— SPEAKER • FACILITATOR • THOUGHT LEADER
Empowering Teams to Transform
through Trauma,
building Unity through Compassion and Tough Love
Booking 2026 • keynotes & workshops
cultivate • regenerate • sustain
40+
Years of practice
7
Countries • 4 Continents
3
Signature Keynotes
17
Years teaching • QLD & India
01 — THE WORK
A practice of truth, hope and trust.
As leaders we work for personal, social or corporate well-being. There are times when we confront uncertainty, confusion or trauma in our efforts toward genuine transformation that we can sustain.
Our constant challenge then is first, to empower our teams in developing a positive sense of self and their goals that is separate from their actions’ outcomes.
Second, they must identify and build on trustworthy elements that enable them to consciously accept and fulfill responsibility for themselves and each other.
Our third challenge is to take responsibility for what we've done and for its consequences.
In other words, examine and pursue truth.
Yet our current post-truth era appears to be awash with tendencies to deceive. How then can we strengthen and sustain collective hopes and trust?
Ultimately, long-term transformation is possible only through
discerning truth, then acting on it, while practicing tough yet tender love.
02 — Talks & Workshops
Three signature talks shaped for teams in transition.
Each is a self-contained keynote — or the seed of a longer workshop, retreat or organisational engagement. Mix, match, or sequence to fit your team.
i.
Growing through trauma together
by fanning sparks of hope and trust
Whether personally or professionally, we all want to grow, develop, improve and flourish. With sensitivity, Neil evokes an audience’s varying experiences of trauma — and invites a deeper response to confronting calls for truth-telling.
Work consistently with others, in dealing with some consequences of trauma (yours and theirs)
Focus on specific actions within a sometimes-crazy spiral of progressive transformation
Engage sources of hope within your own contexts, with confidence that, though faltering, grows and grows
Identify trustworthy collaborators for ongoing action
ii.
Strengthening hope and trust for building unity
through pursuing truth, in compassion and tough love
When we feel abandoned, betrayed or abused, our capacity to trust others is often reduced. To spark hope and reverse the spiral, Neil works with audiences to build an upward, outward spiral of hope and trust — gently, but provocatively.
Drawing out from each audience their own insights into and experiences of post-truth
Guiding participants through some popular (and not-so-popular) versions of truth
Painting some common sense true-to-it-all grounds for hope
Engaging your own spiral of building hope and trust with significant others
iii.
Sustaining your transforming rhythm
by embedding trust within people and practice
You may have established a good level of stability, collaboration or teamwork. Then, suddenly, the unexpected happens. In this absorbing keynote, Neil prepares more ground for your persistent hard work — what seems lost has to be regained.
Levels of insightful passion and deep thought, that your team must keep in balance
Essential qualities each participant must strive to embody, and restfully embrace, as active and inactive agents of change
A totalising way of working — without which your work consumes you, but with which your work and your essential selves are mutually strengthened
03 — Watch
A few minutes with Neil on stage.
From a session at the SatTal Christian Ashram, Uttarakhand — on truth-telling, hope and trust.
Audiences served · From global academic conferences to grassroots community
Global academic conferences
Marginalised village groups
Schools & faith-based audiences
NGOs & corporate teams
04 — About Neil
My invitation & challenge
Local Justice Initiatives & Community Justice Alternative Governing Structures
Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Studies — a Senior Board Subject
Gunya Meta Inc — Logan City
Ganyjuu Family Support Service, Logan City
Logan-Beaudesert Murri & Torres Strait Islander Network
Mununjali Jymbi Centre — reducing over-representation of Indigenous children in Out-of-home Care
Maibin Jahyilah Yahgilah Inc. — Men Gathering Supporting
A life shaped by community, trauma & transformation.
My formative years were framed by a radical-conservative faith-based extended family. It was no surprise then, that I participated in small-scale debates between diverse faith groups and libertarian communists at university.
There, I played a key role in establishing and guiding a small network of student community houses nearby. These households grew to be a hub of hope, healing and recovery for many trauma-impacted young people.
One key aspect of our common life was daily and weekly gatherings. Here, our passionate discussions, debates and prayer explored historical models of personal, social and political transformation that would stand the test of years. The 1970s was an era fuelled by global upheavals, spawning Watergate, protracted wars and the threat of nuclear annihilation. So, matters of truth, hope and trust were crucial. This community/trauma and truth/transformation scenario became a template for my life’s journey.
The next 17 years began and ended with school teaching, initially in the plains of rural Queensland and later, a boarding school in the mountains of South India. In between were six years helping establish therapeutic communities in North India, those of New Delhi’s Sahara House and related urban and rural sites. Living and working with people battling with very diverse addictive behaviours in the face of relentless injustice and oppression, these teams struggled to survive themselves. Over forty years later, many continue to serve sacrificially.
Having married into a Chinese Malaysian family, I maintain contact with a number of leaders within those communities and others throughout Asia.
Back in Australia, over the past 30 years in South-East Queensland, I’ve worked alongside Indigenous or Goori families and local communities in contexts ranging from formal schooling to participatory community development.
I’ve learnt a lot, but am still learning, about what helps us to sustain our groups, even to flourish — and what factors are most likely to undermine us so as to falter or fail. My passion now is to come alongside your team to challenge and support you in your journey.
