Speaker Bios:

Julie Letts has over 40 years’ experience in clinical, ethics and health policy roles. Much of her two decades in policy work focussed on ethics in clinical practice, especially in sensitive and complex areas like end of life, living and deceased organ and tissue donation, and developing clinical ethics services in the health system. In the NSW Ministry of Health, she worked as Principal Analyst in Clinical Ethics, then Manager, Clinical Ethics Unit in the Office of the Chief Health Officer, including establishment of the NSW Health Clinical Ethics Advisory Panel and on NSW and Commonwealth advisory groups. Beyond NSW Health, she worked as Director, Health Care Variation at the Australian Commission for Quality and Safety in Health Care and as Assistant Director, Policy with the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability. For several years, she ran a solo ethics advisory and policy support consulting service. More recently, she managed one of the major surge public health workforces during COVID and then the government review of the NSW COVID-19 public health response. In 2023, she established and is now Director, statewide NSW Voluntary Assisted Dying Support Service. She has a Masters’ degree in Bioethics and post-graduate qualification in ethics and public health.

Zahra Shahabi Kargar, Cancer Institute NSW, is a senior leader in healthcare analytics and reporting, with more than a decade of experience turning complex health data into meaningful insights that guide policy and improve health outcomes. She is the Senior Manager of Reporting and Intelligence at the Cancer Institute NSW, where she leads the development of major reporting platforms and advanced analytics initiatives that support state-wide cancer control, programs evaluation, and health system performance monitoring while also shaping the strategic direction of data and reporting to ensure alignment with future health system needs.

Zahra completed her PhD in Computer Science, specialising in artificial intelligence and optimisation for healthcare systems. She is passionate about bridging the gap between research and practice by building partnerships that enable evidence to translate into real-world impact. Zahra brings a perspective on how healthcare organisations work, what drives their priorities, and how researchers can engage effectively to create collaborations that last.

Prof Penny Sweeting, Macquarie University Hospital, is a Registered Nurse with extensive experience in clinical practice, education, and leadership. She is currently leading the development of a new nursing program at Macquarie University, reflecting her dedication to advancing nursing education. Her research interests are highly practical, focusing on quality and safety in healthcare and healthcare education.

Dist. Prof Wendy Rogers, MQ Ethics and Agency Research Centre is an internationally recognised bioethicist. Her wide-ranging research interests encompass feminist ethics, research ethics, surgical innovation, disease definition and overdiagnosis, transplant ethics, and ethics of emerging technologies (especially synthetic biology and AI). She is lead editor of the 2023 Routledge Handbook of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics and recipient of the 2022 International Association of Bioethics’ Award for Service in the Face of Challenges. Until recently Wendy was Co-Director of the Macquarie University Ethics and Agency Research Centre, and she is a CI in the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology where she leads the ethics node. Her voluntary work includes monitoring powerful owls and combatting transplant abuse in China.

Jo Vallance, Director of Nursing- MUH, RN, BN, GradCertNursMgmt, GradCertNIC, MBA, MACN, with over 25 years of experience in clinical nursing and executive hospital leadership. Integrate clinical expertise with executive management and strategic leadership to deliver sustainable hospital performance. Committed to nurse empowerment and person-centred care, drive cultural transformation, governance reform, and system improvements that enhance quality, safety, and workforce capability.

Jasmin McBride is a Paediatric Clinical Nurse Specialist Grade 2 at Macquarie University Hospital, an ECMO and CRRT nurse specialist with five years of specialised experience in paediatric intensive care at a quaternary referral centre for trauma, burns, and cardiac care. She co-led an international inagural Paediatric Cardiac Nursing Seminar in Fiji and is now focusing on building an evidence-based model of paediatric care for a growing service, using local demographic data to inform clinical innovation, education, and policy development.

Tatiana Aranovich is a PhD Researcher at the Macquarie Law School. She was a TGA intern in 2024, where developed a research report on transparency and explainability around AI-based medical devices - the inputs aim to inform revisions of TGA critical frameworks. Tatiana is a research assistant on the ARC Grant 'Generative AI and Creative Industries', a research advisor on the ARC Grant 'No to Black Box: Toward Transparent and Safe AI in Healthcare', a sessional teaching in 'Law and Technology', 'Contracts', and 'Torts', and a member of the student leadership team at Macquarie. With 16 years of extensive experience, including 8 years at the Brazilian Healthcare Regulatory Agency, Tatiana has honed a multidisciplinary approach in government across diverse sectors.

Inside the System: Understanding and Engaging with Healthcare Institutions