We need to transform workplaces with respect, inclusion, and innovative solutions.
Prabha Nandagopal is an award-winning human rights and discrimination lawyer and advocate, having worked over 18 years in a variety of areas from business and human rights to asylum seeker and refugee policy.
Prabha is an innovative changemaker renowned for her ability to challenge the status quo and develop achievable solutions to complex systemic problems. Prabha has led the development of groundbreaking recommendations on numerous high-profile workplace cultural reviews, including the Independent Review into Commonwealth Parliamentary Workplaces and the National Music Industry Review into sexual harm, sexual harassment and systemic discrimination. In 2020, she was a senior legal advisor to the Respect@Work National Inquiry and helped shape the positive duty regulatory scheme and in 2023, she worked alongside Elizabeth Broderick on the Independent Review into Workplace Culture at EY Oceania.
Prabha spent many years at the forefront of human rights in Australia, tirelessly protecting the rights of asylum seekers and refugees through advocacy, strategic litigation, and policy reform. As one of Australia’s foremost experts on immigration detention law and policy, she led the landmark National Inquiry into Children in Detention in 2014.
She is the founder of Elevate Consulting Partners and SafeSpace@elevate, which she established to support and strengthen the work of organisations committed to positive social change. Prabha has a proven track record of leading high-performance teams in sensitive and complex environments. She combines her fiercely sharp intellect, empathy, and courage to create positive workplace cultures and drive successful business outcomes.
Prabha wants to empower organisations with the leadership mindset and strategies to create safe, respectful, diverse and inclusive workplaces where every individual can thrive. Drawing from her tremendous career at the forefront of the country’s most complex human rights issues, she is a vibrant and compelling speaker, leaving audiences inspired to take action.
In 2024, Prabha won the India Australia Business & Community Award for Business Leader of the Year and was a finalist in the Women’s Agenda Leadership Awards.
Talking Points
Leading With Respect: Building Safer, Fairer Workplaces
Leadership sets the tone for workplace culture. In this keynote, Prabha Nandagopal draws on her national leadership in workplace reform, including the Respect@Work Inquiry and the Positive Duty compliance framework. She outlines how leaders can create environments that are safe, respectful and inclusive, with legal compliance as the result, not the goal.Leading With Respect: Building Safer, Fairer Workplaces
Key Takeaways:
- How leadership drives respectful workplace culture
- Strategies to meet and exceed new legal obligations
- Practical actions to prevent sexual harassment and discrimination
- Tools to shift culture beyond compliance
- The link between safety, trust and organisational performance
Inclusion Starts at the Top: Leadership’s Role in Belonging and Equity
Belonging is a leadership responsibility. Prabha shares what effective, inclusive leadership looks like and how it directly impacts employee engagement and trust. With experience advising boards and designing workplace policy, she offers practical guidance for leaders to create cultures where every person can thrive.Inclusion Starts at the Top: Leadership’s Role in Belonging and Equity
Key Takeaways:
- How belonging impacts retention, engagement and performance
- Common leadership gaps in inclusion efforts
- Embedding inclusion into governance and decision-making
- Strategies for building equity into organisational systems
- Creating accountability at the executive level
AI at Work: How Technology Is Rewriting Workplace Culture
As AI speeds up, culture can crack. This session explains how to protect people while adopting new tech.AI at Work: How Technology Is Rewriting Workplace Culture
AI is reshaping how people are hired, managed and measured. Recruitment tools, chatbots, monitoring software and productivity dashboards are changing how decisions are made and how safe people feel to speak up at work. Research now links AI and algorithmic management to new psychosocial risks, including surveillance stress, loss of voice and amplified bias if systems are not designed well.
Prabha explains how to take a human-centred approach to AI so that technology supports dignity, fairness and psychological safety instead of undermining them. This keynote helps organisations adopt AI in ways that strengthen culture, meet WHS and Respect@Work duties, and keep people at the centre of change.
