So now I would like to introduce, to everybody Matt Tice. So, Matt, Matt Tice is our ADHD Australia chair. Welcome, Matt. So Matt is a has proven experience as a CEO, managing director with a strong track record in delivering results. He's an expert in strategy and innovation. His working experience in North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Australia has delivered billions of dollars of economic value and significant social impact. Matthew brings all of these talents to us here in Australia. He also as well celebrates these talents and supports us within the ADHD community to be able to continue to strive for making a difference. His passion to the lives of individuals with ADHD is outstanding.

Thank you, Matt, for being our chair within ADHD Australia. And I thank you so much for everything that you give to me personally as a CEO and for your support to me as an individual that is a proud individual with ADHD and to help me to succeed in having those voices to be able to celebrate what we do to make a big difference to the lives of individuals with ADHD. And now I'm gonna hand across to our chair, Matt Tyson.

Thanks, Mel, and it's great to see you this morning. And first, I'd like to call out the amount of work that went into this this effort. And Henry and the team, our team, and literally dozens of other people working around the clock for the last month to bring this together to share voices and stories and experience in this in this area around the world has been nothing short of amazing. And so, Henry, thank you for for inviting us at ADHD Australia and participating in this wonderful program. And and, Mel, thank you. And in particular, I'd like to call out Christie for, all of your hard work in on our end to bring this all together. I'd like to thank our volunteers. I'd like to thank our community. I'd like to thank ADHD w WA for.

For agreeing to participate. And I'd like to thank, what I understand is, almost 5,700 people for joining the program today from 96 countries. So, this is the kickoff for ADHD awareness month here in Australia and globally, and it's a really important time for us all to stand back and reflect on not only what's been accomplished over the last twelve months, but, really, our challenge ahead to bring the community together to continue to make Australia a better place for people living with ADHD. And that's that's an ongoing challenge and an ongoing journey for all of us, and we must do it together. So at ADHD Australia, our job really fundamentally is to help build the capacity to support the people.

On the ground that are helping people with ADHD. And we're really focused on a number of key areas, which will be reflected in today's program. In particular, you'll hear about ADHD in the workplace and how, you know, stories about inclusiveness, stories about work experience and discrimination, and how that works in with individuals with ADHD in the workplace, but also from a point of view of employers. So that's gonna be terrific. We also have a great section today, on parents, which will, we'll hear the voices of of many people bringing their stories to to the, to the conference. We'll also hear a view from a couple of our board members with a clinical perspective. We'll hear from we'll hear about education and some breaking.

Breaking news around some research that's been, that's been conducted with OLT and Macquarie University in collaboration with ADHD Australia and others. We'll have an opportunity to hear from Jordan Steel John later this afternoon with, his perspectives on the senate inquiry, which is sort of a landmark, a landmark project to help raise awareness across Australia and more more broadly around the importance of funding ADHD and really mainstreaming ADHD as a condition that, that deserves attention from point of view of our policymakers. So that's a a terrific really terrific opportunity to to hear from senator Jordan Steele John. And in many ways, this has been a a landmark year for ADHD in Australia. I think coming out of COVID, we've seen.

Almost a realization that ADHD is now a a really important and significant, health challenge for, many people in Australia. Up to five percent of people in Australia have, are affected by ADHD, and and that means that many of your coworkers, no doubt people that that you're interacting with on a day to day basis can be can be really struggling or on the other hand can bring, you know, can bring their stories and their innovation and creativity to to the forefront and by looking at the world in a different way. So we talk about ADHD as as much as an opportunity as a condition and the opportunities for us to work together as a community with policymakers, with educators, with parents and carers, with the justice system.

And all the different stakeholders around Australia to really galvanize support for this community is is extremely important. And ADHD awareness month is well, it's a month, we celebrate ADHD during this month, and we bring together programs like this to communicate the importance of ADHD and the importance of supporting the community. We really need to be thinking about this all year round, and we need to be working we need to be working harder to to to bring funding and to re and to bring resources to this community. Now I wanna just take a moment to reflect on this year behind us as we come into what really is our landmark moment in the in 2023.

With ADHD awareness month. And I'd like to say at ADHD Australia, we've made a lot of progress in helping to start really ramp up the capacity of the national structure to help support people with ADHD in Australia in particular. And many things that we're doing in particular, we have three major program areas that, that we're investing a tremendous amount of time and resource into. First is ADHD in the workplace, and that's really designed to help individuals with ADHD navigate, employment and how they enter the workplace, how they successfully navigate everyday living with in a in a job setting. And and fundamentally, on the flip side of that is how employers can support individuals with ADHD.

