Bachelor of Arts (Honours)
Master of Business Administration
Graduate Diploma Teaching (Early Childhood)
Doctor of Philosophy (ongoing)
Registered Teacher (EC) – VIT
Rachel began her career in public policy drawn to the idea that thoughtful, collaborative system design can create genuinely better lives for people. After several years in education policy, she moved into early childhood and found the complexity and importance of the work more engaging than she had imagined possible.
Since then, Rachel has sought out as many perspectives on early childhood education as she can – through policy, research, teaching, and direct practice. Career highlights include supporting the writers of the first national Early Years Learning Framework as a junior bureaucrat, and later leading the development of the first Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework. Both experiences – learning from expert academics and speaking with hundreds of early childhood teachers about their practice – remain defining moments in her professional development.
Rachel completed her own teaching qualification, taught teacher candidates at the University of Melbourne, and led her own learning programs for children across a range of Melbourne settings. She now divides her time between consulting, writing, and research. She is undertaking doctoral research which focuses on ways which children can be more meaningfully involved in decisions about early childhood education and is part of a multidisciplinary research team and collaborates with colleagues internationally through the Childism Institute.
Today, Rachel loves advocating for neuroaffirming education on behalf of children and their families, and providing advice on neuroaffirming learning programs and environments to schools, events, organisations, and government. She is especially energised when people share how their collaborations with children have made their work better for children, and more enjoyable for all the professionals who work with young children.
Bachelor of Education (Birth to Year 6)
Master of Education (Inclusion and Diversity) – Ongoing
Certificate IV Training and Assessment
Registered Non-Practicing Teacher (EC and Primary) – VIT
Sonja has completed a Masters of Teaching at the University of Melbourne and has worked in the Early Childhood field for over 10 years. Her work spans across stand-alone and integrated EC settings as well as leading education programs for children with complex medical conditions at The Royal Children’s Hospital. Sonja is a calm, caring, creative thinker. She has provided EC perspectives in diverse multi-disciplinary teams including psychologists, social workers and occupational therapists in order to design and implement whole-team, whole-child interventions. She has designed and facilitated EC teacher training in marginalised communities and presented in various contexts including conferences and tertiary education institutes. She combines theoretical knowledge and her lived experience to generate creative ideas and solutions that are tailored to a specific context. Sonja has a particular interest in at-risk children and families and implementing trauma-informed practices to listen to and believe children’s perspectives. She particularly enjoys collaborating with teachers on how to best support children and families while building connections with ourselves.
Some of Sonja’s other areas of interest include:
When she’s not working, you’ll often find Sonja learning life lessons in her garden. She is still in awe that seeds, given the right conditions, can sprout and bloom into the most beautiful self that they were meant to be.
Bachelor of Education (Birth to Year 6)
Master of Education (Inclusion and Diversity) – Ongoing
Certificate IV Training and Assessment
VIT Registered Non-Practicing Teacher
Tiffany has over 15 years of experience working within the early years sector. Having started this career path as a volunteer in a long day care service, Tiffany has explored many opportunities to continue to build and strengthen practice working with and advocating for young children. Hand in hand with this is a passion for continuous learning and research both formally and informally.
Tiffany’s lived experience, both personally and professionally has led to a focus on developing opportunities for all children to be heard and seen within early childhood services, focusing on affirming and individualising inclusive practices. Every child is unique and arrives in our care with their own story. These stories are a part of the child and need to be understood and embedded into the way we work with the child and their family. Through these experiences, Tiffany has recognised that creating communities of support for children is at the heart of her practice. When children feel a deep sense of safety and belonging they can express their true self, celebrating and embracing their own story.
With Ethical Interactions, Tiffany is able to walk alongside educational teams as they explore different perspectives and approaches to early education. By walking alongside, she is able to collaborate and provoke thinking to build service and child specific ideas/practices/strategies. Focused on developing sustainable change through these collaborations, Tiffany looks to support the small steps, shifting change slowly with long term impact. Every educational team works differently, and this approach looks to strengthen practice, not replace it.
Bachelor of Teaching (Primary)
Bachelor of Arts (Sociology)
Registered Teacher (Primary) – VIT
Fiona began her career with a strong interest in inclusive, inquiry-driven learning and was drawn to educational environments where children’s diverse ways of seeing and engaging with the world could be genuinely understood. After completing her teaching degree, she spent more than six years living and teaching overseas in the UK and Italy before returning to Australia. Much of her practice has been within the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme, where she strengthened her belief that meaningful learning emerges from curiosity, relationships and deeply listening to children.
As a late-diagnosed AuDHD parent of two neurodivergent children, Fiona’s professional approach is grounded in lived experience and long-standing advocacy for access, equity and participation. This perspective underpins her work leading Ethical Interactions’ sensory space projects as the co-creator and project lead of My Sensory Space. Supported by her team, she designs and delivers responsive, purpose-built environments that support people who thrive outside typical sensory settings, working closely with communities to centre sensory accessibility as an essential part of inclusion rather than an optional add-on.
Within Ethical Interactions, Fiona also contributes to neurodiversity-affirming and LGBTQIA+ professional learning content, supports program and environment design, and coordinates service communication and operational processes. She enjoys collaborating with teams to create environments and interactions that honour children’s perspectives and enable them to feel understood, respected and able to express their ideas in their own ways.
Fiona brings a relational, strengths-based approach shaped by both her professional experience and her own family’s journey, holding a deep commitment to ensuring that every child, and every adult, can participate in ways that feel authentic, safe and meaningful.
Bachelor of Science (Psychology)
Grad Dip. Therapeutic Arts Practice
Cert III Early Childhood Education & Care
Taila is drawn to the places where care, creativity, and research intersect, and brings this orientation to everything she does at Ethical Interactions. Across program management, communications, content development, and sensory space projects, she works to make ideas accessible, useful, and grounded in practice.
With a background in infant and toddler education, Taila has a particular interest in relational pedagogy and the ways very young children communicate, know, and lead their own learning. She is passionate about under-three education and the practices that help infants and toddlers feel seen, safe, and genuinely heard.
Outside of her EI work, Taila and her labradoodle Poppy are a certified therapy dog team, providing emotional literacy sessions in schools and community settings.
