Chief Executive Officer, Advocacy for Inclusion

Christina Ryan is a non-profit governance & management specialist with particular expertise in embedding ethical frameworks across organisational structures & culture. She is a transformational leader and high level strategic thinker and has assisted many non-profits to develop strategic plans.

Christina is a noted innovator, using design thinking and collaboration to build new approaches that have been utilised on the many government advisory bodies for women, disability & the community sector she has been involved with. She has been chair and deputy-chair on numerous non-profit boards.

Christina provides peer consultancy on change management, human rights, human resources, good practice governance & management, and recruiting & retaining people with disabilities.

Christina builds strong teams & culture With a reputation for consumer engagement & creating meaningful connections with the most disadvantaged & marginalised people with disabilities. Her leadership has contributed to Advocacy for Inclusion becoming a leading disability rights organisation embedding the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

She has been a member of Women with Disabilities Australia (WWDA) for 20 years & pioneered the use of mainstream forums by women with disabilities at the United Nations. She now mentors rights activists globally in effective use of the UN.

Christina represented WWDA on Australia’s NGO delegation to CEDAW & was a member of the official Australian Delegation to UN CSW55, succeeding in having language about multiple disadvantage & intersectionality included for the first time. At the 2012 International Conference on Women with Disability in Madrid Christina delivered the keynote on WWDA’s campaign to end forced sterilisation.

In 2013 Christina was acknowledged as one of 100 women of the Canberra Centenary. She was a finalist in the 2014 ACT Telstra Businesswomen’s Awards, and was awarded the Lifetime Achievement in Inclusion at the 2015 ACT Chief Minister’s Inclusion Awards.