Conference 2025
12—13 November 2025, Tarntanya—Adelaide
A conference like no other
What if the way we show up now determines the future?
We took a break in 2024 to reflect and deepen our understanding. Now we’re back! Compassion Revolution Conference is set for 2025. For the very first time we will meet in Tarntanya/Adelaide, on the lands of the Kaurna people.
Our focus is fully set on presenting a deeper and more intimate opportunity for learning and connection. We’re bringing practices of hope and creativity to meet the challenges we now face globally.
Right now we’re searching the world and negotiating with incredible thinkers, researchers and practitioners and in May we will announce our full conference line-up. Tickets will be limited and will sell quickly.
“This conference is crucial for the evolution of all workplaces—so that we can build organisational culture that is safe, considerate, inclusive, enjoyable and productive, enabling both individuals and their organisations to thrive.”
—2023 Conference Participant
Topics
- Sustainable systems of care
- Human-centred design
- AI that is representative and just
- Growing the muscle of hope
- Learning from lived experience
- Nurturing a future workforce
Meet some of our speakers
We are delighted to announce these incredible speakers who will generously share their wisdom and insight with us.
Our full international speaker line-up will be revealed very soon.
Kate Bowles
Compassion Revolution, Australia
Mary Freer
Compassion Revolution, Australia
Duncan McKellar
Hammond Care, Australia
László Herczeg
The Care Lab, Spain
Lekshmy Parameswaran
The Care Lab, Spain
Shannon Weber
Resilience architect, America
Conference Venue
UCity
Tarntanya—Adelaide
We will gather on the lands of the Kaurna people.
Our meeting place this time is in the heart of the Adelaide CBD. UCity is a place of great beauty and will hold us together with warmth.
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FROM THE ARCHIVE
Previous conferences
2023
Making work beautiful
We gathered 200 thinkers, dreamers, and doers to fundamentally reimagine the world of work in this moment of crisis. Compassion Revolution is on a mission to bring the muscularity of radical compassion front and centre to the world of work. We are deeply invested in transforming workplace culture and helping organisations to grow the leadership skills and moral imagination that we need right now and into the future. We care to see more people flourish at work and in their lives and we used the conference is a platform to bring this vision to fruition.
Read the summaries of day 1 and day 2 from the 2023 conference
2023 conference speakers
Sará King
Neuroscientist and entrepreneur
KA McKercher
Co-designer
Selma Quist-Møller
Psychologist and researcher
Nartarsha Bamblett
Queen acknowledgements
2022
CRITICAL CONNECTIONS
We never know how our small activities will affect others through the invisible fabric of our connectedness. In this exquisitely connected world, it’s never a question of ‘critical mass.’ It’s always about critical connections.
Mycelium is the vast and intelligent underground network of the mushroom. This super network connects all living plants to one another, carrying nutrients and information from one tree to the next. Compassion across communities works in much the same way.
There’s no going back to the pre-pandemic days of 2019. Across the world writers, thinkers and artists are naming this place we are in as a great turning point; a place of no return; a transition. Our health systems have been revealed as moribund. Our workforce are tired and overwhelmed. Ambulances ramp and patients queue. Now is no time for nostalgia.
2022 conference speakers
Rachel Callander
Speaker, Trainer & Artist
Céline Schillinger
Founder/CEO, We Need Social
Sará King
Neuroscientist & Medical anthropologist
Alana Marsh
Regenerative practitioner
2021
THIS YEARS FOCUS
With COVID-19 still raging, Compassion Revolution stepped in and delivered an inspiring Conference that ran over three nights and two days, connecting people all over the world.
Opening night was a hybrid session where South Australia presented in person and many others joined us online. Mary Freer had a conversation with Seth Godin, the theme being ‘Can capitalism flourish alongside compassion?’, followed by a panel discussion.
The next two days were executed on our digital community platform, with rigorous conversations designed to create cultures of care that are high quality, continually improving, and compassionate. We set an intention that these discussions motivate our community to take action.
Mary also launched her book, Compassion Revolution: Start Now. Use What You Have. Keep Going.
2021 conference speakers
This years hybrid conference enjoyed these outstanding humans who, in all their rich variety of disciplines, brought their perspective of compassion and how to lead, and be led by it.
Brett Sutton
Victorian Chief Health Officer
Seth Godin
Author, Entrepreneur and most of all, a Teacher
Haben Girma
Disability Rights Lawyer
Rona Glynn-McDonald
Founder, Common Ground
2020
THIS YEARS FOCUS
Because of COVID-19, more than ever, health and aged care workers were being stretched in ways never imagined.
Compassion Revolution Conference responded by building a digital community platform, having created a warm safe meeting space for connection, support and conversation.
During November, Compassion Revolution curated a month of key speakers and engaged audiences as many as 860 people in conversations of moral imagination and social courage.
We also introduced a Book Club where five books were chosen. These books were themed in resilience, care, inclusion and diversity — and participants had group conversations with the authors, where robust conversations teased out some of the complexities of care work.
2020 conference speakers
This years online conference enjoyed these outstanding humans who, in all their rich variety of disciplines, brought their perspective of compassion and how to lead, and be led by it.
Jane Sloan
Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality
Gregory Philips
Medical Anthropologist
Rosie Thomas, OAM
Digital champion for Children’s Rights
Lauren R. Powell
Champion of health equity, Eradicator of racism and sexism
2019
THIS YEARS FOCUS
The Compassion Revolution called for people who care and invited compassionate leaders to bring their wisdom and inspiration to the work of health, aged care and social good.
This was the conference’s inaugural year held on (local indigenous country), at the Melbourne Arts Centre to an audience of 350 people.
Over the two days CR brought together internationally recognised leaders, clinicians and change makers, all focussed on improving our systems of care.
Our first conference was a sell-out and the feedback insisted we keep going.
2019 conference speakers
In our first year, Compassion Revolution Conference brought together speakers from the world, who, in all their rich variety of disciplines, brought their perspective of compassion and how to lead, and be led by it.
Dr James Doty
Writer, Academic & Researcher.
Helen Sanderson
Founder/CEO & Social entrepreneur.
Fiona Kerr
Neuroscientist & International Speaker.
Dr Robin Youngson
Physician & anaesthetic specialist.
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