“Women deserve more than just to survive. We need to lift the bar.”
Be Bold and Lift the Bar
Diana Connell · Lived Experience Advocate & Ambassador, McAuley CSW and Global Sisters
About this episode
In this special episode, Matt and Tenille speak with Diana Connell — lived experience advocate and Ambassador for McAuley Community Services for Women and Global Sisters. Diana shares her story of surviving two decades of family violence and walks us through what genuine co-design with lived experience looks like in practice — multiple seats at the table, fair pay, trauma-informed practice, and the willingness to actually change things. It's a generous and urgent conversation about dignity, the interconnection of family violence, housing and economic security, and what it takes to lift the bar so women don't just survive.
Key takeaways
Lived experience and co-design belong together
Lived experience brings the truth of what it's actually like to navigate these systems. When it sits equally alongside professional knowledge and policy expertise, we stop going in circles and start making real change.
The crises are deeply interlinked
Stepping out of family violence often means stepping straight into a housing crisis — and then an economic one. Programs that focus on only one piece of the puzzle miss how tightly these issues are tied together.
One seat at the table is never enough
A single lived experience representative flattens the diversity of experience into a monolith. Multiple seats — across different backgrounds, identities and stories — make space for the truth that no one voice can carry on its own.
Pay people for their lived experience — then pay them more
Lived experience is expertise. Treating it as a tick-box or under-valuing it financially reinforces the very inequities the work is trying to address. Diana's rule of thumb: whatever you think is fair, add more.
Listening must lead to acting
Listening is the starting point, not the destination. Genuine practice means being willing to change things based on what you hear — including being honest about where the system isn't working.
Lift the bar, slow down, build together
Diana's closing message is that we've set the bar too low across family violence, housing and economic security. The work calls for boldness, patience, and the willingness to build something incredible — together.
Topics covered
- Lived experience
- Family violence
- Homelessness
- Economic security
- Co-design
- Systems change
- Advocacy