Welcome Everyone.
For those that do not know me, my name is Katherine Johnson and I am the Co-ordinator and Founder of the interest group, Pave the Way to Peace, otherwise simply known as PAVE. We are a group of professionals meeting monthly in NSW Parliament House courtesy of our various host Members of Parliament, the current one of which is Penny Sharpe who is the Shadow Minister for Family and Community Services, and Shadow Minister for Disability Inclusion.
NSW Parliament House has always been the home of PAVE since its inception in 1996 and we will be celebrating PAVE’s 25th B/day anniversary this year on 20 July. The idea behind PAVE was originally inspired by the impact of literature to create peace and coincided with my ideas around Buddhist philosophy that any manifestation in the external world is actually an expression of what is happening in the internal world. If we accept this Buddhist-like analogy, then developing a peaceful attitude to life begins with developing the courage internally to express the passion in one’s heart and by sharing that passion we create the experience of peace in the external world. Over the past 24 years we have had a wonderful array of guest speakers every month who have shared their passion with us, thereby creating peace.
Tonight, it is indeed my privilege to welcome the wonderful Dr Belinda Siew Luan Khong, as our inspirational guest speaker. Dr. Khong is a Consulting Psychologist and lecturer at the Department of Psychology, Macquarie University who began her career as a lawyer practising for a number of years in Malaysia and Singapore. She was a senior partner of the law firm she founded from 1980 to 1989 after which she returned to Australia to receive her PhD in Psychology from Macquarie University for her thesis: A Comparative Analysis of the Concept of Responsibility in Daseinanalysis and Buddhist Psychology – a thesis for which she received a number of awards for outstanding postgraduate student research.
Dr. Khong is currently a registered practising psychologist, a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and a Fellow of the College of Counselling Psychologists of the Australian Psychological Society (APS). She is an Adjunct Fellow at Macquarie University and a member of the editorial board for the Humanistic Psychologist with a range of interests from spirituality, psychotherapy, personal growth and healing to meditation, writing, flower arrangement, gardening and community work.
If ever there was a ‘Renaissance Man’, Dr Belinda Khong has proven to be the quintessential Renaissance Woman here to share her inspirational passion with us! Please welcome Dr. Belinda Khong.