Rosalie Martin

The Japanese word ikigai refers to the combination of profession, passion, mission and vocation – what you can be paid for, what you are good at, what you love, and what the world needs. Ikigai has been the driver of the Just Sentences and Just Time projects at Risdon Prison, as well as the several other community-based projects which Chatter Matters Tasmania has initiated and conducted. In this session, Chatter Matters’ founder, speech pathologist and criminologist Rosie Martin, will share her journey and the insights and learnings arising from it.

Biography:

Rosalie is a criminologist, an accredited facilitator with the Center for Courage & Renewal, and a clinical speech pathologist with more than 30 years experience.

Long lamenting inequity and inadequacy in services to support those with impaired communication and literacy, in 2013 Rosalie founded a charity, Chatter Matters Tasmania (soon to rebrand as language. life.) and began the Just Sentences literacy pilot project and Just Time parent-child attachment programs in Tasmania’s Risdon Prison. To gain better context for bringing speech pathology interventions into prison settings, Rosalie completed Criminology Honours in 2016 and is now preparing to undertake a PhD in Criminology.

Rosalie was awarded 2017 Tasmanian Australian of the Year for the work she began at the prison. She is grateful for the platform this recognition has afforded her to speak, raise awareness, educate and champion the cause of literacy for all; and to promote the value of kind communication in evidence-based service delivery.

More than anything else, Rosalie is aware that nothing worth doing is ever done alone – she has enormous gratitude for the support, direction and opportunity she has received from family, friends and many colleagues.