalised voices in decision-making.
Ebe holds a Master of Disability and Inclusion from Deakin University and currently serves as Deputy Chair of Children and Young People with Disability Australia. As the 2024 winner of the National Awards for Disability Leadership Change Making Award, she brings both strategic thinking and practical implementation skills to every engagement.
Her professional and lived experience provide a strong foundation for understanding diverse working contexts, challenges, and opportunities across sectors.
Ready to create genuine change? Connect with Ebe at www.ebeganon.com.au ✨
Our vision: We believe that every person deserves to live their best life. We envision an equitable and inclusive society where all disabled and multiply marginalised people can thrive.
Our purpose: We provide wellbeing, equity and inclusion support and education that is lived-experience based and rooted in disability justice and an anti-oppression approach.
Our values: Kultivate- We believe that everyone can grow and improve how we live, and how we treat ourselves, each other and the environment. We regularly work to improve how we do things, unlearn our biases and do better for our communities. We respect and work with our clients’ values and capacities to kultivate a meaningful life.
Equity- We believe that all people deserve to have access to what they need in order to thrive. This includes everything from physical access to buildings, to bias-free healthcare, and everything in between.
Community- We are active participants in our own communities. We strive to understand and work with people’s communities and context. Where people live, their histories, cultures and barriers all matter, and we consider these in all we do.
Mindful-We strive to be fully present and engaged in what we’re doing and what matters. We are mindful of the people we work with, ourselves, our context and our environment.
About the founder - Liel Bridgford:
"I’m a Psychologist, writer, educator, and podcaster. I'm a proud disabled, immigrant, non-conforming femme, who uses she/they pronouns and is based in Naarm.
I love supporting people with chronic health conditions or disabilities, and helping disabled people live their best life.
Working with fellow disabled adults on their mental health and overall wellbeing is both my passion and a great privilege. As someone who has lived with a disability for more than 30 years, I want to make a difference in the lives of disabled people. Working alongside my clients, I strive to be not only your therapist, but your ally.
My work focuses on inclusive, accessible, holistic, and trauma-informed support and education, by centering lived experience. I am passionate about working from an intersectional feminist perspective and using an anti-oppression approach.
I have worked in the mental health and disability sectors for over a decade. I am experienced in supporting people who live with disability, psychosocial challenges, anxiety, family violence, suicide ideation, perinatal mood challenges, adjustment issues and more.
In 2025 I was the winner of the Brenda Gabe Leadership Award. Before then, I have been selected as an honoree for Diversability’s annual D-30 Disability Impact List 2024, an ABC TOP 5 Arts resident, editor of Writing Place Magazine 2022 and a 2023 Melbourne Access and Inclusion Award finalist. I have facilitated education and writing workshops in schools and organisations across Australia and internationally, focusing on anti-ableism, equity, inclusion and wellbeing.
My work is published in ABC Arts, Mamamia, Hireup, the anthology We’ve Got This by Black Inc. Books and Scribe UK, Mascara Literary Review, amongst others. I have appeared on various media outlets including ABC radio, 3RC radio, Able radio, ABC News and Channel Nine News. I am particularly fascinated by intersectionality and am the creator and host of the (Un)marginalised podcast.
I founded Kultivate to continue working towards wellbeing, equity, inclusion and disability justice."