LANA WOOLF

Hi! I’m Lana Woolf

Community Powered Responses is supported by a small group of skilled collaborators, but at its core it is my practice. I live in Naarm/Melbourne and work at the intersections of Social Inclusion, participation, and belonging across the aid and development sectors.

I have spent more than twenty-five years working alongside people who experience overlapping forms of marginalisation, including First Nations communities, refugee and migrant women, women living in poverty, people with disabilities, and people with diverse Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities, Expressions and Sex Characteristics. My work is grounded in cultural safety, community-led research, and the belief that inclusion must be embedded in systems, not added as an afterthought.

Across my career I have focused on helping organisations understand how power, culture, identity, and institutions shape everyday decisions. This commitment to systems change underpins Community Powered Responses. Through inclusive systems design, reflective practice, and values-aligned coaching, I support teams and organisations to move beyond technical fixes and into deeper, more accountable practice.

Before establishing Community Powered Responses, I co-founded Edge Effect, an organisation dedicated to strengthening the inclusion of people with diverse SOGIESC in humanitarian and development contexts.

I formally resigned from Edge Effect at the end of 2022 and began consulting under the name Community Powered Responses in early 2023. From the beginning, my intention was to strengthen the skills, knowledge, and practice of organisations that are trying to include the people who are too often excluded. Around the world, change is happening at an accelerated rate, yet many under-represented communities are consistently left behind. This includes women, people with disabilities, and people with diverse Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities, Expressions and Sex Characteristics.

What I saw was clear. Many of our systems and policies are not designed for this moment. They are not built to place people and communities at the centre of decision making. They struggle to support meaningful participation or to work with the complexity of lived experience. And they rarely shift the underlying power structures that determine who benefits and who is left out.

I want to live in a world where people, communities, organisations, and governments can come together to tackle our hardest challenges with creativity, courage, and care. A world where inclusion is not a technical exercise but a way of working that honours dignity and strengthens belonging. My work has become increasingly focused on intersectional approaches that ensure people in all their diversity are not left behind, and that institutions can change the systems that shape their lives.

This commitment sits at the heart of Community Powered Responses and continues to guide how I work and the futures I am trying to help build.

Below are some of the organisations I have worked with over the last ten years.