Neil is an author, speaker, facilitator, mentor and teacher. He is passionate about community development, engagement and education. He has done extensive community work in India, Malaysia and Australia, as well high school teaching in Australia and India over the course of his working life. The dux of his high school, Neil went on to obtain degree sin Science, Arts and Education, as well as a PhD in a Transformative Philosophy of Truth. He co-founded the Sahara House Centre for Residential Care and Rehabilitation in New Delhi in 1978, remaining there for six years. This experience strengthened his passion for community work, and over the next 40 years he worked with multiple government and non-government organisations to help trauma-impacted people and their families. In addition, he was a visiting Research Fellow at the University of Malaysia’s Centre for Poverty and Development Studies for two years, as well as the Copy Editor for the University’s Journal of Institutions and Economies. Neil also played a key role in establishing multiple Indigenous community-controlled programs in his home city of the Logan-Beaudesert region of South-East Queensland, and he was a State-wide evaluator of the Trial Senior Syllabus in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in the mid 1990s. As he did internationally, Neil has regularly worked with numerous private and public sector agencies in his home country to improve health, education, youth and community justice, and employment and training outcomes for Indigenous Australians. He has presented on community development, engagement, and education at 14 international conferences in 10 different countries over the past two decades. Neil is a member of the IACR(International Association of Critical Realism) and the TPAQ (Teachers’ Professional Association of Queensland). Marrying into a Chinese Malaysian family more than 40 years ago, Neil has two children and three grandchildren. He has lived, worked, and travelled extensively throughout India Malaysia.
