Jess Kennedy - State Candidate 2026

Jess Kennedy is a dynamic speaker and lived experience leader who transforms difficult conversations about mental health, ADHD, addiction, and systemic reform into spaces of connection, insight, and change.

Drawing on her own journey through trauma, recovery, and advocacy, Jess shares the words she wished she had heard in her darkest moments. With honesty, humour, and authenticity, she creates psychologically safe environments where stigma is challenged, lived expertise is celebrated, and people feel empowered to speak up and support each other.

Jess specialises in tailoring her presentations to the audience — whether it’s equipping frontline workers to provide trauma-informed care, guiding executives on workforce culture and inclusion, or encouraging construction workers to look after their mates and their own wellbeing.

Her style is engaging, real, and impactful — blending evidence, lived experience, and storytelling with a good dose of dark humour.

Jess’s vision is simple yet powerful: to be the voice she wished she had during her toughest times, and to inspire change so that others don’t have to walk the same path alone.

As a queer neurodiverse woman who was born and raised in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, I naturally believe in being the change you want to see in the world.

Jess believes in owning her past as a source of empowerment — using her unapologetic lived experience voice to create meaningful change for people who often feel unheard.

As someone living with mental health challenges and in recovery from addiction, Jess understands firsthand how difficult it can be to recognise you need help, let alone feel safe enough to ask for it. Alongside this, Jess openly lives with ADHD and is a victim-survivor of LGBTQIA+ family violence. H

er experiences, even today, include. barriers to treatment, stigma within systems designed to provide care, and judgement based on both appearance and personal history.

Jess has also experienced the challenges many neurodivergent people face in maintaining sustainable employment, particularly in workplaces where trauma-informed practice is not prioritised and neurodiversity remains widely misunderstood.

Jess has used her lived experience to advocate internationally, including contributing to discussions in the Scottish Parliament in 2019 around harm minimisation and addiction reform.

Since returning to Australia in 2020, Jess has worked on the frontline within public mental health and alcohol and other drug services. Through this work, she has seen firsthand the growing impact of the housing crisis, cost of living pressures, family violence, untreated mental health, addiction and neurodiversity across Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.

She has listened to the stories of people surviving on resilience and hope while struggling to access basic support. Jess believes healthcare should be treated as a human right — not a privilege determined by income. Increasingly, essential care has become financially out of reach, while wait times for free services continue to grow beyond acceptable levels.

In 2025, frustrated by the lack of action from the Victorian Government, Jess publicly petitioned Parliament with the support of the Australian Greens to reform ADHD access in Victoria. The campaign called for training 1000 GPs to be empowered to diagnose, treat and support people with ADHD — bringing Victoria into line with other Australian states.

By choosing to live authentically without hiding who she is to make others comfortable, Jess has inadvertently become a force for change. She speaks up against social injustice, calls for reform where others remain silent, and stands beside people who are finding their voice for what may feel like the first time.

Jess believes no one should be locked out of treatment. No one. Reducing barriers to diagnosis and care gives people the opportunity not just to survive, but to thrive. It should never be utilised as a tool for profit over care and compassion. 

Running for government was never part of Jess’s original plan. However, she believes the current two-party system is failing too many people, and that continuing the same political cycle is neither sustainable nor safe.

Jess strongly opposes cuts to life-changing supports such as the NDIS and believes vulnerable communities deserve empowerment, dignity and genuine representation — not further stigma and disadvantage.

Jess is running for the seat of Bayswater to disrupt the cycle of inaction and bring an authentic lived experience voice into politics. She is committed to speaking openly, advocating fearlessly, and fighting for a community where people are supported to live with dignity, safety and opportunity.