Speakers



Christina Bryant

Associate Professor Christina Bryant is an academic clinical psychologist and currently serving as the Director of the University of Melbourne’s clinical psychology training programme. She has 20 years’ clinical experience and 15 years’ research experience in psychology and the mental health of older adults, in particular the prevalence of anxiety and depression, the relationship between attitudes to ageing and anxiety, depression, and well-being, managing long-term physical conditions, and the promotion of healthy ageing. She collaborates extensively with researchers within and outside psychology and has published widely in international journals and books. Christina has a strong interest in increasing patients’ access to psychological informed interventions, and how non-psychologists can safely incorporate such interventions into their clinical practice.


Melbourne



Emma Laird

Emma Laird is a clinical audiologist with training in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Mental Health First Aid. She provides an audiological counselling service to help clients manage negative thoughts and emotions related to hearing loss, tinnitus, hyperacusis and vestibular conditions. Emma is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, researching ways to address mental health in adults with hearing loss. She is also a diagnostic and vestibular clinician and clinical educator at The University of Melbourne Audiology Clinic.




Jaime Leigh

Jaime Leigh, PhD, is a senior clinical and research audiologist who co-ordinates the Paediatric Cochlear Implant Program, Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital. Joining the Cochlear Implant Clinic in 2001, her clinical role involves supporting adults, children and their families through the pre and post-operative phases of the cochlear implantation process.  Jaime holds a Research Fellowship at the University of Melbourne and is passionate about research which directly influences clinical practice. Jaime has published in a diverse range of cochlear implant areas including; candidacy, speech and language outcomes, benefits of early implantation and management of patients receiving bilateral cochlear implants.




Lisa Singer

Lisa has Bachelor of Biomedical Science degree at Monash University and Masters of Clinical Audiology degree at the University of Melbourne. Lisa has over ten years of experience in Audiology, gaining valuable paediatric experience working at the  Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, Great Ormond Street Hospital in London before joining the Cochlear team working both within the Clinical Affairs team and the Sales team.


Adelaide



Nina Swiderski

Nina has worked in public health, private practice and clinical education since graduating from the University of Melbourne in 1995. Nina began working with cochlear implant recipients in 1996 while employed at the University of Melbourne and the Royal Victorian Eye & Ear Hospital and has been involved with hearing implant services in South Australia since 1998. Nina also has extensive experience in diagnostic audiology; has been a member of National and State-wide working groups; and has been an executive member of Audiology Australia (SA Branch). Nina is an inaugural member of the SACIC team, has recently completed a Master of Business Administration (MBA) and holds the position of Clinical Manager.


Sydney



Annemarie Lindner

Annemarie studied her Masters of Clinical Audiology at the University of Queensland. In 2016, she furthered  her studies and completed her Doctor of Audiology through the University of Florida. Throughout her audiology career Annemarie has worked for both Private and Government organisations before starting her own private clinic in 2019. Annemarie has a keen interest in assessing and managing tinnitus.




Emma Scanlan

Emma is Principal Audiologist for adults with complex needs at Hearing Australia. She has delivered clinical services in the paediatric and adult areas for many years, and manages policy and practice for adults. She has a particular interest in assisting clients who have severe and profound hearing loss, have poor communication ability, or have other impairments in addition to hearing loss. 
Emma is interested in improving communication outcomes and access to services for people who are Deaf or hearing impaired. She also has an interest in the hearing health of Aboriginal people living in remote communities. 




Jane Brew

Jane has been working as a clinical audiologist for SCIC for 20 years. As well as having a clinical caseload, Jane is involved in training new audiologists and developing clinical protocols for SCIC. She enjoys contributing to research projects and in implementation of innovative new developments in cochlear implant audiology in Australia and internationally. Jane has presented multiple research papers and workshops both around Australia and internationally during her career with SCIC. Jane is keen to share her understanding of how best to support clients when they reach a point where conventional aids are no longer meeting their hearing needs.




Michael Polkinghorne

Michael Polkinghorne is an audiologist, holding a Masters of Audiology and a Bachelor of Health Sciences from Flinders University. He has worked across diagnostic and rehabilitative settings over his 7 years in practice, where his work has taken him to regional and metropolitan locations. He has a focus on patient-centred care and cochlear implantation. He is a Clinical Account Manager at Cochlear, where his focus is on clinical support and product training, as well as educating non-CI and Baha clinicians on referral criteria and local referral pathways.




Nick Baulderstone

Nick is an audiologist with experience working with children and adults in Sydney, rural and remote Australia and the UK. His goal is to be a contributing member of a dynamic and innovative audiology industry, with a focus on patient centred practice. Nick currently works at the Cochlear Implant Program (Sydney Cochlear Implant Centre) at the Royal Institute of Deaf and Blind Children (RIDBC). In his current role Nick is responsible for providing cochlear implant services to the community.


Brisbane



Katie Ekberg

Dr Katie Ekberg is a Research Fellow in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at The University of Queensland. Her research focuses on the psychosocial issues related to hearing impairment and understanding and improving practices in audiology services for both adults and children. A key part of her research involves expanding the implementation of patient- and family-centred care in audiology clinical practice. She has specific expertise in the methodology of conversation analysis for analysing real-life, video-recorded social and clinical interaction.




Alexandra Kirkwood

Alexandra has held a clinical position with Neurosensory for six years specialising in diagnostic audiology, complex adult rehab and implants.  Alexandra loves the challenge of improving client outcomes, especially those with complex needs.  Alexandra took a locum year in 2019 to travel around Australia and had the pleasure of providing outreach work to indigenous populations with Northern Territory Health.   Alexandra studied her undergraduate degree in Biomedical Science with a Masters in Audiology at the University of Queensland.  




