Develop, support, promote disability leaders
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Disability Leaders
We are the world's first disability owned and led disability leadership development organisation.
The DLI provides leadership programs that consider your disability as an asset, while surrounded by a supportive community of disability leaders. The DLI promotes our members when they are in the news or appointed to positions. We like to share what disability leaders are up to.
As a fully virtual organisation, we offer membership to disability leaders all over the world. Membership is open to all disabled people everywhere and at all levels.
The DLI also offers Entrepreneurs Membership to disability entrepreneurs. Be part of a supportive community while learning and growing our businesses together.
Check out our online courses and programs.
leadership development
leadership coaching
leadership assessments
members community of practice
entrepreneurs community
DLI Consulting
Our range of specialist consulting and training is designed to support you to support your emerging and established disability leaders.
DLI Consulting uses only disabled people, across the broad expertise of the DLI membership, to work with your organisation by delivering workshops, specialist coaching, and organisational change management.
The DLI is home to the National Register of Disability Leaders - share your opportunities with disability leaders to find the leader you are looking for.
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 ✨
Heidi La Paglia (she/her) is a proud Autistic, queer and disabled consultant and advocate living in Muwinina Country, in Lutruwita, Hobart, Tasmania. Heidi has over a decade of experience working in professional and voluntary roles in the disability and women's rights sector as well as extensive personal experience navigating chronic health conditions and disability. After becoming a mother in 2022 and finding juggling employment, disability and parenting inaccessible, Heidi set up her consulting business.
In her consultancy, Heidi specialises in gender equity, disability rights and neuro-inclusion and is passionate about transforming organisations, political movements and spaces to ensure are are safe for and accessible to communities who experience intersectional marginalisation .
Heidi offers services in a range of areas such as research, report writing, project management, facilitation, public speaking, neurodiversity training and more.
NDIS & Disability Policy Consultant and Non-Executive Director blending professional expertise with lived experience of deafblindness.
Expertise
NDIS, national and state disability policy including NDIS Review and Disability Royal Commission reforms
Accessibilityand disability
Governance and leadership, including advisory on accessible and inclusive boardroom/workplace leadership practice
Type of work
Consultations
Research and analysis
Policy submissions
Public speaking
Media and writing
Project work
Advisory (disability/accessibility/governance)
Your business has a story - all it needs is the right person to tell it.
That’s why you need a wordsmith. Someone who can step in, craft the exact turns of phrase and put the best words in the right order to smash your business goals out of the park.
Wordsmith By DK was founded for exactly that purpose. My name’s Danielle, I’m an award-winning neurodivergent journalist and communications specialist. I’ve spent more than ten years dealing with the intricacies of finding the right words for the job. Now, I’m sharing that skill with you. Specialising in disability and neurodivergence, I bring an inclusive lens to my work. With experience perfecting communications in corporates, not for profits, tertiary institutions and government, I’ve got the know-how to make you the go-to in your field. Whether you’ve got a press release that needs writing, an audio story to cut and script, a speech to draft for that all-important gig, or social media pages that need filling, I can help. Unsure how to put your business out there? Let me tailor a bespoke communications strategy to support your business goals. By combining my journalistic experience and communications expertise, I can take the stress out of media relations and comms for you - and get you the airtime you need.
But wait, there's more!
I'm also an engaging and confident public speaker. I've had the privilege of sharing my knowledge of media literacy and disability representation and inclusion with classrooms, businesses and community groups around Victoria. If that sounds like something you need, get in touch and let's work something out - while I can't promise you steak knives, you can be sure I'll deliver an evidence-based, curriculum-focused, context-appropriate presentation, rooted in real-life and lived experience that won't put the audience to sleep.
Yenn has been working in the disability and Queer advocacy spaces since 2005. They have written 18 published books and have two further titles under contract. Yenn has been a public speaker since 2002 including twice for TEDx Canberra. Yenn can speak on a number of topics to audiences of any size. Yenn spent 17 years in the public service and has worked in executive leadership in the disability sector. Yenn also provides consultancy and mentoring services including peer mentoring for people with NDIS plans. Yenn is an experienced facilitator and has been part of a large number of boards and committees. They also provide writing and editing services.