Full Name
Jarrod Wheatley
Job Title
CEO at Professional Individualised Care, 2019 NSW Young Australian of the Year, Social Entrepreneur
Speaker Bio

Jarrod is working tirelessly to improve opportunities for those on the margins of our community. Currently, Jarrod is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Professional Individualised Care (PIC). Six years in the making, PIC is a new model of Out-of-Home Care in Australia. Generally, children who are too traumatised or high-needs for a foster home, are placed in a group home or hotel. Here they are cared for by shift workers and are at risk of becoming institutionalised. Instead, PIC places one child in the home of a Professional Therapeutic Carer (counsellors, social workers, psychologists), who can provide a therapeutic intervention. For the child, this means they have someone who can appropriately respond to their complex trauma and attachment needs but also and most importantly, someone who can offer a real relationship – a relationship that enables profound healing and lifelong transformation. Jarrod was named the NSW Young Australian of the Year in 2019. 

For four years, Jarrod ran a generalist youth service for youth at risk, followed by working abroad with refugees for two years. Upon returning to Australia, Jarrod founded Street Art Murals Australia (SAMA). Through SAMA, Jarrod used street art as a vehicle for social inclusion, breaking the negative cycle of criminalisation and alienation by commissioning murals and workshops. Street artists have now painted more than 360 murals all over the country for clients such as Pfizer and Lend Lease. Whether it is sport, art or any other medium, Jarrod believes a strengths-based approach creates connection, which can be used as a catalyst for positive change. For these initiatives, Jarrod was named the 2014 Youth Worker of the Year. 

Jarrod chooses to apply himself to challenges focused on improving the wellbeing of some of our country’s most vulnerable children and young people. Not only does he bring a strong commitment to relationship and strength-based solutions, he applies these principles in his work to realise change. As with genuine relationships, real change requires compassion, tenacity, personal reflection, and appreciation of the complexities of our connections (interpersonal and societal). Jarrod seeks to build capacity and enable and create positive change, both for individuals and in society’s structural responses to those in need. 

Jarrod Wheatley