After huge numbers of applicants from around the world, the DDPI Worldwide Board of Directors is thrilled to introduce you, our wonderful DDP community, to our new Executive Director, Professor Erica Myers-Davis.
A strategist, advocate, and relational leader, Professor Erica Myers-Davis brings nearly 30 years of experience across trauma-informed systems, Indigenous rights, and values-led leadership. Her work focuses on equity-centred leadership, place-based solutions, and helping organisations grow with integrity and care. She currently lives and works between Greece and Australia, consulting, and teaching and mentoring future change makers through the RSA Junior Fellows program at the University of Fiji.
Benjamin Hargrave, DDPI Worldwide co-Chair, writes: “Erica’s skills and experience will allow the organisation to grow in ways which we have only been able to talk and dream about so far. Her appointment will allow us to restructure and rebalance so that the great work we have been doing can blossom with a new leadership structure to hold us.”
Please join us in offering a huge, warm welcome to Erica who has these words to introduce herself:
“Joining DDPI Worldwide feels like coming home to a community that doesn’t just talk about healing—it lives it. I’ve spent nearly three decades working across health, justice, philanthropy, and systems change, and it’s rare to find an organisation so deeply grounded in relational values while also committed to global impact.
What excites me most is the way DDPI Worldwide is evolving—not just expanding reach, but deepening its roots. This is an organisation that understands healing isn’t just clinical—it’s cultural, communal, and structural. My vision is to help DDP become a global standard for relational, equity-informed healing: applied across sectors, adapted across cultures, and embedded in the systems that shape children’s—and ultimately, all of our—lives.
Can you imagine if our schools, health systems, police forces, and social care agencies all operated from this relational, trauma-informed foundation? The impact would be revolutionary. Safer classrooms. Calmer crisis responses. Stronger families. I sometimes joke—but also quietly hope—that we’ll see the day when every police unit is accompanied by a mental health support worker, much like the Starship Enterprise* with its balance of empathy and logic at the helm.
That’s the world I want to live in—and no one else is building it quite like this. So why not us?
I’m particularly passionate about uplifting Indigenous knowledge systems, honouring lived experience, and supporting local communities to lead their own change. That’s what real decolonising practice looks like—agile, respectful, and place-based.
My door is open. If you have ideas, insights, or suggestions for how we can strengthen our infrastructure, deepen our impact, or support our community better—I’d love to hear them. Together, we can grow something that is not only sustainable, but truly transformational
Please contact me at executive.director@ddpnetwork.org.
* Reference to Star Trek: The Next Generation, where the Starship Enterprise is crewed by both emotional and logical thinkers—most notably Counsellor Deanna Troi, who offers empathic insight and relational guidance, and Commander Data, an android who embodies logic and analysis. Together, they represent the ideal of trauma-informed systems: emotionally attuned, ethically grounded, and strategically responsive.“
You can read more about Erica and our whole team on a new Executive Team page in our updated DDPI Worldwide section.
