Tarra van Amerongen, Head of Design at Atlassian & Sharon Draper, Psychologist at The Conscious Project
Special guests, Head Designer at Atlassian, Tarra van Amerongen, and Psychologist, Sharon Draper, join us for our latest event. Asking For A Friend teams an industry leader with a psychologist to give advice on career, mental health and everything in between. It’s there for the questions you don’t yet have the courage to ask of your boss or at your workplace for fear of how you may be judged or treated. Of course, we hope you can ask those questions, but just in case, you can ask them anonymously for a friend instead.
Tarra van Amerongen is a design leader with a deep understanding of client needs and design culture, and extensive experience in business and education. She is currently the Head of Design, Jira Platform at Atlassian and has worked previously in house, in consulting and in agency. She also teaches innovation design at UTS, is a board advisor for the Australian Publishers Association and Flow of Work Co and is a Mental Health First Aider.
For the past 13 years, Sharon has worked as a Psychologist, aiming to authentically connect with people to help them feel safe and heard. She believes, if we can gain insight into why we might think, feel and behave a certain way, we can make more sense of our current lives and then, with a growth mindset of self-compassion instead of a fixed mindset of shame, we can consciously implement positive change. Sharon has a holistic approach, she is informed by Existentialism, Neuroscience, Polyvagal Theory and Attachment Science. Sharon believes if we can accept that the behaviours we developed as children were necessary for our survival and if we can understand that all the emotions we feel provide insight into our deepest values, we can live purposeful and meaningful lives. Sharon is currently working on an online program called Taking Up Space. The program empowers women who tend to default to people pleasing behaviours. The program focuses on building insight into ones behaviours, developing emotional competence (learning how to regulate and learn from all emotions we feel) as well as building courage to integrate these insights into our everyday lives so that we can live more authentically. Sharon is also a contributor to Newspaper articles (Sydney Morning Herald), Radio (ABC) and TV (Sky News, Channel 7 Sunrise), and is the Psychologist for eHarmony Australia.
