On Our Own Terms: Emerging Insights

On Our Own Terms: Emerging Insights is a research report from a national Australian inquiry into Lived Experience Leadership, convened by Morgan Cataldo in collaboration with RMIT University and funded by the Paul Ramsay Foundation. It is based on in-depth conversations with ten leaders from across Australia, conducted between 2023 and 2025. The report draws a clear distinction between lived experience as something a person holds, and Lived Experience as a capitalised term for a recognised professional discipline with its own knowledge base and practice.

The report presents ten key insights drawn from those conversations. Leaders describe a strong orientation towards full-scale systems change, not incremental reform. They move fluidly between working within institutions and building community-led movements, and many hold deep ambivalence about how the term "lived experience" is used within institutional settings, noting a risk that it reduces complex expertise to personal story.

The report is candid about the personal costs this leadership carries, including burnout, harm and the emotional weight of engaging with systems that have previously caused damage. It also surfaces what sustains leaders: peer connection, community, and a shared commitment to collective movement building. Alongside the challenges, the report documents growing power and possibility within the field.

The report is most relevant to Lived Experience practitioners, social sector leaders, allied organisations, funders and policymakers who engage with or seek to support this form of leadership.