World Mental Health Day 2026: Book a Speaker Who Inspires Change

At 17, Jelena Dokic was a Wimbledon semi-finalist. Behind that extraordinary success, she was enduring years of abuse, fear and trauma that followed her long after she left the court.

Now a two-time bestselling author and the subject of the 2025 Logie-winning Unbreakable: The Jelena Dokic Story, Jelena shows audiences that finding your voice can be the first step from surviving to thriving.

Former NRL player Luke Bateman draws on his lived experience of depression, substance abuse and gambling recovery to speak honestly about vulnerability, resilience and choosing change.

He helps audiences move beyond outdated ideas of strength, speak more openly and recognise the courage it takes to ask for support.

Nine weeks after the birth of her long-awaited daughter in 2015, high performer Chelsea Pottenger was hospitalised with severe postnatal depression.

Recovery reshaped her view of success and led her to found EQ Minds in 2016. Now author of The Mindful High Performer and a Gidget Foundation ambassador, Chelsea shows teams that looking after your mental health is what makes sustainable performance possible.

Losing a close friend and mentor to suicide changed the direction of Gus Worland’s life. After exploring men’s mental health in the 2016 ABC series Man Up, he founded Gotcha4Life in 2017 and took his message of mental fitness to the TED stage in 2023.

Gus gives audiences a simple challenge: build your emotional muscles, strengthen your village and never worry alone.

Across a 14-year, 282-game AFL career, including North Melbourne’s 1996 premiership, Wayne Schwass privately lived with clinical depression before sharing his experience publicly in 2006.

Founder of mental health and suicide prevention social enterprise PukaUp, Wayne challenges organisations to make honest conversations about emotional wellbeing part of everyday life, not just something we discuss in a crisis.

Tom Boyd was the No. 1 pick in the 2013 AFL Draft and helped the Western Bulldogs break a 62-year drought in 2016, all while privately struggling with anxiety, insomnia and intense pressure. At 23, he chose his wellbeing over his career, walking away with more than $2 million left on his contract.

With honesty and humour, Tom helps people separate self-worth from achievement and recognise when “pushing through” is no longer working.

A gold and silver medallist at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, Brooke Hanson OLY OAM draws on elite sport, personal loss and life beyond the podium to speak candidly about burnout, grief and resilience.

Named the 2025 Gold Coast Wellness Warrior Woman of the Year, Brooke helps audiences protect their energy and make space for the relationships that help them thrive.

Mindset expert and bestselling author of Living A Life of Greatness, Sarah Grynberg draws on her own experience of burnout and her work with executives and professional athletes.

She shares practical ways to manage stress, reduce rumination and build resilience, helping people move from overwhelmed to clear, purposeful and connected.

Two-time world champion, three-time Olympian and doctor Jana Pittman still wrestled for years with the feeling that she wasn’t enough.

In her 2023 book Enough, she shares how self-acceptance turned her inner critic into empathy and resilience, reminding audiences that thriving isn’t about proving your worth. It starts with believing you already have it.

After a car accident left him with a cervical spinal cord injury midway through medical school, Dr Dinesh Palipana went on to become Queensland’s first medical graduate with quadriplegia, later working as a doctor, lawyer, researcher and disability advocate.

Author of the 2022 memoir Stronger, Dinesh reminds us that thriving isn’t about returning to who you were. It’s about discovering what is still possible.

At 20, a diving accident in Bali left Rhiannon Tracey with a C5 spinal cord injury and the news she would never walk again. In 2012, she founded The Next Step to create the rehabilitation and wellbeing support she wished she’d had.

A 2024 TEDx speaker, Rhiannon shows that progress looks different for everyone, and that we thrive when people have the support, inclusion and belief to find their own next step.

In 2013, Dr Dianne McGrath applied for the one-way Mars One mission and made its final 100 candidates worldwide, only for the project to end. Rather than let an abandoned dream define her, she kept exploring, including 11 months at sea in the 2023–24 Clipper Round the World Yacht Race.

A 2014 TEDxMelbourne speaker, Dianne shows that resilience isn’t having certainty. It’s learning to adapt, stay connected and keep moving when the map changes.

After years in corporate HR, Candice Harvey realised she looked productive while quietly running on autopilot. That shift took her from personal development sceptic to performance coach.

Author of the 2026 bestseller The Shake Up, Candice helps teams build better boundaries, stronger self-awareness and healthier ways of working.

