Tahlia-Rose Vanissum is a proud Woppaburra woman and Traditional Owner of the Keppel Islands. Tahlia-Rose works across her community and the public sector to improve services for First Nations women, girls and people with disability. She is currently undertaking a Master of Culture, Health, and Medicine at the Australian National University (ANU).
Tahlia-Rose’s focus is building understanding and identification of intersectional and systemic discrimination, bringing awareness to the violence it continues to cause her community through truth-telling while elevating community-led solutions, voices and practice. Tahlia-Rose is passionate about inclusive, respectful and reciprocal leadership that amplifies the strengths of cultural ways of being by building the capability of others to identify and address discrimination across national frameworks, jurisdictional priorities and institutional settings.
Tahlia-Rose is currently on secondment to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet as an A/g Senior Adviser working to embed cultural safety and intersectionality across the NDIS Review. Tahlia-Rose is the Chair of the ACT Government’s Women’s Advisory Council, Sisters In Spirit Aboriginal Corporation Chairperson, and a Board Director at the Canberra Institute of Technology, the ACT’s public and largest vocational education provider and its wholly-owned subsidiary CIT Solutions.
In her spare time, Tahlia-Rose is completing the AICD’s Company Directors Course as a 2023 Disability Leadership Scholar. Tahlia-Rose also holds vocational qualifications in government, business, leadership, and human resources management and a Bachelor of Criminology from the ANU.