Both from a point of view of providing infrastructure to help them succeed, but but also helping their peers to better, better understand how people with ADHD navigate the work for work workplace and how they engage with their peers in in the workplace settings. So we're doing a lot of work in this particular area to help really enhance the value for individuals with ADHD in the workplace and help employers to better support our community with ADHD. The second big area that we're focused on at ADHD Australia is to better support parents and carers and those who support parents and carers. It's a it's a real challenge in a sense that often it's difficult to find the information that you need. It's difficult to find access.

To that information. It's difficult to understand what's true and what's not true. And, of course, everyday living can be can be a challenge, and we aspire to better supporting parents and carers to, to give the support that they need to our community in, at large and in particular in disadvantaged communities as well. Another key area of our focus is is really to amp up the support for educators, in particular, in primary and secondary classrooms, but also in tertiary and as people are, aspiring to leave the education system and transition into work. It's a really key area that that needs additional focus and funding.

So, again, we're we're ramping up our our resources and efforts in these areas, and and Mel and the team are doing a terrific job sort of driving that work. And, additionally, I'd like to call out our community colleagues in other parts of the ADHD ecosystem in Australia. We have a a very open policy. We wanna all be working together to to help support this community, and I hope that ADHD awareness month, provides an opportunity to us for for all for all of us to reflect a little bit on what that really means in terms of working together and participating as, participating as a community, as an ecosystem.

To support the wider community. So I'd call out our friends and colleagues in the many organizations that support and do wonderful work for the ADHD community to put more effort into working together to helping our community collectively. And I think those are some big opportunities to, to enhance that. And, really, from our point of view, the ADHD alliance work and the network that, that we're very keen to progress is something that we all feel passionate about here at ADHD Australia. Another thing as we look to the program for today, I'd like to talk a bit about are the the, really, the thousands of people who are volunteering to support ADHD Australia and our community more broadly in.

In the country and the wonderful work that these individuals are doing often without any call out or any recognition. It's, it's really impossible for charities and not for profit organizations to support communities without armies of volunteers. And for those of you out in the community that are putting in countless hours to support our team, people living with ADHD, supporting, for example, the senate inquiry that's just that's just come. And, all the work that you do is is wonderful. And for those of you that are are considering spending time volunteering to support a really important cause, we'd we'd open up and welcome you to to join us as join our army of volunteers to help to help make sure that we have.

Make sure that we have a robust and vibrant community that keeps going. Also, for those of you joining us today, this is a tremendous opportunity to hear from some some wonderful people talking about really important issues, and we'd very much love to hear your perspectives as we go through the day. Send us your comments. Let us know what you're struggling with, what you're challenged with, and give us opportunities to support you as we go forward. So the only way that we can all, advance the cause of making, making life better for those with ADHD is if we all work together. So I think that's really the that's really the key. Now one other thing I'd like to talk about very briefly is.

It's a it's sort of a moment to reflect here about where we head in terms of supporting individuals with ADHD. And one of the things that it it really occurs to me as chair as I've learned more about, our community and the many people supporting our community is is just how disconnected the different elements of of the community are. And I think there's opportunities for us all to work much harder on this. In particular, we'd like to see, and we'd like to challenge the education community, the clinical community, the justice community, the not for profit community, and parents and carers to all come together and work more collectively to support.

Our community and individuals with ADHD and those that support them. We think that, there's a really significant opportunity to bring these many, these many clusters that support the community in a very important ways, more more together so that we can work to in a more holistic fashion. Another area that I I reflect on in the last twenty four months in particular since I've been involved with ADHD Australia is the amount of innovation that's that's emerging in this area to support individuals with ADHD, everything from wearable technologies to complementary medicines to, support programs and so on. I'd like to also put a call out to the innovation community to.

To come together to help us to to really profile and spotlight some of this tremendous work that's happening, often or even almost always with, significant involvement from those who see gaps in the market who are experience experiencing ADHD and and really see an opportunity to create innovation that supports our community in very different ways. So I think there's some very exciting things happening there, and we look forward to to to bringing some of those ideas together and sharing them with you in the future. And and sort of I'd also like to to make a to make a call out to those that are that are working very hard every day to support individuals with ADHD, your your clinicians, the general practitioners, psychiatrists, psychologists.

These individuals are under tremendous amount of pressure to to make expert to to bring their expert advice to individuals with ADHD in a very constrained system. And I just want to assure everybody that the the the patient access issues surrounding ADHD is a is a is a significant issue that everyone's working very hard on and that the clinical community is is significantly challenged to, to accelerate that process, and only more focus and more funding will help that. So that's one of the key things you'll hear about today as, as you hear a little bit more about the senate inquiry in particular. I'd also like to call out briefly the, the many educators who are on the ground working with, with with kids and young adults, every single day.

