Jay grew up in regional New South Wales, chasing adventure and opportunity wherever she could find it. That included plenty of public speaking, earning a student pilot’s licence at 16, and travelling to South Korea and Finland as an exchange student.

Shaped by intergenerational trauma, she left home and quit high school at 18, then married young before moving to Canberra to study at the Australian National University — the first of her three degrees.

Jay has worked as an intelligence analyst, foreign policy director, senior advisor to ACT Minister Emma Davidson, and diplomat. Over her career, she’s engaged with figures including the Prime Minister, the Governor-General, and the Australian of the Year.

She’s also lived with the profound challenges of psoriatic arthritis and
post traumatic stress disorder. Her lived experience and compassion for vulnerable people have shaped her work in inclusion and diversity, helping to develop policy for veterans, people in the criminal justice system, carers, those with mental health challenges, and communities recovering from disaster.

Today, alongside her public service work, Jay is a lived experience speaker for Beyond Blue, a keynote speaker, and a writer sharing personal insights into mental illness and Australia’s mental health system.

She still lives in Canberra, where she spends far too much time thinking about baked goods.