Confirmed Keynotes
Julie Inman Grant, Children’s eSafety Commissioner, Office of Children’s eSafety Commission
Julie has extensive experience in the non-profit and government sectors, and spent two decades working in senior public policy and safety roles in the tech industry at Microsoft, Twitter, and most recently Adobe.
Julie’s career began in Washington DC, working in the US Congress and the non-profit sector before taking on a role at Microsoft. Julie’s experience at Microsoft spanned 17 years, serving as one of the company’s first and longest-standing government relations professionals, ultimately in the role of Global Safety Director for safety policy and outreach.
At Twitter, Julie headed up Public Policy for Australia and South East Asia, managing a range of public policy issues, including online safety and countering violent extremism. Julie also built Twitter’s ‘Rules and Tools’ for safety, and conceptualised and piloted #PositionofStrength, which now serves as Twitter’s global female safety and empowerment program.
Most recently, Julie served as Director of Government Relations Asia Pacific at Adobe, where she worked with governments across the region on issues such as innovation and digital transformation, creativity and STEM skills development and cybersecurity.
Ms Jennifer Hoffman, Commissioner for Victims of Crime, Department of Justice, Western Australia
Jennifer Hoffman was appointed to the position of inaugural Commissioner for Victims of Crime for Western Australia, established by the State Government in July 2013.
The Commissioner provides high level advice to the Director General of the Department of Justice, and to the Attorney General, in Western Australia. She advocates to Government for ongoing improvement in victim of crime legislation, policies and services in Western Australia. She represents Western Australia on national working groups and advisory committees on issues which impact Western Australian victims of crime.
She was a commercial lawyer for eight years, becoming a senior associate at Clayton Utz in Melbourne. She then moved into a career in public policy, having now been a senior executive in the public service of Victoria and Western Australia for over a decade.
Key achievements of the office of Commissioner for Victims of Crime since its establishment include:
- Providing advice to the Attorney General on legislative reform to support improved outcomes for victims of family violence, significantly broaden the range of people who can make victim impact statements, and giving a voice to victims in dangerous sexual offender proceedings;
- Working with the judiciary on a range of improvements, including the introduction of new transparency measures around parole processes aimed at victims of crime, and new court practices regarding victim impact statements in superior courts in Western Australia;
- Advocating to ensure that there are now many hundreds of victim impact statements provided each year on behalf of victims to the Prisoners Review Board, so that the perspective of victims remains relevant in justice system decision making about offenders;
- Assisting in the development of innovative court arrangements being developed for family violence victims, including new victim safety risk assessments for criminal matters being the subject of a pilot program in the Magistrates Court of Western Australia; and
- Collaborating with Western Australia Police on new victim of crime practices, including the establishment of co-located police, child protection and non-government services at a centre to assist children who make disclosures of sexual abuse (at the George Jones Child Advocacy Centre, in Armadale.
Dr Rae Kaspiew, Senior Research Fellow, Australian Institute of Family Studies
Dr Rae Kaspiew is a socio-legal researcher with particular expertise in family law and family violence. She manages the Violence and Families and Laws and Families research programs at the Institute. She has been involved in an extensive range of studies and is the lead author of two large scale evaluations of successive waves of reforms in family law (the 2006 and 2012 reforms). She is the lead author of the Institute’s 2015 report on elder abuse and was on the Advisory Group for the Australian Law Reform Commission’s reference on safeguarding the rights of older Australians.
In addition to her role at AIFS, Rae was a member of the Family Law Council for six years, a body that provides policy advice on family law to the federal Attorney General. She was also a member of the Violence Against Women Advisory Group (2009-2011) that advised the federal Minister for the Status of Women on the implementation of the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women. Rae is also on the editorial board of the Australian Journal of Family Law and is second author on a family law textbook used widely in universities.
Assistant Commissioner, Dean McWhirter, Family Violence Command, Victoria Police
Assistant Commissioner Dean McWhirter has had a diverse career during his 35 years in Victoria Police. He has worked at various supervisory levels across Victoria Police including the Intelligence and Covert Support Department, Transit Safety Division, Ethical Standards Department, Traffic Camera Office and People Development Command.
In March 2015, Dean was appointed as the Assistant Commissioner, Family Violence Command. This Command is the first of its kind in any policing jurisdiction in Australia.
Ms Fiona McCormack, CEO, Domestic Violence Victoria
Fiona is the CEO of Domestic Violence Victoria, the peak body for family violence services for women and children in Victoria.
DV Vic provides advice to government and political advocacy on behalf of, and in partnership with its member organisations for violence prevention, systemic change and enhancement of systems.
Fiona is also the Chair of VicHealth and the Co-Chair of the Victorian Government’s Family Violence Steering Committee.
Dr Michael Salter, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Western Sydney University
Dr Michael Salter is a senior lecturer in criminology at Western Sydney University. Michael specializes in the study of violence against women and children, with a focus on complex trauma, victim support and primary prevention. He is the author of Organised Sexual Abuse (Routledge, 2013) and Crime, Justice and Social Media (Routledge, 2017).
Dr Salter is currently a Chief Investigator on an ANROWS-funded research project undertaking a meta-evaluation of perpetrator programs in sexual assault, domestic violence and child sexual abuse with a focus on improving engagement and retention. As the leader of the violence strand within the Sexualities and Genders Research cluster, he is developing a primary prevention program for high schools in the Western Sydney region to reduce gendered violence, and mapping community understandings of domestic violence in refugee and migrant communities.
He has published widely on the needs and experienced of adult survivors of child sexual abuse, was an expert advisor to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. He also sits on the Scientific Advisory Council of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation.
