Organising Committee

Priscilla Ennals

Scientific Program Chair

Priscilla is the Senior Manager of Research and Evaluation at Neami National – a community managed service delivery organisation working in mental health, housing and homelessness, and suicide prevention across Australia. Priscilla is an occupational therapist who has worked in and around mental health for 30+ years, in clinical mental health services, academia and now in research in the for-purpose sector.

Priscilla's passion is qualitative, participatory or coproduced research; based on a belief that if we listened better to people who experience mental ill-health/ distress/ use mental health services, we would design and deliver a more effective and joined up system of care. Priscilla has been a long-time attendee at the OT Australia conference – continually returning for the learning, inspiration, new ideas, challenge and most importantly for the people, the connections and friendships made over the years (and the dancing of course).

Brianna Cattanach

Committee Member

Brianna commenced her career working as an Occupational Therapist with a speciality in occupational health and wellbeing. Her role as a workplace consultant provided exposure to a wide range of industries and employers and the vast array of challenges workplaces face in proactively supporting, managing and engaging their teams in occupational health and wellbeing. From here Brianna’s passion and work grew in the space of workplace education and training programs which build capacity, manage risk and enhance an organisations existing culture and processes, creating a truly preventative and predictive approach.

Now as the lead of Gallagher’s national education and training services, Brianna has been integral in developing and facilitating a range of bespoke workforce education projects and training courses which ultimately drive improved productivity, cultural, financial and most importantly people outcomes for organisations. Her projects balance best practice content with engagement and ensure that organisational collaboration and buy-in are at the centre of achieving results in areas such as mental health and wellbeing, injury management, safety, ageing workforce strategies, occupational violence and aggression and team dynamics.

In addition to her work with Gallagher, Brianna routinely presents as an expert speaker on occupational health and wellbeing at a range of industry and corporate events. Brianna is a guest lecturer in the field of Occupational Therapy at Swinburne University and La Trobe University. Brianna also sits on the Academic Advisory Committee for La Trobe University's Masters of Occupational Therapy degree and is involved with OT Australia.

Kate Gledhill

Committee Member

Kate works as a lecturer in the Occupational Therapy department at Monash University. She is also a PhD candidate at Deakin University studying the definition of discharge-readiness from subacute care from the perspectives of key stakeholders. Her main research interest is health services, in particular how health services can interact with vulnerable populations. Clinically, she worked at Alfred Health and Monash Health for 11 years predominantly in subacute care and was the Allied Health Advanced Practitioner and senior clinician for the Better at Home program.

Laura Joliffe

Committee Member

Laura is a research fellow of the Brain Recovery and Rehabilitation Group (Department of Neuroscience) at Monash University with a joint position at Alfred Health in Melbourne. Her research has been focused on evidence-based decision-making within the rehabilitation context and she has a keen interest in supporting consumers to review the evidence underpinning therapy choices, along with understanding behaviour change intervention effectiveness with clinicians who deliver these therapies.

Remie McMaster

Committee Member

Remie is a new graduate, based in regional Victoria. She recently completed her study at La Trobe in Bendigo, Victoria. She is passionate about regional and rural health. She has an interest in mental health and the growing role of occupational therapists in this space. Remie is keen to grow in her career and be a lifelong learner. She loves to hear about other therapists’ experiences and the ways in which OT is applied across settings.

Claire Pearce

Committee Member

Dr Claire Pearce, B App Sc (Occupational Therapist), MSc (Health Sciences), PhD, is experienced occupational therapist and emerging researcher. She has extensive clinical experience in adult acute and rehabilitation services based in public health services in Australia and the UK. She also has experience as a multidisciplinary team manager and has undertaken health service evaluation and development, and policy roles.

Claire lives and works on Ngunnawal country. She is an Assistant Professor in Occupational Therapy at the University of Canberra. She teaches into the Masters and Bachelors of Occupational Therapy. Claire’s areas of research interest are in in the implementation of research into healthcare settings using a systems approach, with a particular focus on workforce development and the development of professional reasoning.

Trish Wielandt

Committee Member

Trish is the Head of Occupational Therapy at James Cook University. Prior to this appointment she was involved in the development of the Occupational Therapy program at CQU in Rockhampton. Trish also spent several years working in Canada as an Associate Professor and Curriculum Chair in the Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Alberta. Her research interests include understanding the human perspective of assistive technology (AT) use; AT use in First Nations communities; midlife transitions for women with MS; rural and remote workforce issues and preparation of graduates for the diversity of rural practice.