Expert international panel to launch global Orygen initiative

21 June 2021

Youth mental health experts from around the world are preparing to introduce Orygen’s new international project to a global audience in July.

The distinguished panel will feature in a free webinar about the future of youth mental health to mark the launch of Orygen Global on Thursday, 8 July.

Orygen Global has been established to partner with communities to design, implement and evaluate youth mental health services that make sense in their contexts, and to elevate the importance of youth mental health on national, regional and global agendas.

The webinar will be held at two different times to accommodate international time zones and panellists will vary between sessions.

Our panellists

Nataya Branjerdporn
Australia
Nataya is a lived experience youth mental health advocate and child and youth mental health clinician in remote Queensland. She is the Brisbane lead for the Global Shapers Community, a World Economic Forum (WEF) initiative, and co-founder of the Orygen Global Youth Advocacy Fellowship.

Vivienne Browne
Australia
Vivienne is Principal Adviser, Government Relations and Policy at Orygen. She has worked in policy development, project management and program delivery in state government, local government and the community sector for more than 15 years.

Aviwe Funani
South Africa
Aviwe is an advocate for mental health, racial inclusion and gender parity. She is Programme, Policy and Advocacy Manager for Waves for Change, an innovative mental health surf therapy organisation in South Africa, and the outgoing curator of the Global Shapers Community hub in Cape Town.

Professor Helen Herrman
Australia
Helen was President of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) from 2017 to 2020 and is Director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre in Mental Health, Melbourne. She is Professor of Psychiatry at Orygen, and The University of Melbourne. A member of The Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health and Sustainable Development, Helen was co-chair for the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Technology for Mental Health 2019-20.

Craig Hodges
Australia
The Director of Orygen Global, Craig is responsible for implementing Orygen’s global strategy, which builds on the success of Orygen’s partnership with the World Economic Forum (WEF) in developing a global youth mental health framework, which Craig led while on secondment to the WEF in Geneva. He has held executive leadership roles in Australia and internationally for over 20 years.

Dr Christian Kieling
Brazil
Christian is Associate Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at the School of Medicine, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). He directs the Child & Adolescent Depression Program (ProDIA) at the Hospital de Clinicas de Porto Alegre (HCPA), Brazil, co-leads the Identifying Depression Early in Adolescence (IDEA) consortium, and is a UK Academy of Medical Sciences Newton Advanced Fellow.

Professor Eóin Killackey
Australia
Eóin is a clinical psychologist and director of research and head of the functional recovery research program at Orygen. His research is primarily in functional recovery, focussed on finding better ways to help young people with mental illness in relation to education, employment and physical health.

Sarah Kline
United Kingdom
Sarah is co-founder and interim CEO of United for Global Mental Health, a UK-based global mental health charity. From 2011 to 2017 she worked at the World Health Organisation in a variety of positions focused on polio eradication, and public health emergencies including the 2014 Ebola outbreak.

Professor Patrick McGorry
Australia
The executive director of Orygen, Pat is a psychiatrist known world-wide for his development and scaling up of early intervention and youth mental health services and for mental health innovation, advocacy and reform. He is Professor of Youth Mental Health at the University of Melbourne and has played a key advocacy and advisory role to government and health system reform in Australia and in many parts of the world.

Maddison O’Grady-Lee
Australia
Maddison is a lived experience advocate and psychology PhD candidate passionate about improving youth mental health outcomes. She is co-founder of the Orygen Global Youth Advocacy Fellowship.

Priya Prakash
India
Priya is an entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of HealthSetGo, India's leading healthcare organisation for schools. She is the founding curator of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Community hub in Gurugram.

Isabella Quagliato Nogueira
Brazil
A psychologist and mental health advocate, Isabella is co-founder of IFMM, a non-profit focused on youth development and engagement through skill-based volunteering. She is a youth advisor at Orygen Global and a member of the advisory council for the Global Shapers Community.

Zsofia Szlamka
Hungary
Zsofia is a developmental psychologist and founder of well-being platform, AMKA Counselling. She is a PhD Candidate at King’s College London, investigating health inequalities, service development and empowerment of families raising children with developmental disorders in Ethiopia and in Argentina. She is the curator of the Global Shapers Community hub in Cambridge.

Peter Varnum
Norway
The Associate Director of Orygen Global, Peter built and led the World Economic Forum's work on global mental health, executing global-scale projects and developing multisectoral communities focused on mental health and youth, technology and the workplace. He chairs the board of The Stability Network and serves on the Lived Experience Council for the Healthy Brains Global Initiative.

Event dates and times

10–11am, 8 July, Melbourne (9-10pm, 7 July, Rio de Janeiro; 5-6pm, 7 July, Vancouver). Check your local time zone here.
9–10pm, 8 July, Melbourne (4.30-5.30pm, 8 July, New Delhi; 1-2pm, 8 July, Cape Town, Paris; 7-8am, 8 July, New York). Check your local time zone here.

2021