KARABENA CONSULTING

Who we are

Karabena Consulting Trust is a 100 per cent Torres Strait Islander women owned and operated company, led by our Managing Director, Professor Kerry Arabena, a proud Torres Strait Islander and Meriam woman. We work nationally with government, community and industry to strengthen the health, wellbeing, leadership and self-determination of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and we share the evidence of that work across Australia and the world.

Our team includes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, non-Indigenous allies and CALD specialists, which is part of how we reach across communities with credibility. We are part of the Karabena Group, alongside Karabena Publishing and Karabena Coaching, and we operate as profit-for-purpose. For national work we draw on a trusted network of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander consultants active in every state and territory, so that the people guiding a project hold cultural authority for the communities it affects.

Our approach and methodologies

We deliver research and evaluation that meets the highest academic standard while keeping community authority at the centre of every decision. Our methodologies are Indigenist and grounded in evidence. They keep relationships at the centre, and they are built so that communities keep control of their own stories and their own data.

• Indigenist and culturally grounded evaluation. We ground design in Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing, working alongside Western methods so findings are defensible to a funder and true to community.

• Relational accountability and cultural governance. We establish cultural governance and ethics oversight at the start of a project and hold to it through to reporting.

• Indigenous Data Sovereignty and governance. We apply the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance and the work of the Maiam nayri Wingara collective, so data is held in trust for the community it comes from.

• Community-led fieldwork. We train and support community researchers to lead data collection in their own communities, and we share authorship so credit sits with the people who did the work.

• Culturally safe methods. We use yarning, dadirri, site visits and participatory sense-making alongside surveys, document review and statistical analysis, chosen to fit each brief.

• Strengths-based, voice-led reporting. We foreground the voices of participants through story, case study and quotation, set beside quantitative and policy analysis, so the people behind the findings are never lost.

  
  

Our ethical practice is anchored in the AIATSIS Code of Ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research (2020), the NHMRC Ethical conduct in research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and communities (2018), and the Australian Evaluation Society First Nations Cultural Safety Framework (Gollan and Stacey, 2021).

Working with First Nations and CALD communities

First Nations communities

This is the heart of our practice. We have led culturally safe research, evaluation and co-design for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across health, family violence, child and family, justice, workforce and self-determination. Our authority comes from who we are and how we work: community-led, accountable to the people affected, and grounded in Country.

Culturally and linguistically diverse communities

Cultural safety is not the preserve of any one community, and the methods we have built for First Nations work transfer well to culturally and linguistically diverse communities. This is a genuine and growing area of our practice, led by our Senior Consultant Associate Jide Onademuren and carried by the CALD specialists on our team. It rests on the same commitment to self-determination and community control that shapes all our work.

Our Say it Safe platform is configurable by design. Because a person can set the tool up in their own identity and language, control what they share, and remain de-identified, the same architecture that serves First Nations clients adapts readily to migrant, refugee and other CALD communities. That makes safe, multilingual feedback possible in the settings where trust and confidentiality are usually the barrier to being heard.

Flagship: Say it Safe and the Safely Talk Back cultural safety mechanism

The ACT Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Division has commissioned Karabena Consulting Trust to develop and pilot a culturally grounded feedback mechanism that assesses how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experience mental health services. Delivered through our Say it Safe platform and branded for the pilot as Safely Talk Back, it shows what culturally safe evaluation looks like in practice.

The mechanism starts from a simple truth: politeness and kindness are not the same as cultural safety. It is built so that the person giving feedback holds the power.

• Community control. Each person chooses their own feedback pathway, sets up the tool in their own identity and colours, and decides whether, when and how they share.

• De-identification by design. Every voice stays de-identified, and nothing leaves the person’s phone until they choose to submit it.

• Feedback that leads to change. Feedback is meaningful only when it changes something, so the mechanism connects directly to the people who commission and run the service.

• Owned by community. The mechanism belongs to community and answers to community. It does not belong to the service it assesses.

Services

Our services are tailored to each brief and can be delivered as a discrete package or as a culturally safe component within a larger program.

• Research and evaluation. Indigenist, mixed-method research and program evaluation, from design and program logic through to lived-experience insight and final reporting.

• Cultural safety review, audit and planning. Cultural safety assessments, cultural safety and reconciliation plans, and the strategies that make them real.