Jacqui Cooper was days away from competing as a gold-medal favourite at the 2002 Winter Olympics when a training accident shattered her knee. Across a 20-year aerial skiing career, she rebuilt from serious injury again and again to become a five-time Winter Olympian and five-time World Cup champion.

Jacqui gives audiences a practical “bank of resilience”, showing that resilience isn’t about never being knocked down. It’s knowing how to rebuild when you are.

Tully Smyth speaks candidly about anxiety, grief, ADHD and the pressures of living publicly, including her own ADHD diagnosis at 37. As a Dementia Australia ambassador, she also champions young carers and the emotional load often carried behind closed doors.

With humour and honesty, Tully helps audiences feel seen and talk more openly about what they’re carrying.

Drawing on her experience with postnatal depression and her family’s mental health struggles, Jessica Rowe AM speaks openly about what happens when life stops looking perfect.

She gives audiences more honest language for talking about mental health, helping teams check in with each other earlier and feel more confident asking for support themselves.

Known as The Streets Barber, Nasir Sobhani turned his own recovery from addiction into a life of service, offering free haircuts to people experiencing homelessness, along with dignity, conversation and the feeling of being seen.

Nasir shows audiences how connection and everyday acts of care help people through difficult moments, and how much one genuine human connection can matter.

Ranked among the world’s Top 100 DJs in 1993 as “Sugar Ray”, Ray Good turned to meditation after experiencing burnout and has practised mindfulness daily for more than 30 years.

As founder of The Good Place, Ray translates neuroscience and mindfulness into practical tools to manage stress, quiet negative self-talk and reset under pressure. He is trusted by organisations including Macquarie, Tennis Australia and the Victorian Government.

Clinical psychologist Dr Jodie Lowinger has spent more than 25 years helping people understand anxiety, manage uncertainty and move from fear-driven avoidance towards purposeful action.

Creator of The Anxiety Reset Method and author of The Mind Strength Method, Jodie shows that mental strength isn’t about eliminating difficult emotions. It’s learning to respond to them without letting them run your life.

Before advising leaders on pressure and performance, Kamal Sarma spent six years training his mind as a monk, later holding senior roles with organisations including McKinsey & Company, Eli Lilly and AMP Capital.

Author of Mental Resilience and a 2017 TEDxUNSW speaker, Kamal helps people manage stress, quiet unhelpful mental chatter and stay clear-headed under pressure.

As a founding board director of R U OK?, Graeme Cowan has helped bring mental health conversations into workplaces across Australia.

Drawing on his own recovery from a five-year episode of depression, he gives leaders practical strategies to recognise when someone is struggling, build resilience and turn care into everyday action.

In 2012, an ex-soldier injured in Afghanistan told comedian Mark McConville that his show was the first time he’d laughed out loud in three years.

That moment, alongside Mark’s own lived experience of depression, led him to complete a master’s degree in Suicidology in 2018 and create The Laughter Clinic. He uses humour and evidence to make difficult conversations feel safer.

In November 2003, at 28, Anthony Hart was battling depression in silence and attempted to take his own life. During his five-year recovery, he discovered four simple steps that became Lifeback Tracker, a free early-intervention tool.

Anthony’s message, born from lived experience, is direct: don’t wait until breaking point to speak up, connect and get help.

Australia came to know Rosie Batty AO for her extraordinary strength after her 11-year-old son Luke was killed in an act of family violence in 2014. Behind the public advocacy, she was navigating profound grief, anxiety and PTSD.

Her 2024 memoir Hope shares a deeply human message: healing takes time, hope can return, and none of us should face life’s hardest moments alone.

For people who keep saying “I’m fine” while running on empty, Sophie Bretag offers a different definition of strength.

Drawing on nearly two decades in executive HR, her own burnout and her recovery from aggressive head and neck cancer, Sophie gives people practical ways to set boundaries, manage stress and reconnect before exhaustion takes over.

Neuroscientist Dr Hayley North took the TEDxSydney stage in 2025 to explore how our brains respond to uncertainty and stress.

Drawing on her research into the biological foundations of mental health, she turns complex science into practical strategies for regulating stress, protecting attention and building healthier habits.

After surviving a great white shark attack and losing her left arm, Sydney teacher and mother Leah Stewart shares an intensely personal story of recovery, adaptation and rebuilding.

She helps audiences find possibility after devastating setbacks and appreciate the role purpose and gratitude play when moving forward feels hard.