Social worker. Refugee advocate. Acrobat.#
Brenda is a Research Assistant at 3Ai within the School of Cybernetics and completed a Master of Applied Cybernetics as part of the 3Ai First Cohort. In the 15 years prior to joining the first ever 3Ai Masters cohort, Brenda worked in the not for profit sector, supporting people from refugee backgrounds, those seeking asylum, as well as families facing homelessness.
Her roles have spanned torture and trauma counselling, community development, advocacy and management. She is passionate about human rights and finds great joy and inspiration in working cross-culturally. During the Masters, Brenda wrote an essay entitled: “A Social Worker in the New Applied Science”. The AI conversation is still so closed to the majority of people – including the people that Brenda has spent a career supporting. Finding a way into that conversation for diverse voices was a major contribution Brenda made to the new branch of engineering. In 2020, Brenda published an article on the Asia & the Pacific Policy Society Forum, on resisting gender blindness in smart cities, a reminder that policies need to cater to everyone in the urban centres of the future.
Brenda is excited to continue this work, helping people navigate an increasingly AI-enabled world.