Meet Morgan Cataldo
This work is deeply personal for me.
I don’t come to it with only theoretical expertise but as someone with intimate lived and living experience of my own. As someone who moved through service systems from a young age, I personally understand the importance of engaging ethically with those who are affected by systems and structures to imagine more just and impactful offerings.
Drawing from my experiences and moral compass in my work keeps me real, vulnerable and anchored in my humility. It keeps me asking:
- How do I help create opportunities, services and offerings where people have a path in front of them that makes sense in their own unique context?
- How can I support others to learn what I had to without the harm attached, and through knowing how to effectively advocate for their own and others’ rights?
We must prioritise dignity, and value lived and living experience as a valid way of ‘knowing’.
I am dedicated to developing and advocating for participatory practice and peer education as essential levers for creating true, lasting, power shifting change.
I have over 15 years of personal and professional expertise collaborating with individuals, communities and organisations to reimagine the role those who experience systematic exclusion play in social change.
I’m particularly interested in how incorporating the lived and living experiences of those whose voices aren’t traditionally heard can – and does – affect and create deep and lasting ripples of transformative change.
I advise, coach and consult with organisations
both in Australia and internationally. These organisations seek to understand the role of power in their everyday work, and how they can design and shape more equitable and integral policies, programs and services through partnering with people with lived and living experience relevant to their purpose.
I am also passionate about coaching, supporting and investing in the next generation of lived experience and community leaders, and building the confidence and competency of those who wish to be more effective allies for participatory approaches within their teams and organisations.
Qualifications & professional recognition
Morgan holds a degree in Social Science and is a Visiting Fellow at RMIT University School of Global, Urban and Social Studies.
- Winner of the ‘Modelling a Generous Community’ award through the 2021 Victorian Protecting Children Awards
- Shortlisted as 1 of 150 social innovators across Australia in Pro Bono Australia’s 2020 Impact 25 Awards
- Selected in 2019 as 1 of 21 young women in Victoria for the Inaugural Joan Kirner Emerging Leaders Program.
“I came to theory because I was hurting—the pain within me was so intense that I could not go on living. I came to theory desperate, wanting to comprehend—to grasp what was happening around and within me. Most importantly, I wanted to make the hurt go away. I saw in theory then a location for healing.”
– bell hooks
