People

Tracy Levett-Jones holds the position of Distinguished Professor in the School of Nursing & Midwifery at The University of Technology Sydney. Tracy established and is the Director of the Empathy Imperative research group and the Planetary Health Collaborative for Nurses and Midwives. She is recognised as a world-leading nursing and healthcare researcher and was inducted into the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame in 2022.

Tracy’s program of research includes planetary health, empathy and patient safety. She has written over 300 journal articles as well as twelve books, the most recent being ‘Clinical Reasoning: Learning to think like a nurse’ and ‘Critical Conversations for Patient Safety’.  Tracy has been the recipient of multiple teaching and research awards and has been awarded over seven million dollars in research funding. She continues to lead major research and education projects and her collaborations with organisations such as Diabetes Australia and the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia demonstrates her commitment to community engagement and industry partnerships.

Professor Jacqui Pich is the Co-Chair of the Empathy Imperative and holds the position of Deputy Head of School (Teaching & Learning) in the School of Nursing & Midwifery at The University of Technology Sydney. She is a dual university medal winner for her undergraduate and honours studies in her Bachelor of Nursing degree. Her PhD was a national study on the experiences of emergency nurses with patient-related violence and she has presented the findings at domestic and international conferences. She is part of an international Cochrane review on education and training for preventing and minimising workplace aggression directed toward healthcare workers. She is also involved in research on horizontal and vertical violence experienced by undergraduate nurses and has been involved in studies related to empathic interactions with people who have a disability.

Dr Carolyn Antoniou is the Co-Chair of the Empathy Imperative. Her research focuses on the education of nursing students, professional values, empathy and person-centred care in healthcare and nursing curriculum. Carolyn’s PhD explored the development of professional values in undergraduate student nurses who have experienced a curriculum underpinned by the Person-centred philosophy, using narrative inquiry methodology. During her time at UTS Carolyn developed a third year subject in the Bachelor of Nursing which brought together industry leaders and nursing specialists to facilitate empathic and person-centred learning for graduating students, winning the UTS Faculty of Health Deans award for Innovation in Learning and Teaching in 2024 for this subject. She remains passionate about the possibilities for improved outcomes for all people in the healthcare environment based on the development of empathetic, compassionate and authentic care that creates environments where all persons can flourish.

Ellie is a University of Newcastle Faculty Medal winner and received the ‘Nurse of the Year – New to Practice’ Award at the Central Coast Local Health District in her first year of professional practice. Ellie has experience in paediatric and adult medical nursing. Her research interests include empathy, volunteering, and patient safety. As part of her honours program, Ellie created a unique hospital volunteering program for medical and nursing students. She recently completed a Patient Safety Masters degree at the University of Oxford, in the UK.

Dr Elizabeth Brogan is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Nursing at Fiji National University (FNU). She completed her PhD at the University of Sydney. Her work is grounded in a strong commitment to health, wellbeing, and compassionate care, with research interests spanning the health behaviours of new graduate nurses, workplace health promotion, and nursing students' attitudes towards people with obesity. Dr Brogan has been a Registered Nurse for 25 years, with extensive experience as a perioperative nurse across a wide range of clinical settings, including general and orthopaedic trauma, high‑risk obstetrics, urogynaecology, surgical nursing, day surgery, and IVF. Her clinical background continues to shape her teaching and research, particularly her focus on empathy, communication, and person‑centred care in complex healthcare environments. At UTS, Dr Brogan works closely with students to support their transition to university in her role as First‑ and Further‑Year Experience Coordinator (Health). She also coordinates the third‑year specialisation subject, Introduction to Perioperative Nursing, supporting students in developing confidence, professionalism, and care‑focused practice as they transition into demanding clinical roles.

Professor Gabrielle Brand is a passionate nurse, educator and qualitative researcher at Monash Nursing & Midwifery. She has over 20 years’ experience in health professions education. Her research interests include narrative medicine, health humanities and creative and critical pedagogy. She is recognised as an education leader in the co-design of education with healthcare consumers and is the co-founder of the ‘Depth of Field’ © reflective learning resources which are used across Australia and New Zealand to teach current and future health professionals to move beyond “diagnosis’ to a more empathetic, humanistic models of care. More recently her research has included planetary health education, integrating tolerance of uncertainty pedagogy into higher education and co-designing simulation-based education with healthcare consumers. Gabrielle has published and presented her research in Australia and internationally, authored over 60 peer reviewed articles and several book chapters.

Natalie's nursing career has been focused on understanding and supporting the mental health needs of people who receive healthcare. She has worked as a clinician, educator, manager, policy advisor and assessor in mental health services. Natalie believes that nurses have a responsibility to listen to the voices of people who receive healthcare. She believes that compassion, empathy and human-centredness should inform everything health services do. Natalie has recently completed her PhD focused on understanding the lived experience of people who have been admitted to acute mental health units. The findings of her study showed that being treated with empathy and kindness contributed to feelings of safety for people admitted to this setting. Natalie has an interest in adapting 'taken-for-granted' approaches in health services to be as human-centred as possible. In line with this, she was instrumental in transforming a traditional aggression management training program into a human-centred program that was co-developed and co-delivered by people with lived experience of admission to an acute mental health unit. The program transformed a workplace culture of 'them and us' to one of 'all of us'.

