Our board
Board and staff at our strategic planning weekend in Canberra, ACT, on 16 July 2022. From left to right: Cody Smith, Dr Aileen Kennedy, Morgan Carpenter, Dr Alice de Jonge, Paul Byrne-Moroney, Dr Anita Jacombs, Clare MacDonald, Olympia Balopitos, Dr Agli Zavros-Orr, Councillor Tony Briffa. Photo thanks to Dr Hannah Holland
Tony Briffa JP – Co-Chair
Antoinette (Tony) Briffa was a co-executive director between December 2016 and May 2021, alongside Morgan Carpenter and is now a vice-chair. Tony is one of Australia’s first intersex advocates, appearing on 60 Minutes in 2000 and 2005, and published in Nature in 2004. Tony more recently presented a statement to the UN Human Rights Council, in 2014. She is also a councillor of Hobsons Bay in Melbourne, the first openly intersex person elected to public office and the world’s first openly intersex Mayor. An aviation engineer and specialist, she is a former president of Intersex Peer Support Australia (IPSA) (also known as AISSGA), co-chair of the Victorian government’s intersex expert advisory group, a member of current and previous Victorian Ministerial Advisory Groups on LGBTI issues, a board member of ILGA Oceania and chair of the intersex committee of ILGA World. Tony speaks nationally and internationally and has appeared on television, radio, magazines and newspapers discussing intersex human rights. She is a Justice of the Peace and former Bail Justice in Victoria.
Associate Professor Morgan Carpenter – Executive Director
Morgan Carpenter, PhD, is an intersex man, bioethicist and executive director of IHRA (a part-time role) who lives on Bundjalung Country in northern NSW. He is also an Associate Professor at Sydney Health Ethics in the University of Sydney School of Public Health. In 2023, Morgan’s “tireless work” was singled out for particular recognition, by Australian Capital Territory Chief Minister Andrew Barr, in introducing Australian-first legislation to protect the rights of people with innate variations of sex characteristics in medical settings. He has been named as a significant contributor to a 2021 Australian Human Rights Commission report on the health and human rights of people born with variations in characteristics. Morgan has also changed the global and local face of intersex advocacy: in 2013 he designed and shared the intersex flag, now used across the world, framed around concepts of bodily integrity and autonomy. Morgan wrote our submissions to Senate inquiries on involuntary or coerced sterilisation, and anti-discrimination legislation, and also participated in hearings on those inquiries. He participated in the first intersex expert meeting, organised by the UN. He was an expert and drafting committee member for the Yogyakarta Principles plus 10 and has also consulted or been a reference group member for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the ACT government, Australian Department of Health and Aged Care, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, NSW Health, and other bodies. A director since IHRA registered as a not-for-profit company in 2010, Morgan Carpenter has served in numerous board positions, including president.
Dr Alice de Jonge – Director
Alice de Jonge SJD, PhD is a senior lecturer in law at Monash Business School, Monash University, where she lectures on aspects of public and private international law. Alice is a long term member of the Faculty Equity, Diversity and Social Inclusion Committee, and the Monash NTEU Branch Committee. Alice has travelled extensively throughout Asia and speaks Mandarin and Chinese. She lived and studied in Shanghai (Fudan University), and was a visiting scholar at Nanjing University. In 1998, she worked for two months as investigative lawyer for the Ombudsman Commission of Papua New Guinea. She has provided written advice for the Central and East European Law Initiative of the American Bar Association, and provided advice in cases before the Refugee Review Tribunal. Alice was awarded the LawAsia Research Award in 1998, and has also been the recipient of a number of travelling scholarships and research grants. She has also taught at university institutions in Southeast Asia, Europe and South Africa. She has published extensively on topics of international law, human rights, women in business and intersex rights, and she volunteers as a lawyer for Refugee Legal, Victoria. Alice joined the board at the 2021 AGM.
Dr Aileen Kennedy – Co-Chair
Dr Aileen Kennedy is a leading scholar on Australian law relating to sex and gender, with particular focus on intersex human rights. Aileen chairs Intersex Human Rights Australia and is a member of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights LGBTIQ Sub-committee. She was recently appointed as a national director of Pride in Law. Aileen joined UTS Faculty of Law in the Law Health Justice Research Centre in April 2023 as a Chancellor’s Post-doctoral Research Fellow. Her post-doctoral project is to provide an analysis of Australian law as it impacts on the intersex population, and comprehensive recommendations for law reform. Aileen completed her PhD at UTS, and her thesis considered the impact of neurological theories of binary gender on judicial decision-making for transgender and intersex minors in Australia, Aileen has an extensive record of research and advocacy on intersex human rights law. Her forthcoming book ‘Law, Gender Identity and the Brain’ published by Routledge Press, sits at the cutting edge of law and medicine’s engagement with sex and gender to argue that law must develop greater acceptance of dynamic complexity and diversity in the domain of sex/gender. Law must retreat from its determination to create, define, and regulate artificially bounded sex categories of male and female which can lead to violations of embodied integrity and a betrayal of autonomous rights of intersex minors. Aileen is currently investigating Australian privacy laws in relation to the history and ethics of medical photography of intersex minors. She is researching fertility issues in the context of intersex variations. In her previous academic job Aileen was a Senior Lecturer at University of New England in Armidale NSW.
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