Key Takeaways:
- How AI tools in HR and management are already shifting behaviour, power and trust at work
- The main cultural risks: bias, opaque decisions, constant monitoring and loss of psychological safety
- Human-centred AI principles that align with WHS and psychosocial hazard duties, and Respect@Work obligations
- How to involve workers and marginalised groups in designing and testing AI systems so they are safe and inclusive
- Practical guardrails for leaders: governance, clear policies, communication guidelines and review points that protect culture while using AI too
Intersectionality in Action: A New Approach to Gender Equality
Many gender equality initiatives fail because they overlook how other forms of discrimination intersect with gender. Prabha explains how to take an intersectional approach to equity, with insights into what works and what needs to change. This keynote helps organisations build policies that support all women and gender-diverse people, especially those from marginalised backgrounds.Intersectionality in Action: A New Approach to Gender Equality
Key Takeaways:
- What intersectionality means and why it matters
- How race, disability and class compound gender inequality
- Embedding intersectionality into recruitment and culture
- Leadership behaviours that enable inclusive systems
- Practical policy changes that improve outcomes for diverse groups
Workplaces as Agents of Change: The Social Impact of Leadership
Leaders influence more than workplace outcomes — they shape lives. Prabha reframes the workplace as a key driver of societal change, with leadership decisions affecting mental health, equity and community wellbeing. She shares practical tools to help leaders align workplace culture with broader social responsibility.Workplaces as Agents of Change: The Social Impact of Leadership
Key Takeaways:
- How leadership behaviour impacts society beyond the workplace
- The connection between inclusive cultures and mental health
- Designing policies that model fairness and respect
- Linking organisational values with social impact
- Equipping leaders to create lasting cultural change
Human Rights and Belonging: Australia’s Missed Opportunity
Australia is one of the only liberal democracies without a federal Human Rights Act. In this keynote, Prabha unpacks what this means for marginalised communities and why business leaders have a role to play. She explores how applying human rights principles can strengthen organisational culture, trust and reputation.Human Rights and Belonging: Australia’s Missed Opportunity
Key Takeaways:
- Overview of Australia’s human rights protections
- How workplace leaders can embed human rights principles
- The business case for fairness and equity
- Strengthening social licence through values-led leadership
- Opportunities for business to lead where legislation lags
Fairness by Design: Building Trust in Diverse Workplaces
Most organisations want to create fair and inclusive workplaces. Yet racial discrimination often persists not through overt prejudice, but through everyday systems and decision-making processes. Recruitment practices, promotion pathways, and complaints procedures can unintentionally reproduce unequal outcomes even in organisations with strong diversity commitments.Fairness by Design: Building Trust in Diverse Workplaces
In this keynote, Prabha Nandagopal explores how workplace systems shape who gets opportunities, whose concerns are taken seriously, and how trust is built across culturally diverse teams. Drawing on legal insight and practical organisational examples, she explains how leaders can identify hidden barriers and design processes that promote fairness and accountability.
This session helps organisations move beyond intention and towards systems that consistently deliver equitable outcomes.
Key Takeaways:
- Why racial discrimination in modern workplaces often arises from systems rather than individual intent
- How recruitment, promotion, and complaints processes can unintentionally create unequal outcomes
- The role of leadership in building trust across culturally diverse teams
- Practical ways to strengthen fairness, transparency, and accountability in organisational decision-making
- How well-designed systems reduce risk and support more inclusive workplace cultures
This keynote is perfect for events taking place around Harmony Week and International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination events.
Video
Prabha Nandagopal | Human Rights Lawyer & Changemaker | Saxton Speakers
Discover how Prabha Nandagopal, a renowned Human Rights Lawyer and changemaker, is empowering organisations to foster safer and more inclusive workplace cultures. In this engaging session, Prabha discusses critical challenges like underreporting workplace misconduct and introduces innovative solutions such as the Safe Space platform—a groundbreaking tool for independent reporting and trauma-informed support. She also unpacks Australia's Positive Duty compliance framework, emphasising leadership accountability and proactive strategies to prevent workplace harassment. Prabha's expertise, drawn from over a decade at the Australian Human Rights Commission, makes her an authoritative voice on organisational transformation, intersectionality, and cultivating belonging. Whether you're planning a corporate event or industry summit, Prabha delivers actionable insights that resonate across industries.Prabha Nandagopal | ABC News | Saxton Speakers
In this impactful interview, Prabha Nandagopal, a leading human rights and discrimination lawyer, discusses a deeply concerning report on workplace sexual harassment, particularly affecting migrant women in Australia. She highlights the alarming rates of underreporting—75% of cases—and explores how intersecting factors like exploitative work conditions and racial discrimination exacerbate the issue. Prabha offers solutions, emphasising the importance of safe reporting pathways, cultural change in workplaces, and the enforcement of positive duty legislation to ensure accountability. Prabha’s expertise, informed by her extensive legal career, positions her as a compelling Speaker for events focused on workplace culture, diversity, inclusion, and human rights.Prabha Nandagopal | ABC News | Saxton Speakers
Human rights lawyer Prabha Nandagopal returns to the couch to unpack today’s key headlines with clarity, warmth and insight.Audio
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