Dr. Zane Ma Rhea

Consultant in Indigenous Issues

Using knowledge transfer and skills development to provide:

• Research-based policy advice to government
• Skills training for leadership and management of diversity in corporations
• Effective strategic change in complex organisations, focusing particularly on service delivery to Indigenous populations

Zane has many years of experience working with Australian Indigenous Peoples in a variety of contexts and, in spite of the seemingly intractable obstacles, has the experience of success and a continuing engagement with possibility.

She is adept at helping organisations to reorient themselves with regard to traditionally marginalized people.

Zane’s work enables the development of an intelligent, curious and wise workforce capable of meeting the complex challenges of the new century.

Biographical Details

Since her early school days in Sydney (Australia), Zane has had a commitment to social and economic justice. She takes in a rights-based approach that encourages self-actualisation, rather than the perpetuation of dependency. Zane believes the 21st century requires an understanding of complex adaptive systems when facilitating local capacity building and the integration of traditional knowledge into governance structures. She prefers to include local Traditional Owners and other local experts in all of her consulting engagements.

Zane has worked as a social worker with profoundly deaf people in both Australia and England and ran a vegetarian restaurant in Spain for several years. She did her post-doctoral work at Cambridge (Wolfson College, UK) as a Visiting Scholar in Commonwealth Studies where she developed her work on wisdom and its place in higher education in postcolonial democracies. The greater purpose in all of her work is to enable transcendent spaces to emerge.

Zane is part of an international network of scholars, practitioners and Traditional Owners around the Pacific Rim.

Indigenous Projects and Initiatives

Zane has worked with Indigenous people over the last 30 years in various capacities. She is recognised nationally and internationally for expertise in supporting organisations to improve the quality of services to Indigenous people, focussing on education, human resource development, community development, and capacity building.

Zane is a highly qualified and experienced practitioner with considerable knowledge and expertise, including specialist ability in the management of Indigenous Peoples in the workplace. She facilitates a participatory approach to training and research.

International Experience

Zane has lived, studied, travelled and worked in a number of countries. She has spent many years undertaking collaborations for research, staff development and peer support for colleagues in many parts of the world. She lived and studied in Thailand where she worked with Thai Civil Service senior and middle-level managers. Zane has conducted collaborative projects with people from Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands. She sat on an Australian Government-Industry Partnerships Group that particularly examined diversity issues within the context of leadership and management of Australian corporations. Dr Ma Rhea has also delivered a ‘Leadership and Communication’ Masters level course for IDP Australia through a collaboration between the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand and Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia as the course director and principal consultant. Zane has also supported many international students through their programs of study both in Australia and overseas and is comfortable adapting her research and facilitation style to a variety of cultural contexts.