Making Inclusion the Default, Not an Add-On

Suzanne Gearing is CEO of Physical Disability Australia, an organisation led by and for people with physical disability. She brings leadership and advocacy experience across nonprofit and peak-body sectors, with expertise in strategic growth, partnerships, financial stewardship and building people-centred workplace cultures. Her work focuses on dismantling physical, attitudinal and systemic barriers to participation and ensuring people with disability have a meaningful place in social, economic and political life.

Describe your career trajectory and how you got to your current position.

I’ve deliberately chosen roles that fight for the rights of people who are too often left out of the conversation, or, in the case of Physical Disability Australia, designed out instead of designed in. My path has moved through corporate and not-for-profit sectors, which taught me that good intentions need good balance sheets.

I’ve focused on strategic, sustainable growth and building positive workplace cultures where people want to turn up on Monday and are still smiling and loving their job on Friday. Each role added another tool to the kit. Eventually, that kit was substantial enough that leading Physical Disability Australia felt like a logical next step. There was no five-year plan, just a clear compass.

What drives you to do the work that you do?

The moments when something shifts. A business installs a ramp and discovers a whole new customer base. A policymaker stops talking about people with disability and starts talking with them. A young person realises their disability isn’t the problem; the barriers are. Those moments are rocket fuel.

I’m also driven by stubborn optimism. I genuinely believe we can build communities where inclusion isn’t an add-on but the default setting. We’re not there yet, but we get closer every day, and I’m far too impatient to sit around waiting.

If you could go back in time, what advice would you give yourself?

There’s no such thing as “no”—only “not yet” or “not that way”. Treat every closed door as a design brief.

I’d also tell myself to start a “proof file” on day one. Keep every thank-you note, every win and every time someone says you changed their mind. When a door seems nailed shut and double-locked, open that file and read it aloud—loudly, if necessary.

And stop apologising for taking up space. The chair was empty. Sit in it.

Any words you live by day to day?

“Be the ramp, not the step.” Every day, in every conversation, I can choose whether I’m a barrier or a bridge for someone else. A step says, “You can’t come in.” A ramp says, “Come on up, we’ve been waiting for you.”

I also remind myself that courage is contagious. When one person speaks up, it gives the next person permission to do the same. So I try to go first, even when it seems terrifying.

What are you currently watching, reading or listening to?

I’m reading Michael Talbot’s *The Holographic Universe*, which proposes that reality itself might be a kind of hologram. Somewhere along the way, I developed a keen interest in physics. Ten years ago, I’d have run screaming from an equation; now I read about quantum theory before bed, which my friends find impressive, alarming or just downright odd—probably the latter.

Perhaps it makes sense. Physics is about questioning what we assume is fixed and discovering that everything is more interconnected than it looks. That’s not a bad lens for advocacy, and it’s excellent dinner-party material.