Riki has a vision impairment due to a birth injury. She attended a regular school where she completed VCE. Moving to adulthood, she faces many challenges in getting paid employment despite having years of experience through volunteering with Grit Media (a disability organisation that produce No Limits on C31) and Peer Support work at Yooralla.

Riki is also involved with Social Impact, a dating program for people with disabilities as a mentor to other participants after completing the program as Grit Media’s feature participant. Riki also is associated with Women with Disability Victoria, Australians for Disability Diversity Employment (ADDE), Vision Australia, and on the State Advisory Committee of Blind Citizens Australia (BCA) among other organisations. Riki is also working with Hume Metro Access in establishing a Hume Disability Issues Group, (HDIG).

To increase her employability Riki has completed the Leadership Plus program at RMIT and has continued with the Diploma of Community Development. She saw the diploma as an opportunity for her to extend her knowledge about disability employment in Australia and hopefully contribute in making healthy changes in this area.

Riki’s presentations raise awareness about the numerous challenges faced by people with disability throughout their life whether it is education, employment, public transport, independent living or simply being able to access and participate in the community.