Our staff

Ro (Phoenix) Bersten

xe/xyr | managing director

Ro is a queer Jewish autistic person with ADHD. Xe has been an activist and communications strategist for more than 20 years. Xyr most recent publication was the Pride in Prevention Messaging Guide in collaboration with Rainbow Health Australia. Ro lives on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation.

ro@intertwine.org.au

Ulysses Thomas

they/them | casual trainer

Ulysses is a queer Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander person from the Bwgcolman community on Palm Island. Ulysses creates and facilitates supportive networks and programs for queer BIPOC people. Ulysses lives on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation.

ulysses@intertwine.org.au

Toyo White

he/they | project officer, ROAR

Toyo is a dedicated, energised, youth advocate with a background in activism, student unionism, the community sector, and academic study.

Toyo is also a final-year Monash University student studying Governance and Sustainability.

toyo@intertwine.org.au

Shabnam Hameed

she/they | trainer

Shabnam is a gender and employment specialist with technical expertise in supporting organisations in developing countries to address gender-based violence and gender inequality through building partnerships, undertaking business case research, providing advisory services, and creating tools.

shabnam@intertwine.org.au

Jupiter Haehn

they/them | technologist

Jupiter is a queer, AuDHD technologist with a background in games, fashion, and not sitting still. They immigrated to Australia for the coffee and found the tech community here much more inviting. Originally from Seattle, they love board games and making technology easier to use.

Rafeif Ismail

she/her | casual trainer

Rafeif is a writer and poet. She is a third-culture child of the Sudanese diaspora, the current managing director of Djed Press and co-editor of Unlimited Futures: Speculative, Visionary Blak+Black Fiction.

Moirra Cohen

xe/xyr | project assistant & casual trainer

Moirra is a Yorta Yorta, Boon Wurrung, Jewish, and queer transsexual self-taught writer, poet, and artist living in Naarm. Xe believes in writing as a revolutionary tool that holds the power to champion the voices of marginalised peoples, challenge the status quo of oppressive colonial systems, and imagine a just and liberatory future for us all.

moirra@intertwine.org.au

Our governance team

Rose Durey

she/her | board member, secretary of the board

Rose is committed to making gender equality a reality through social and systems change. She has been Manager, Strategy and Programs at Women’s Health Grampians, in Western Victoria, since 2019. Rose has previously worked for the Victorian Department of Health, Women’s Health Victoria and the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, in roles that have spanned health promotion, advocacy and social policy.

Jane Chen

She/her | board member

Jane Chen (she/her) is the daughter of Hokkien-Chinese immigrants, born and raised as a settler on unceded Wurundjeri lands. As a social policy scholar-practitioner-activist, her work broadly focuses on understanding and dismantling structural drivers of complex social inequalities. She is currently writing a PhD thesis on how intersectionality is being understood, embedded into process and otherwise applied by public policymakers in so-called Australia.

Tim Hollo

he/they | board member, public fund management committee

Tim is currently working on a PhD. Tim was previously Executive Director of the Green Institute and also Communications Director for Greens Leader Christine Milne. He has been a board member of Greenpeace Australia Pacific, Green Music Australia (current), the Young Music Society (ACT), and Manuka Occasional Childcare Association.

Tim’s book, Living Democracy: An Ecological Manifesto For The End Of The World As We Know It, was published in 2022.