Dr Shannon Jarrott has been writing about the value of intergenerational relationships ever since she realized that not all young and older people have the opportunity for a close intergenerational connection like she and her siblings enjoyed with their “Nanny.” This motivation led Shannon to work with child care centers, adult day service programs, primary schools, nursing homes, 4-H clubs, universities, food banks, and churches interested in utilizing youth’s and older adults’ strengths to benefit participants and the larger community.

Sometimes organizations need help preparing their environment and their staff to offer programming to diverse young and older people; Shannon has collaborated with practitioners and researchers to identify specific strategies that increase the success of these programs.

With the support of community stakeholders, the intergenerational programs Shannon has partnered with community organizations to promote meaningful roles, healthy food access, empathy, resilience, life skills, and a sense of purpose for both young and older persons. Intergenerational programs also support cost savings and enhanced well-being for sponsoring organizations.

She is Editor of The Journal of Intergenerational Relationships and was recently selected as the 2023 Gary Andrews International Fellow by the Australian Association of Gerontology.

Marcus Riley has a demonstrated ability to impact and influence in the field of health, ageing and seniors living, education, workforce development and technology through 25 years experience across the globe.

In addition to his role as Executive Chairman of BallyCara, Marcus is the founder of Booming – which is all about a new approach to ageing successfully. He has a distinguished record of leadership roles with international, national and state-based organisations and in 2018 was awarded the Global Ageing Influencer award by Ageing Asia. Further to Director roles with various companies he has been appointed to a number of Government Boards and Committees, has a Master’s of Business Administration and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He is a passionate advocate for positive ageing and for the interests of older people, accordingly he is the author of Booming - A Life Changing Philosophy on Ageing Well.

Professor Felicity Baker is Associate Dean Research, Director, International Research Partnerships at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne and Adjunct Professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music.

She is a former Australia Research Council Future Fellow (2011-2015) and now leads a series of music therapy clinical trials with people living with dementia. She has attracted more than $15.5 million in competitive research funding and is Principal Investigator on 3 National Health and Medical Research Council grants, an Australia Research Council Discovery Grant, and a Medical Research Future Fund. She is Associate Editor, Journal of Music Therapy, former President of the Australian Music Therapy Association, and holds numerous awards including the World Federation of Music Therapy Research Award. Felicity was recently commissioned by the WHO Arts and Health Lead to undertake research on music interventions for dementia care, some of which she will report on in her presentation.

Alison is a general physician, health services researcher and highly regarded educator based at Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, and Conjoint Professor at the University of Queensland. She is passionate about making hospitals more age friendly through genuine engagement with older consumers, increasing the skills and compassion of multidisciplinary staff, empowering clinical leadership, and translation of evidence about the physical environment and models of care. She leads the Eat Walk Engage program, a ward-based continuous improvement program that prevents delirium and gets older patients home from hospital sooner and is now implemented in 18 hospitals throughout Queensland. She serves on the steering committee of the Queensland Dementia, Ageing and Frailty Network.

Simon Lowe is co-founder of People Tech Revolution and The Ageing Revolution and is a strategic partnership and design thinking expert. He is adept at systems change, user experience and behaviour change theory, applying these approaches to innovative solutions that tackle systemic and individual issues. Simon has a passion for innovative digital solutions that use gamification techniques and has several works in the pipeline around how to have serious conversations using games. This includes designing Carked It! a card game about death and dying, as well as VR apps focused on empathy and discrimination, a mobile app for women with endometriosis, an app for carers of people at home and a game focused on conversations about ageing.

Simon has mentored over 20 game designers and developers over the past five years through the SAE Institute intern industry program. He currently coordinates a small team of virtual reality developers with a specialised focus on innovative VR experiences around soft-skills training. Simon has worked in government, non-government, academic and for-profit settings and has assisted with brokering partnerships across the different sectors.

Leonie Sanderson is an experienced human services designer, with a special focus on the bringing the lived experience of older people, younger people, women, and carers into the design process. Over the past five years, Leonie’s work has melded co-design and engagement with strategy and innovation in tech – a human-centred design approach.

As co-founder of People Tech Revolution and The Ageing Revolution, she has worked on the design and development of VR apps to increase empathy and fight bias, for clients such as Mater and the Mayo Clinic, consulted on telehealth solutions for Queensland Health and created the imagery of ageing project ‘Pikme’. She is currently a member of the QLD XR Hub Advisory Board and a volunteer with the XR Safety Initiative (XRSI). In 2021, Leonie project managed the QUT project Transforming Aged Care with Virtual Reality - https://research.qut.edu.au/agedcarevr/