ABOUT SALLY
Sally Rugg is an activist, digital campaigner, author and speaker.
She is the Executive Director of campaign platform Change.org, supporting ordinary Australians to make the changes they want to see in the world through collective, online action. She is proud to have led a team supporting the campaigns for a Royal Commission into Aged Care, an end to LGBTIQ conversion therapies, the protection of sacred Aboriginal cultural sites, declarations of climate change emergencies across dozens of local councils and to keep many families from being separated and pulled from their communities due to deportation.
She was formerly a Campaign Director at campaign group GetUp, working on digital campaigns on dozens of progressive issues, several election campaigns and at the forefront of Australia's campaign for marriage equality. While at GetUp, Sally also worked as the organisation’s Creative Director, leading the creation of GetUp’s video, livestream projects and social media.
Sally is the author of the critically acclaimed How Powerful We Are: Behind The Scenes With One Of Australia’s Leading Activists (Hachette, 2019). Part memoir, part manifesto and part activist-handbook, How Powerful We Are pulls back the political curtain on the decades-long, people-powered campaign for equal marriage rights for LGBTIQ Australians, exposing the political, the personal and the history-making power of collective action.
How Powerful We Are is described by the Sydney Morning Herald as, “a propulsive tale” and The Lifted Brow as “a blueprint for one way effect change on a national scale” and is available in all good bookshops and as an audiobook. She is also contributing author to The Full Catastrophe, (Hardie Grant, 2019) and Growing Up Queer in Australia (Black Ink, 2019).
She co-hosts the podcast On The Job with broadcaster Francis Leach for Australian Unions, about working lives, workplace tears and triumphs and how, as we grapple with the pandemic, the nature of labor and the economy are radically changing,
Sally’s writing on activism, feminism and LGBTIQ rights is published in The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, News.com.au, The Guardian, Vice, Whimn, Pedestrian and Junkee.
She’s a regular on TV, giving commentary and advocacy as on ABC’s Q&A, The Drum, the Friday Fix, The Project, The Latest,A Current Affair, The Feed, or heard her on a variety of radio stations and podcasts.
Sally has been recognised as a finalist for Hero of the Year at the Australian LGBTI Awards (2018), Amnesty International’s Top 15 Women Championing Human Rights (2017) and won the Young Achiever Honour Award (2016). She has been profiled in Rolling Stone, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire, the Sydney Morning Herald and the West Australian.
Sally travels the country speaking at festivals, events and conferences (shoot her a message to book her to speak at your thing!). Her heart will always be on the microphone (or megaphone) at a grassroots protest.
She originally hails from Fremantle, WA, spent most of her twenties in Sydney and now lives in Melbourne with her partner Kate, their six year old, and three cats.