Emily Dwyer, Founder and Co-Director

Emily Dwyer is a trans woman, a humanitarian and development professional, and a former journalist. After graduating in Philosophy from the University of Adelaide Emily found her quickly unemployed, and joined the campus radio station (now Radio Adelaide). Over the following ten years she volunteered and worked in community radio stations in Australia, she was a broadcaster and producer with the Radio National network of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and worked as a freelance foreign correspondent in Southeast Asia (filing for the ABC, BBC, CNN and other broadcasters). In 2004 she took a 3 month job in Herat, Afghanistan, to help startup a campus radio station Saday-e-Jawan. Four years later she left Afghanistan, after managing the USAID-funded national university journalism training program and establishing a national humanitarian radio service for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.  Emily moved to Bangkok in 2008, as South Asia Regional Manager for the US NGO Internews, managing media development and humanitarian information projects in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India and elsewhere. She moved to Washington DC with Internews in 2011, as Vice President of Afghanistan Programs, to manage the USD21 million AMDEP program. She subsequently worked as a Senior Program Officer at the United States Institute of Peace, also in Washington DC, before returning to Australia in 2014.  She returned to postgraduate study at the University of Melbourne, worked with Melbourne’s LGBTIQ+ community radio station JOY94.9 as Specialist Program Director and with Oxfam Australia as a Youth Engagement Advisor for International Programs. She co-founded Edge Effect in 2017 and is having the time of her life.