Chief Executive Officer
Carlie (Caroline) Atkinson is a Bundjalung and Yiman women and an accredited Social Worker with a PhD (Charles Darwin University, 2009). Associate Professor Atkinson is an international leader in complex and intergenerational trauma and strengths-based healing approaches in Indigenous Australia.
She has focused her career on the interplay between trauma and violence in Aboriginal peoples in Australia, has developed extensive community and practice-based experience through her collaborative co-designed resource development work, and developed Australia’s first adapted, culturally sensitive, reliable and valid Aboriginal trauma assessment measure. She is the CEO of her family organisation, We Al-li, designing and coordinating delivery of Culturally Informed Trauma Integrated Healing Approaches (CITIHA) training and resource development for organisations and communities across Australia focusing on systems transformation and implementation.
She also leads We Al-li’s effort in partnership with Griffith University to embed CITIHA into the curriculum. Associate Professor Atkinson is regularly invited to participate in policy and other high-level meetings for government and non-government organisations. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne and CI on the NHMRC funded Healing the Past by Nurturing the Future project and the MRFF funded Replanting the Birthing Trees Project.
- Bachelor of Social Work at the University of South Australia
- Senior Lecturer at Gnibi College of Indigenous Australian Peoples
- Course Co-ordinator of the Master of Indigenous Studies (Wellbeing) and the Diploma of Community Recovery at the Southern Cross University
- CEO of Indigenous Organisation We Al-li
