Disability inclusion and leadership. Eighteen years ago, Cathy Hockey stepped into an employment program for people with intellectual disabilities with no experience in the field. A simple tool, a one-page profile capturing what each person valued and how to support them, became the foundation for everything: hiring, team-building, and later her entire coaching practice.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses grief, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you’re not alone. Help is available:
• Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au
Disability inclusion starts with knowing the person. Cathy Hockey spent nearly two decades leading Bushlink, an employment program on the Northern Beaches that hired people with intellectual disabilities for bush regeneration work. She arrived with conservation qualifications and no background in disability services, armed instead with a willingness to listen and learn.
Everything changed when she discovered the power of the one-page profile: a simple tool with three headings. What’s important to you. What people admire about you. How to best support you. That single page became her compass for understanding what motivated each team member, how to match them to roles, and how to build teams that worked.
One moment reveals how specific this was: she learned one team member loved vacuuming at home. She then helped him see the mulching machine as a vacuum, a push-pull action he already understood. Suddenly he could do the work.
When Bushlink’s initial contracts ran out, Cathy didn’t step back.
🕒 CHAPTERS:
00:00 Who Cathy is and why she works in not-for-profit leadership
05:41 Starting Bushlink with no experience in disability, only the one-page profile
11:28 The vacuum insight: how knowing the person unlocks possibility
15:36 Building teams where everyone contributes real work, not busy work
20:02 What people with disability taught her about communication and presence
26:41 The schools inclusion program begins with a wave in the playground
31:00 A young man returns to the school that bullied him, and it transforms him
34:12 The breaking point: grant refusals and the weight of keeping people employed
38:48 Why an ally instead of just an advocate: amplifying voices that matter
43:19 From frontline struggle to coaching leaders in complex environments
46:28 The one-page profile as a principle for life and work
47:46 Closing and gratitude
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Welcome.
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Kintsugi Heroes was created from a simple belief: every person has a story worth sharing, and sometimes the story we need to hear arrives exactly when we need it most.
Our name comes from the Japanese art of Kintsugi, where broken pottery is repaired with gold. Rather than hiding the cracks, they are honoured as part of the object’s history. We believe people are much the same. The experiences that challenge us, break us, shape us, and help us grow are often the very things that connect us to one another.
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• Grit Diaries: From Grit to Grace, hosted by Simone Allan and Maryan Bova
• From There to Here, hosted by Emma Bellamy-Dodd
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