ADCET Webinar: ECU Inclusive Employability - Intentional action for equitable employment outcomes

Thu 4 Sep 2025 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm AEST

Online

Event details

Edith Cowan University Professor Justin Brown, and Inclusive Employability Officers, Emma Lovegrove and Denise Bertilone, have led the development of a suite of initiatives that support university students with disability in their transition to employment. The Inclusive Employability Project is a strategic initiative that sits within the University’s newly formed Centre for Employability, intending to ensure that work-integrated learning (WIL) and employment opportunities are accessible, fair, and supportive of all students.

Australian data highlights persistent employment disparities for people with disability, despite increased higher education participation. The ECU approach addresses this through a holistic strategy that foregrounds lived experiences whilst creating systemic change.

The project is shaped around four foundational pillars:

• Student enablement and inclusion
• Policy positioning
• Capacity-building for ECU staff
• Fostering inclusive employers

Through these pillars, the Project aims to ensure that students with disability are empowered through inclusive career development learning (CDL) and WIL experiences, that Policy is written with a lens of inclusive practice, that staff are supported to understand and deliver inclusive WIL and CDL resources, and that this approach is extended to ECU employer partners.

The team adopt co-design methods to explore the challenges and opportunities faced by students and staff for inclusive transitions to employment and work placements. Work-based WIL is an important enabler for graduate employment transition success, and yet QILT GOS data has shown that students with disability are less likely to participate in non-mandatory WIL opportunities.

Join us with the ECU Inclusive Employability team as they share insights and examples of work that is being undertaken under each of the pillars and talk about how this can contribute to changing the landscape of disability employment success for students with disability. The webinar will include snippets of Student and Graduate stories from the workplace, co-created for the Project.

Audience: Equity, disability and careers practitioners, educators in the WIL space and leaders in the higher education setting, interested in advancing inclusive employability through in-curricular and extra-curricular activities.

Presenters

Justin Brown is a Professor of Learning Innovation and the Interim Director of the Centre for Employability at Edith Cowan University, Australia.  Justin has used a wheelchair for mobility since childhood and has built an academic career that combines discipline expertise in information science, teaching and learning leadership and advocacy for people with lived experience of disability. The focus on inclusive employability at ECU challenges stereotypical perceptions of disability versus capability, seeking to empower all students on their employment journey and create an informed and respectful discourse with our stakeholders in industry and government.

Emma Lovegrove is a careers and employment professional with 15 years of experience in recruitment, the disability sector, and tertiary education. As an Inclusive Employability Officer at Edith Cowan University, Emma cultivates inclusive career development learning and employment opportunities for students. Emma’s past achievements include leading on-campus and external jobs programs and developing tailored career development learning resources for students with neurodivergent conditions. Emma holds a BSc. Anthropology Hons. and a Graduate Certificate in Careers Education & Development.

Denise Bertilone is a proud woman with a disability who uses adaptive technologies in the workplace such as screen reader software. Her lived experience of low vision motivates her to advocate for greater equity and inclusion. She works at ECU as an Inclusive Employability Officer, and an Equity Projects Coordinator, and is also a graduate of ECU with a Bachelor of Arts.

The webinar is free to attend, and it will be live-captioned.

Registrations for this webinar are now open

ADCET is hosted by the University of Tasmania

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