My invitation & challenge
i. Cultivate Collective Hopes.
ii. Regenerate Integrity.
iii. Sustain Transformative Rhythms.
In my diverse community work I’ve tended to be unassuming, quietly working behind the scenes. Then as a public speaker or workshop leader, my passionate presentations have provoked deeper thought and sharing amongst participants in seven countries.
On the one hand, I’ve presented aspects of Indigenous community development to global academic conferences. On the other, engaging with marginalised village groups, schools, faith-based audiences and NGOs ensures my presentations are tailored to a very diverse range of participants.
05 — Endorsements
From scholars, leaders & communities worldwide.
Six voices — across Indigenous studies, critical realism, government, community development and faith-based work.
"
Leaders and organisations would do well to have Neil and his services on call and in support.
Neil Hockey has been working in a government funded community project amongst Indigenous family groups, where his aim is partly to make the work more liberatory for all involved, whether Indigenous or not, in these collaborative processes.
Listening to Neil speak and examining his excellent research over a number of years, I commend his superb account of the methodology for any research in this field, whether it be geared to emancipating the colonizer or the colonized. He also provides an exemplary account of emancipating his own research process from the shibboleths drawn from post-structuralism, positivism and other more or less inadequate methodologies, which together stymy research within a colonial context.
Even those who are not working within this field will benefit enormously from his clear exposition and defence of Critical Realism, including the Philosophy of metaReality.
28 May 2007.
Roy Bhaskar (1944-2014)
Originator of the philosophy of critical realism and author of many acclaimed and influential works. World Scholar and Director of the International Centre of Critical Realism, University of London Institute of Education.
"
Neil speaks with sensitivity and a very evident depth of understanding and knowledge.
In his speaking and writing as I observed him in several international conferences over more than a decade, Neil Hockey made a valuable and original contribution to the field of Indigenous studies.
His main aim was to contribute to elaborating a metatheory specifying the general conditions of possibility for decolonisation and emancipation.
With his primary focus on Indigenous Peoples or First Nations contexts, both in Australia and globally, this work aims to help create conditions for agentive or effective agency in such contexts and underlabours for decolonisation. In this he succeeds admirably.
Mervyn Hartwig
University Lecturer (retired), founding editor of Journal of Critical Realism, and editor and principal author of Dictionary of Critical Realism.
"
Breaking down lofty content into manageable bits to impact personal life and behaviour was a skill you helped us all with.
Neil is a fearless thinker with a scrupulous respect for evidence and the use of forceful but always fair argument.
Watching him present at local and international conferences, he is a witty and amusing speaker who does not allow the gravitas of what he has to say, to alienate his audiences.
Gary MacLennan
Research Officer, Department of Seniors, Disability Services and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships Queensland Government
"
Leaders and organisations would do well to have Neil and his services on call and in support.
In his vision for transforming society, Neil Hockey recognises the roles played by both organisations and their leaders and through his experience he has identified the skills needed to move organisations toward playing a transformative role. Well versed with challenges faced, he has the ability to assist in navigating through these.
Leaders and organisations would do well to have Neil and his services on call and in support. He possesses an important level of maturity essential to assist leaders in being able to identify possibilities. I personally benefitted from the support and encouragement Neil and the community movement of Sahara House in New Delhi provided, which eventually formed some of the ideas I have explored both in life and practice.
Neil’s ability to be cognisant of the circumstances that have to be navigated and his ability to identify nuances that need attention, rests on his strong listening and observational skills, so important today as people and organisations struggle with the challenges of “sustainability and survival”.
Mathew Titus
Member in the Prime Minister’s Council on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) 2010 – 2014
"
Neil speaks with sensitivity and a very evident depth of understanding and knowledge.
A key speaker at two early festivals at Sattal Christian Ashram in Uttarakhand, India, and a valued contributor to the organising team over the first five years, Neil speaks with sensitivity and a very evident depth of understanding and knowledge.
Clarifying doubts and debating issues respectfully, he brings to the table his vast experience, challenging audiences to join him in exploring each topic, striving for a deeper understanding by relating his personal journey in faith and social justice through health, healing, education and community
work.
It has always been a joy to work with him in planning for each festival. Easy to work with, he joins in discussion so as to more fully understand and address diverse audiences. We have always appreciated his prompt attention to providing a synopsis.
Anuvinda Varkey
New Delhi Executive Director of the Christian Coalition for Health, India.
Former General Secretary of the YWCA of Delhi
"
Breaking down lofty content into manageable bits to impact personal life and behaviour was a skill you helped us all with.
Neil I often look back to the years you spent with us in Ooty. I was struck by your deep commitment to excellence and industry and was regularly provoked and challenged by you to think out of the box in Christian thought and life.
Breaking down lofty content into manageable bits to impact personal life and behaviour was a skill and activity you helped us all with.
And what I admired the most was the humility and simplicity with which all this was done … it was winsome and disarming. Thank you for impacting all our lives Neil Hockey.
Thomas George
Deputy Principal (retired), Hebron School, Udhagamandalum (Ooty), NilgiriHills, South India.
Bring Neil to your team, conference or community.
Reach out with what you’re working on — the team you’re leading, the change you’re navigating, the audience you’re convening. Neil will tailor a keynote, workshop or longer engagement to your context.
Neil Hockey
Speaker, facilitator & thought leader. Forty years of work alongside communities — in Australia, India and across Asia.