FREE TO BE ME

Before you explore

Acknowledgement of Country

Sovereignty was never ceded. No treaty was ever signed. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the Traditional Custodians of the lands and waters on which this work is made, and that does not become less true with time, legislation or silence.

FREE 2B ME acknowledges Elders past, present and emerging. This body of work exists because systems cause harm when they ask people to become easier to accommodate. No community in this country has been asked to do that more often, or for longer, than First Nations peoples.

We hold that as a matter of practice, not sentiment.

FREE TO BE ME phoenix by Tanya Hicks Book Tanya

MC, Speaking & Workshops

Make room for people to light up.

I love helping people share what they know, tell a story in their own words and have their moment.

MCing, speaking and conversations with room for different ways to participate.

Because sometimes the most important shift happens when something familiar becomes impossible to see in quite the same way again.

Tanya Hicks speaking with a microphone alongside four other panellists seated on stage
Panel · AusMumpreneur Gala Awards, Sydney, September 2026

Choose the shape of your gathering

Different rooms. Different ways to take part.

MC & event host

For conferences, awards and gatherings. Introductions, interviews, transitions and room connection that give other people room to share what they bring.

Keynotes & conversations

For audiences exploring identity, belonging, leadership and change. Stories and questions that connect the ideas with people’s lives.

Panels & interviews

For organisers bringing different perspectives together. Preparation, thoughtful questions and space for more than one way to contribute.

Participant workshops

For community groups and gatherings, including women’s events and LGBTQI+ conversations. Enquire about a tailored session; dates and content are agreed with the organiser.

Professional learning

For practitioners, teams and organisations. Explore access, reasoning, power and accountable support in real work.

Speaking, listening, writing, watching or taking a break can all be part of participation. Discuss access and audience needs during planning. Women’s events include trans women; each event’s audience is agreed explicitly.

Enquire about your event

What becomes possible when people don’t have to become less of themselves to belong?

That question runs through my work.

  • Disability.
  • Leadership.
  • Support.
  • Work.
  • Professional practice.
  • Parenting.
  • Community.
  • Systems.

And the ordinary places where people are asked - often quietly - to spend enormous amounts of themselves being acceptable enough to participate.

FREE 2B ME is about making more room for the person.

Tanya Hicks speaking as attendees stand and participate
Speaking · Women Changing the World, 2025

The talks

Talks, by the question they leave behind.

  1. What did “fine” cost?

    Visible functioning can hide preparation, masking, pain, support, recovery and effort nobody counted.

    What changes when we stop treating “they managed” as the whole account?

  2. What does our practice require the person to become?

    A question for professionals, services and organisations about the hidden entry requirements inside apparently good support.

    • Calmer?
    • More verbal?
    • More independent?
    • More compliant?
    • Easier to understand?
    • Less inconvenient?

    And what happens when those expectations start being mistaken for progress?

  3. Can I say no and still belong?

    Choice means more when disagreement does not quietly threaten support, relationship, employment, participation or belonging.

    A talk about authorship, consent, power and what it actually means to leave room for another person.

  4. Who is carrying the cost of this working?

    A service can look efficient because somebody else is absorbing the strain. A workplace can look productive because employees are recovering privately. A family can appear to be coping because one person never stops compensating.

    Functioning tells us something happened. It does not tell us what it cost.

  5. What happens when belonging stops requiring performance?

    What would workplaces, schools, services and communities look like if people could contribute without disappearing inside the effort?

    • Not identical participation.
    • Not identical communication.
    • Not identical capacity.

    Belonging with room for difference.

  6. Does this leave room for me to be me?

    A deceptively simple question for support, relationships, workplaces, healthcare, community and life.

    Not: does everybody get everything they want?

    But: can people remain recognisably themselves while being supported, challenged, treated, employed, included and loved?

The point is not to leave agreeing with me. The point is to leave noticing differently.

A good question should keep working after the speaker has left the room.

That is what I am interested in.

  • A sentence in a case note.
  • A person who always seems fine.
  • A policy everyone calls inclusive.
  • A support plan nobody has questioned for years.
  • The employee who delivers brilliantly and disappears afterwards.
  • The person described as “resistant”.
  • The child everyone is helping.
  • The meeting where the person being discussed has somehow disappeared from the account.

Rooms this has already been in

Where I have stood up and said it.

Tanya Hicks speaking into a microphone on a panel in front of a Women Changing the World Awards backdrop
Panel · Women Changing the World, London, 2025

The full record of events, podcasts and print sits on the media page.

Formats

Speaking shaped for the room.

KeynotesConference sessionsPanelsPodcastsMedia conversationsLeadership eventsProfessional forumsOrganisational conversations

Each engagement is shaped around the audience, purpose and context rather than pulled unchanged from a fixed deck.

I bring together lived experience, professional practice, evidence, stories and the language developed across the FREE 2B ME body of work. Not to give a room one more framework to admire. To give it something useful to carry away.

For conference organisers

You are not booking a topic list. You are bringing an idea into the room.

Together, we can shape the emphasis around:

  • belonging and identity
  • hidden effort and capacity
  • disability and neurodivergence
  • support without takeover
  • leadership and organisational conditions
  • professional practice and accountability
  • workplaces where contribution and difference can coexist
  • lived experience becoming infrastructure

The strongest talks usually begin with the question you want people still discussing afterwards.

Bring a different question into the room.

  1. What did “fine” cost?
  2. What does our practice require the person to become?
  3. Can I say no and still belong?
  4. Who is carrying the cost of this working?
  5. Does this leave room for the person to be themselves?
  6. What becomes possible when belonging no longer requires disappearing?
Enquire about speaking Professional learning Understand the Practice Read the books

Less fixing. More living.