John is the Lead Mental Health Commissioner within South Australia and joins his fellow commissioners Heather Nowak and David Kelly, focusing upon the vison to strengthen the mental health and wellbeing of all South Australians.

John Mannion is also the inaugural Executive Director of Breakthrough Mental Health Research Foundation – Australia’s only foundation dedicated solely to investing into mental health research, within the areas of youth mental health, depression, indigenous mental health and eating disorders.

John’s career in mental health has spanned more than 30 years including as a practitioner as well as leading mental health services across the state.

He has a passion for community connectivity, suicide prevention and evidence-based interventions.

David Kelly is one of the South Australia’s Mental Health Commissioners. He is an experienced program manager, service designer and community researcher with a thirty year commitment to working with disadvantaged communities to improve wellbeing and mental health outcomes. From 2014-2019, David led the development of community, ageing and youth resilience projects within the SAHMRI Wellbeing and Resilience Centre.

In the not-for-profit sector, in government and in his own business he has achieved national recognition for creativity and innovation in community and youth development and wellbeing and resilience programming. His success is based on the deeply held belief that communities change for the better when citizens of all ages are active and empowered participants in community development processes rather than passive consumers of services.

Sarah is a Matthew Flinders Fellow at Flinders University, situated within the Flinders Institute for Mental Health and Wellbeing, College of Education, Psychology, and Social Work.

She completed her PhD in 2008 at Kings College London, and after completing a post-doc moved to Adelaide in 2012.

In 2016 Sarah established the Behavioural Genomic and Environmental Mechanisms lab where her group investigates genetic factors in eating disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, and even every day cognition and thinking. Her work centres on the nexus between our genes and environment, understanding how they interact to alter our outcomes with a focus on epigenetics and how this is influenced by external factors across the life-cycle – from conception to old age.

Steve is the Executive Manager for Youth Services at Sonder and a Clinical Psychologist by background.

He has worked in the mental health sector for over 20 years in a range of different roles both in direct service provision and leadership/management.

Steve drives the strategic leadership, direction and executive-level operational oversight of the youth services portfolio at Sonder. Sonder is a large not for profit that is the lead agency of headspace Edinburgh North, Onkaparinga, Adelaide and Marion.

Underpinning Steve’s commitment to youth mental health is a drive to reduce the lives lost to suicide each year in young people, and to ensure that young people, regardless of sociodemographic background, have the ability to obtain high quality, youth-focused mental health support in a manner which best meets their needs.

Jessica Morgan is a social worker with over 10 years’ experience of working in suicide prevention and postvention, to reduce the rates of youth suicide and improve mental health outcomes among Australian students and their community. Having been a longstanding member of the headspace Schools & Communities team, Jessica has played a key role in strengthening headspace’s knowledge of the key elements of effective postvention support to education settings, and communities. Jessica’s current role as Program Manager for headspace’s University Support Program complements the broader headspace Schools & Communities programs and holds a strong focus on building the capacity of the higher education sector to support the mental health outcomes of students and staff by providing training and bespoke service delivery, including suicide postvention, that is contextualised to the setting. 

Jessica is a strong advocate for promoting the use of consistent language and understandings of mental health, and a stronger focus on empowering individuals to identify the active role they can play in supporting their own mental health and the mental health and wellbeing of those around them. 

Jessica’s personal and professional goal for 2022 is to harness the opportunities that exist each day, to exercise self-care and finding balance.