Sue Dean has taught communication in health programs for 25 years. Her area of research is the development of empathy and compassion in health care students and practitioners. She has been awarded over $300,00 for research into empathy and vulnerable communities individually and as a co- investigator. Sue has published extensively  in the area of  empathy and compassion in health care students and practitioners and in 2018 Sue will be a Visiting Scholar in The Oxford Empathic Care Program, University of Oxford where she will work on developing empathy training programs and collaborative research opportunities. She will also attend Stanford University for the Cultivating Compassion Training program.

Caz Hales is an Associate Professor (Te Herenga Waka- Victoria University of Wellington), Adjunct Bariatric Research and Service Development Advisor – Health New Zealand (Capital, Coast, Hutt Valley), registered nurse, and a leading obesity and size inclusive healthcare researcher in Aotearoa New Zealand with over 20 years of experience working in clinical practice.

 Caz’s work focuses on advancing equitable, person-centred care through innovative education and research. Her work spans safe patient handling, bariatric care, and workforce development, with a strong emphasis on addressing weight bias in healthcare. Caz is the co-developer of the Weigh Your Bias education initiative and is leading the development of a VR bariatric platform to enhance empathy and clinical capability, recently supported through commercialisation funding. Her research integrates empathy-driven design with digital health innovation to improve care experiences and outcomes. Caz regularly collaborates across clinical, academic, and industry sectors and is an invited international speaker on size-inclusive care practices.

Professor Samantha Jakimowicz is a nurse academic and empathy researcher whose work explores how healthcare professionals maintain compassionate, patient‑centred care in high‑pressure environments. Drawing on Rogers’ humanistic principles of empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard, her research examines compassion satisfaction, compassion fatigue, emotional labour, and the organisational conditions that enable or erode compassionate practice. Samantha’s work spans critical care nursing, patient experience, and workforce wellbeing. Her doctoral and subsequent research demonstrate how workload, workplace culture and role expectations shape nurses’ capacity to deliver empathic, person‑centred care. She developed a conceptual framework using Bowen Family Systems Theory to strengthen compassion satisfaction and support healthier team cultures. She has worked alongside experts on nationally recognised empathy and wellbeing initiatives, including the Virtual Empathy Museum, empathy‑immersion training, and evaluations of Schwartz Rounds across NSW Health. Samantha’s work continues to shape how empathy and compassion are taught, supported and sustained in healthcare.

Margaret is Emeritus Professor of Nursing at Central Queensland University. With a background in nursing and mental health nursing, Margaret was an academic for 30 years. She published 200 articles and 10 books and supervised many students at Master and Ph D level. She has a deep interest in the intersection between the arts and health, seeing this as an effective way to illuminate aspects of health care that are misunderstood, taboo or require more scrutiny. Some of her projects include: an examination of the nurse in popular culture across time, the history of nursing (See Vivienne Bullwinkel: a model of resilience), nursing and the gothic, the impact of threshold choirs at end of life and using the arts to build resilience in youth.

Dr Rook’s clinical and research activities have led to an exploration and critical examination of the impact of culture, values and coping mechanisms on therapeutic relationships, performance, and well-being. Helen is particularly interested in fostering organisational climates to build resilient, mindful, self-confident, empathetic people.Helen is recognised as a leader in the field of nursing, empathy, and compassion. Her most recent work has examined the psychologization of emotions, and the meaning of empathy from cultural perspectives. Helen is Deputy Dean of Wellington Faculty of Health, Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington, a registered nurse, mind coach practitioner and Senior Lecturer. She is also is member of the Safe Healthcare Collaborative (SHC), Health Services Research Association Australia New Zealand (HSRAANZ), International Philosophy of Nursing Society (IPONS) and is a Te Whatu Ora Wellbeing Champion.

Suzanne is an Associate Professor of Person-Centred Nursing Research at the Prince of Wales Hospital & Sydney Hospital & Sydney Eye Hospital and the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Faculty of Health, School of Nursing & Midwifery. In this role as a conjoint, Suzanne has continued to build a program of research fostering collaborative partnerships between academia and local health districts.

Her program of person-centred research focuses on patients’ experience of living with a chronic condition across the lifespan, particularly vulnerable and marginalised population groups. She is an experienced mixed-method researcher with experience in co-design and co-production research. She is recognised for her engagement and working in partnership with priority populations and non-government organisations as a clinician and researcher and is a recipient of a NSW Health Premier's Award for her collaborative research and clinical care working with People subject to Homelessness.

Katie is a caring sciences researcher whose focus is on spirituality and health, empathy, and planetary health. In addition to qualifications in emergency nursing and education, her Doctor of Philosophy (Health) explored the role and impact of chaplains on paramedic wellbeing in Australian ambulance services.  Katie has worked in positions including as a Senior Research Fellow, Postdoctoral Researcher, and is now a Senior Lecturer at the Australian Catholic University. She collaborates with domestic and international researchers from nursing, paramedicine and the Australian Defence Force, and supervises research students in nursing and paramedicine.