Working, in the trenches, helping these individuals live their best lives, inspiring them, helping them navigate peer relationships in the classroom. Again, it's a very often thankless sort of position to be in working on the front lines, and this community in particular really welcomes the fact that that you guys do that hard work every single day, and it's and it's incredibly important. So I'd like to call that out as well. I'd also like to call out, in particular, those employers who who really inspire workers to workers with ADHD to navigate the the workplace. And in particular, I have a wonderful story. My one of my both of my kids have ADHD, but one of my one of my kids works at at Woolworths, and he has a wonderful mentor there who.

Who gives him an opportunity to to thrive in in the workplace and an opportunity to support to support him through that. And I I reflect on that that there are thousands of people out there who are providing that, you know, that really, really wonderful mentorship for individuals with ADHD in all walks of life every single day. So thank you for, thank you for your hard work to inspire our community. And, for those of you who look to find these stories, reach out to us, and, we'd love to share share more of those stories with you. Now I understand we're on a pretty tight time frame today, so, I only have one or two more minutes to share my comments here. So I thought it might be useful to share with you a little bit about the program today.

After my session this morning, we're gonna hear from from from who's gonna talk about about neurodiversity and inclusiveness in the workplace, which is which is gonna be really interesting. Followed following that, we'll have a story from Microsoft where, Dom Pringle, who's and and his colleagues will share share with us stories about their experience to accommodate ADHD within the Microsoft workplace. We'll have an opportunity to hear from Hailey Dean about ADHD in the workplace, continuing on that theme. And then we'll then we'll shift gears a little bit, and we'll talk about neurodiversity and executive functioning. And we'll hear from, Ben Van Hook, from the United Nations, and, we'll hear a little bit about that topic.

And then progressively, we'll go through, the remainder of the day, and we'll have a a number of different topics. We'll hear from Nicole Walsh talking about discrimination. We'll have a parenting panel and talking about the day daily journey of living with ADHD. We'll hear from a couple of our board members, doctor Patrick Concannon, and professor Cohen, who will talk about some of the clinical issues surrounding ADHD. And, then we'll hear from our colleagues at ADHD WA who are gonna share with us a perspective on on their experience with ADHD and WA and some of the interesting things they're doing with social enterprise. And following that, we'll hear from Melody Porter who's gonna share with us her perspectives on some research insights.

Looking at ADHD in the classroom. And then that will be followed by a panel to talk about education, ADHD and education. And then and then sort of transitioning, we'll hear from Marco Renee who's gonna share with us some insights around workforce focused education, which will be very interesting. And then as we reach towards the end of the day, we're gonna hear from senator Jordan Steele John, who's gonna share his perspectives. And I'll be joining that session to talk about the senate inquiry here in Australia. And then the day will be anchored with by Moon Lake Lee talking about ADHD and empowering ADHD.

In Singapore. So then we'll come to the wrap up, and we'll hear again from Henry and team who will sort of bring all bring it all home. And we're really looking forward to hearing everyone's comments and everyone's contribution today. So great work team in bringing this all together. Thank you again, Henry and team, and the many volunteers in particular on our end, Mel and Christie and the board who have brought together all this this wonderful program for us today. So thanks very much, and I'll transition now.

Thank you, Matt. What a wonderful overview. Thank you so so very much. I just wanted to ask a quick question. We have here ready to go, and we are delighted to have him join. And as you've mentioned, our run sheet is vast and varied and packed, so we are keeping to time. But before we go, I really do wanna ask you, Matt, knowing that I am you know, I'm new to the ADHD Australia organization, and I really love the passion that, the whole board and volunteer network, deliver each and every single day. If there's one takeaway of your work with ADHD Australia and from a personal perspective, what's one of the great things that you've learned and, what really what really warms.

The warms the heart and fills the cup for you with working with ADHD Australia.

Look. There's really it's it's it's a no brainer. It's the easiest question anyone's ever asked me, really. I've been really inspired by the absolute passion of our community. And when we call out, for example, for volunteers to come help us support programs or to work with our team on various on various challenges, I've just found the engagement to this community to be super inspiring. And, yeah, I think the amount of great people coming together to achieve great things is is probably the hallmark for me. I've never seen anything like it.

Amazing. Well, gosh. Thanks again, Matt. And I'm conscious we are welcoming you back a little later on in the day, talking to senator Jordan Steel John, which I think is going to be fantastic. Really keen to understand from his perspective everything that has transpired with the senate inquiry, and I know that you'll be avidly watching throughout the day. But, again, thank you so very much for your time. As I said, we've got here in waiting in the wings. I do have a a run sheet that's given to me by Henry around how to put in transitions and making sure that we have that all ready to go. So, I'm gonna let you go, but as I said, thank you so very much for your time and I look forward to welcoming you back a little later on this afternoon.

Thank you, Christie. Good work. All the best.