• Community engagement and fieldwork. Culturally safe engagement and community-led data collection with First Nations and CALD communities.

• Culturally safe feedback technology. The Say it Safe platform for gathering client experience safely and using it to improve services.

• Co-design and models of care. Community-led co-design and the development of culturally grounded models of care across the life course.

• Monitoring and evaluation frameworks. Frameworks, indicators and tools that let organisations measure what matters to community over time.

• Cultural governance and advisory. Independent cultural governance, ethics oversight and advisory support to a project or program.

• Policy analysis and development. Analysis of policy and its implementation, and the drafting of strategy that reflects First Nations aspirations.

• Facilitation, chairing and keynote speaking. Master facilitation, independent chairing of advisory groups, and keynote presentations for national and international audiences.

• Knowledge translation and publishing. Writing, editing, design, course development and publishing that carry findings to the audiences who need them.

Selected track record

A sample of recent engagements shows the breadth and seniority of our work.

The value we add

Partnering with us strengthens more than the cultural safety of the work. It strengthens the response.

Our team is transdisciplinary. Between us we hold qualifications across social work, allied health, education, health service design, evaluation, life coaching and finance, among others, and we bring them to bear together on a single brief. That breadth lets us work as systems thinkers, seeing how policy, service design, community and funding interact, so our recommendations are practical and stand up once they meet the real world.

As a 100 per cent Torres Strait Islander women owned and operated enterprise, our involvement contributes directly to Indigenous procurement and social procurement objectives that increasingly shape government tenders. Supply Nation’s research finds that every dollar of revenue generated by an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander business creates $3.66 of economic and social value for First Nations owners, households and employees (Supply Nation, The Sleeping Giant Rises, 2025). Working with us offers a client both methodological excellence and measurable social value.

How we prefer to work

We do our best work in relationships built on shared values, and we say plainly what matters to us in an engagement.

• Values and ethics alignment. We look for partners and clients who share our commitment to cultural safety, self-determination and Indigenous Data Sovereignty. Alignment on values and ethics is what makes the work both possible and good, and it is the first thing we look for.

• Enduring, multiyear relationships. Culturally safe work depends on trust, and trust is built over time. We prefer multiyear engagements and enduring relationships to one-off transactions, because they let community authority, evidence and impact compound.

• Community authority at the centre. Whatever the structure, cultural authority and Indigenous Data Sovereignty stay with community, and quality stays with our team.

• Meeting on Country. We like to begin on Country where we can, because it grounds a project in relationship and place from the outset.

• Flexible teaming. We can lead a program, lead the First Nations and CALD components of a larger piece of work, provide cultural governance and advisory oversight, or deliver community-led fieldwork and the Say it Safe platform within a wider design. We welcome a conversation about the right arrangement for each opportunity.

Meeting on Country in the Macedon Ranges

We hold a retreat space on Country in the Macedon Ranges, and visitors are welcome. It is a place to meet with us away from the office, well suited to strategic planning, co-design, team days and the deeper conversations that partnership work benefits from. Meeting on Country also sets the right foundation for culturally safe work, grounding a project in relationship and place from the outset.

Procuring Indigenous products: Ilan Style

There is a further, simple way to procure with us. Ilan Style is our purpose-driven wellness and culture brand, founded by Professor Kerry Arabena. Its tagline, ‘Know. Be. Do’, reflects Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing, and the brand describes itself as reciprocity in action: when you hold the products in your hands, you place meaningful change in ours.

Ilan Style offers naturopathically formulated native tea blends that bring together Australian native ingredients and tisane ingredients from around the world, alongside affirmation cards, tea towels, teaware and gift bundles. The teas make a natural fit for meetings, events, corporate gifting and staff wellbeing, with corporate discounts available on bulk orders. A portion of profit supports the Ilan Style Fellowship, which backs cultural preservation, language revitalisation and Indigenous scholarship, so each purchase carries measurable social value. The range can be explored at www.ilanstyle.com.au, and we would be glad to arrange a tasting.

Contact

Email: info@karabenaconsulting.com

Phone: 1800 939 276

Web: www.karabenaconsulting.com

Acknowledgement of Country

Karabena Consulting Trust acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the lands and waters on which we work, and we pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging. We extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who guide and inform our work.