Isabelle is a prominent leader successfully driving system change on the critical issues of our time, helping build a fairer, safer and more inclusive Australia.  

In 2017, Isabelle founded Grata Fund, a leading not-profit based at the University of New South Wales that acts as a campaigner, litigation incubator and funder for people and communities challenging systemic gridlocks across three key areas: human rights, climate injustice and democratic freedoms.  

As Executive Director of Grata, she leads the strategy and collaboration with some of the nation’s top legal minds, civil society organisations and community advocates to support and design cases to advance and protect rights and freedoms. Grata has incubated numerous landmark cases that have set significant precedents and shifted the dial on important subjects, from challenging climate change injustice, to exposing abuse in offshore refugee detention centres, and establishing new rights to humane housing in remote First Nations communities. She has helped facilitate almost $2M in philanthropic case funding from passionate supporters. Prior, Isabelle had more than 10 years’ experience as a director and lawyer at organisations including Getup, Immigration Advice and Rights Centre, and as a solicitor at Clayton Utz, where she acted for First Nations clients seeking stolen wages reparations in remote East Kimberley. 

Isabelle is the author of Courting Power: Law Democracy and the Public Interest in Australia and an expert in the intersection of the law, politics and power. As Australian communities evolve, Isabelle helps government, law makers and decision makers understand key societal shifts in values and expectations and speed up change to avoid the civil unrest and inequalities that impact other countries. She is known globally for influencing the way the law, civil society and social movements work together to create a fairer world.  

Isabelle was named the 2022 Emerging NFP Leader in Women’s Agenda Leadership Awards, is a Churchill Fellow, and the 2021 Women’s Leadership Institute of Australia Fellow, awarded to women “who are leaders in their respective fields, women who have innovative approaches and the courage, conviction and capacity to create real change”.  

A mum of one, she is also part of the big conversations about providing more support for working mothers and female leaders.