Vidya Raghavan

Vidya has a Doctor of Audiology degree from the USA and Bachelors and Masters degrees in Audiology and Speech Rehabilitation from India. She has nearly 20 years of experience as an audiologist working with Hearing Australia and National Hearing Care, predominantly in adult hearing rehabilitation. Training and education has been a significant part of the different positions she has held, including that of National Audiology Training Manager, and she has supervised and trained several audiologists and audiometrists over the years. Vidya has been with Cochlear ANZ for over 2 year and currently works as a Clinical Account Manager based in Brisbane supporting implanting clinics as well as supporting non implanting clinics with education and information around implantable solutions.




Bianca Monger

Bianca studied her undergraduate degree in Psychological Science and her Masters of Audiology at the University of Queensland. Prior to her current role, Bianca worked in rehabilitative audiology for seven years where she also supervised and trained clinicians. As a manager at Hearing Australia she supports clinicians to deliver services in paediatric, adult, and complex adult rehabilitation. Bianca is passionate about client-centred care and supporting clinicians to improve client outcomes.


Perth



Lisa Saulsman

Dr Lisa Saulsman is a registered clinical psychologist.  Lisa worked most of her career in public mental health at the Centre for Clinical Interventions (Perth), providing individual and group cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT) for people experiencing complex and enduring depressive and anxiety disorders. In addition to her clinical work, Lisa has been heavily involved in developing new CBT interventions, training mental health professionals in CBT, as well as authoring online CBT self-help resources covering numerous issues (i.e., worry, self-esteem, distress intolerance, self-compassion, procrastination, health anxiety, and body dysmorphia).  These popular online resources are freely available to consumers and clinicians alike. Lisa now holds the position of Senior Lecturer/Deputy Clinic Director (Robin Winkler Clinic), in the postgraduate clinical psychology program within the School of Psychological Science at the University of Western Australia. 




Sue Day

I did a Bachelor of Science BSc at UWA majoring in Psychology and Human Biology, then did the Audiology course at Melbourne University in 1983. 

I have worked for 36 years – the first 18 with NAL (Hearing Australia) in both WA and NT. I worked in various areas for them including paediatrics, complex adult services and Aboriginal services. I have always chosen to work as a clinical audiologist and enjoy adult rehabilitation audiology for the interaction with clients and their families. I have worked in private clinics for the past 18 years- in the NT and more recently for Lions Hearing in Nedlands. Each clinic brings different challenges- in remote Aboriginal communities the needs to gain an understanding of cultural differences is vital and with elderly clients- an understanding of the challenges of hearing impairment with other co-morbidities and inevitable challenges of aging and losing loved ones becomes very relevant.

In all these roles I have experienced many different challenges and am very aware of the need to feel confident in asking how clients are managing – not just with their hearing issues but overall. Audiology courses do offer training in the psychology of hearing loss and case studies can help provide a better  understanding of some of the psychological challenges that face both the clients and their family. But even after many years in a clinical role I can see the benefits of continually improving our skills in identifying and managing these challenges -including being able to identify and address the need for referral. I hope the future sees Audiologists working closely with psychologists and both fields providing formalised training to each other.




Andre Wedekind

Andre completed a Bachelor of Physiotherapy at Auckland University of Technology, working primarily in stroke and vascular rehab. He completed his Master of Clinical Audiology at the University of Western Australia where his final research thesis focused on different muscle sites for VEMPs. Andre is a senior clinical audiologist at Medical Audiology Services where he practises in the areas of hearing aid and implant rehabilitation and vestibular diagnostics. He is currently a PhD candidate with the School of Surgery at the University of Western Australia in the field of cortical plasticity in cochlear implantation for single sided deafness.




Siew-Moon Lim

Siew-Moon Lim is an experienced audiologist and is the clinical coordinator of Lions Hearing Clinic. Siew-Moon has worked as an audiologist for over 10 years, helping hundreds of people to hear better along the way. Her experience includes 2.5 years at Lions Hearing Clinic, and 2 years as the operations coordinator for the largest implant clinic in WA, the Ear Science Implant Clinic.




Azadeh Ebrahimi Madiseh

Azadeh is passionate about solving global healthcare problems, improving quality of service delivery, customer experience and promoting innovative culture in teams to challenge the status quo. Her 18-year long career has spanned a range of experiences in research with entrepreneurial mindset, clinical workload managing a broad range of portfolios and training and mentoring. Her current PhD studies is focused on improving adult cochlear implantation service delivery. She is interested in developing data-driven, customer-centric, integrated and sustainable solutions and digital technology to improve accessibility and affordability of healthcare. 




Dayse Távora-Vieira

Dr Dayse Távora-Vieira is Head of Audiology Department at the Fiona Stanley-Fremantle Hospital, and the Leader coordinator of the state-wide audiology services.  She completed her PhD on cochlear implant, unilateral deafness and brain plasticity at the School of Surgery, University of Western Australia and obtained her Doctorate at the University of Florida, USA. Dayse has ~20 years adult and paediatric audiology experience in different international frameworks including North America, South America, Europe and Australia. Dr Távora-Vieira has published ~40 papers in international peer-reviewed Journals while maintaining a full-time appointment as a senior lead clinician in the field of diagnostic and hearing rehabilitation. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia and Curtin University.