About Michael Elwan

My name is Michael Elwan. I’m the founder of Lived Experience Solutions (LEXs), an award-winning Accredited Social Worker, and a PhD candidate in mental health. I’m also a husband and a father of two; a boy and a girl. My daughter carries the name of my late mother, a quiet way of keeping her story close.

I hold many roles, but none of them explain why I do this work.

My story begins in Alexandria, Egypt. I was raised by my grandparents, my first experience of unconditional love. I lost them both within a year. At fourteen, I became my father’s carer after a massive stroke left him blind. For two years, I was his eyes and his hands. He died when I was sixteen. Not long after, I cared for my mother through years of mental health challenges until she ended her life.

In my culture, grief was carried in silence. Masculinity meant endurance. Vulnerability had no language. What I now recognise as trauma was, back then, simply life.

Portrait of Michael Elwan, accredited social worker and therapist, smiling on outdoor step

When I migrated to Australia in my late twenties, I arrived alone. No family. No safety net. English as my second language. What I did bring was a quiet resolve to build something different from what I had known. I started from the ground up; volunteering, working nights in residential care and youth work, studying in every spare hour, slowly building a life shaped by service and meaning.

Today, I hold qualifications across mental health, psychology, leadership, and business, including:

PhD Candidate (Mental Health) - Charles Sturt University, Australia
Master of Social Work (Specialisation: Counselling for Loss & Grief) [Credit] - University of New England, Australia
Diploma in Psychology (Merit) - Austin Peay State University, USA
Graduate Certificate in Mental Health (Credit) - Australian Catholic University
MicroMasters in Organisational Psychology (High Distinction) - University of Canterbury, New Zealand
MicroMasters in Business Leadership (High Distinction) - University of Queensland, Australia
MBA (Distinction) - Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK
Bachelor of Business (Accounting) - Alexandria University, Egypt

Over time, that path led me into senior leadership roles across mental health, suicide prevention, disability, and community services. I have had the privilege of leading teams, supporting thousands of people each year, and contributing to national and state work in areas such as lived and living experience leadership, peer workforce development, and culturally responsive practice.

Today, my professional life spans therapy, supervision, training, research, and system-level work. I serve as a national and state advisor across multiple governance and policy groups shaping Australia’s mental health and suicide prevention landscape. Alongside this, I continue my doctoral research, focused on how lived and living experience can be held with dignity and integrity in leadership and organisational life.

I am an Accredited Social Worker and a full member of the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW), and a member of the Australian Association for Cognitive and Behaviour Therapy (AA-CBT). I include this here to quietly affirm that my work is grounded not only in experience, but in professional accountability and ethical practice.

In 2025, I was honoured to receive the WA Mental Health Award - Lived Experience Impact & Inspiration,followed later that year by the AASW National Excellence Award - Social Worker of the Year, the highest individual honour in the profession. I have also been recognised as a Finalist for the WA Multicultural Awards - Sir Ronald Wilson Leadership Award, and the R U OK? Barbara Hocking Memorial Award.

I’ve had the privilege of speaking and presenting at national conferences including the National Suicide Prevention Conference, WA Mental Health Conference, WA Peer Supporters Network Conference, the Finding North e-Symposium; contributed to research translation as Writer-in-Residence with the ALIVE National Centre for Mental Health Research Translation, and written for journals including The Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine (Cambridge Press). Yet despite all of this, my heart remains closest to the quiet, human moments; sitting with people as they make sense of pain, identity, grief, relationships, and the long shadows of responsibility.

That is why I founded LEXs.

LEXs is an independent practice rooted in lived and living experience, cultural humility, and a deep belief in human dignity. Through therapy, social work supervision, peer work supervision, training, consultancy, and public speaking, I work with individuals and organisations to create spaces that feel safer, fairer, and more humane. My guiding principle is simple; building systems that hold people, not harm them.

If you are looking to work with someone who understands trauma, migration, caregiving, identity, and grief not only in theory but in lived reality, and who brings that understanding into careful, ethical practice, I would be glad to connect.

Not to fix you.
Not to impress you.
But to walk alongside you as you find steadier ground.