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bio

Sally is the Founder and Director of the National Australia Indonesia Language Awards (NAILA) and currently works at the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department. She holds Bachelors of Laws and International Relations and two diplomas of languages in Arabic and Indonesian. In 2013 Sally was awarded the Prime Minister’s Australia Asia Award for her first class research examining the effects of corruption on trade and aid in the Australia-Indonesia relationship. Sally has worked as a lawyer, paralegal and seasonal clerk, at commercial law firms over the past five years, including at MinterEllison, Herbert Smith Freehills, Baker & McKenzie and Ashurst’s Melbourne and Jakarta offices. During her most recent stay in Indonesia from 2013-2015 Sally worked as a consultant providing executive advice and training to staff at the Centre for World Trade Studies in Yogyakarta, as well as held the role of First Secretary to the Indonesian Ambassador to the WTO at the Ninth Ministerial Conference in Bali. Prior to this Sally lived in Tunisia, Hong Kong and Sri Lanka where she worked at Colombo University’s Centre for the Study of Human Rights and won an Australia Arab Chamber of Commerce Language Award for her proficiency in Arabic. Sally has spent 12 years traveling between Australia and Indonesia for work, study and pleasure and maintains technical proficiency in Indonesian/Malay, evidenced by her first place award at the International Malay Speaking Competition: Prime Minister’s Championship (PABM). As a co-founding member of the Australia-Indonesia Youth Association (AIYA), Sally is passionate about strengthening the bilateral relationship through people-to-people links. Sally believes that trust and mutual understanding are essential to maintaining Australia’s place in the world and that communication (and foreign language skills) is key to achieving this.