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  • Nicolette Beard

    Nicolette Beard

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Nicolette Beard

Graduate Diploma of Education (Primary), 2018

Winner of the 2026 Young Alumni Award

Teacher turned not-for-profit organisation co-founder, Nicolette Beard has used her learnings in the classroom to make a difference in the areas of consent education, respectful relationships and gender-based violence prevention.

In her teaching days, she identified systemic gaps in in how young people were being prepared to navigate consent, boundaries and respectful behaviour.

This led her to co-found We Are W/M in 2021, a not-for-profit organisation delivering trauma-informed, evidence-based education to schools, communities and organisations across WA and nationally.

Nicolette began We Are W/M with Kate Raston, whom she met while studying health promotion.

Upon returning home to Perth during the COVID pandemic, the pair discussed how they could combine their teaching and health expertise, which led to the start of We Are W/M.

Since its inception, over 30,000 young people and more than 200 organisations in Western Australia have been a part of school workshops, parent education sessions and professional learning.

Nicolette has been recognised with various honours, including the Young West Australian of the Year 2024 at the Western Australian of the Year Awards.

Witnessing the “small impacts” We Are W/M makes to young people has been a strong driver for Nicolette.

“We always say if, ‘We just get through to one person in that session’ - our research says we get through to more – but hearing that one person who's like, ‘Oh, that's really made a difference for me,’ or, ‘That's really changed my thoughts and ideas around this’.

“It's just really rewarding to hear them have that sort of “ah ha’ moment…to see the cogs ticking and getting to have those opportunities.

“Lots of young people, unfortunately, they don't have parents who feel comfortable having these conversations, which of course is no fault of the parent if they're not used to it, they also don't know what to say.

“So, to have people, like us come in who do know the foundations, the facts, and the research can really make it a lot easier for schools.”

Looking back on her university days at ECU Mt Lawley, Nicolette said she remembers the lecturers and teachers as being easy to converse with.

“They were all really engaged in their topics they were teaching, and I found lots of their passion for teaching sort of rubbed off on people in the class,” she recalls.

“They made you see the enjoyable side of it, while also being realistic but I found their passion for it really helped set the bar for everyone in the room moving towards a teaching role.”

Her advice to students contemplating beginning an Education degree at ECU, was that teaching has the potential to pave the way for many different career paths.

“There's so many different ways that you can go about it, and if you do it for a few years and you finally want to extend your studies and branch out, I feel like ECU was a really great path to be able to continue your studies, or change it up or do something different,” she said.

“Having all those opportunities in one place really sets the bar of what you can and can't do, and there's no limits with that.

“You can really strive for all the areas you're interested in.”

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