Our team
Esra Erkilic
Principal Psychologist | Founder of Empowered People & Co
Esra Erkilic is a Registered Psychologist with a deep commitment to walking alongside individuals navigating trauma, adversity, and complex life experiences. With over a decade of experience spanning crisis care, domestic violence services, and forensic settings, Esra brings a rare combination of clinical expertise, lived insight, and fierce advocacy to her work. She has supported both victims and perpetrators of crime, and her passion lies in helping clients reclaim their sense of safety, identity, and power.
Her therapeutic approach is grounded in evidence-based practice and delivered through a trauma-informed lens. Esra draws on a wide range of modalities tailored to the unique needs of each client, including CBT, TF-CBT, DBT, ACT, EMDR, Schema Therapy, and play-based interventions. She has a strong interest in working with complex trauma, personality disorders, neurodiversity, and emotional regulation across the lifespan from children to older adults.
Driven by her own experiences as a carer and a woman of culturally diverse heritage, Esra brings warmth, curiosity, and real-world understanding to the therapy space. She is also the creator of a growing suite of therapeutic programs and resources, spanning post-incarceration support, children’s storybooks, and emotional regulation kits, designed to empower individuals and communities beyond the therapy room.
Above all, Esra is building something that extends beyond the therapy room. Through Empowered People & Co, she is creating a space where people feel heard, supported, and empowered, working toward a future where psychology drives community empowerment, systemic reform, and meaningful, lasting change.
Nicoli Camargo Almeida
Provisional Psychologist & Positive Behaviour Support Practitioner
Nicoli is a Provisional Psychologist and Positive Behaviour Support Practitioner dedicated to helping individuals navigate life’s challenges with clarity and confidence. She works with children, adolescents, and adults, offering support for a wide range of emotional, behavioural, and developmental challenges.
Her approach is collaborative and personalised, focusing on understanding each person’s unique experiences and building on their existing strengths. Nicoli aims to create a warm, safe, and non-judgemental space where clients feel genuinely heard and supported, allowing them to explore their thoughts, emotions, and behaviours with confidence while working towards meaningful and lasting change.
Nicoli draws on evidence-based therapeutic approaches and tailors her interventions to suit each individual’s needs, goals, and stage of life. She is passionate about empowering clients with practical strategies and skills that can be applied in everyday situations, supporting emotional regulation, resilience, and improved overall wellbeing.
Nicoli also provides comprehensive psychological assessments, offering clear, detailed insights to assist with diagnosis, intervention planning, and access to appropriate supports. She is committed to delivering reports that are both clinically thorough and easy to understand, ensuring clients, families, and referrers feel informed and confident in the next steps.
She values strong collaboration with families, educators, and other allied health professionals, recognising that a holistic, team-based approach leads to the best outcomes. Nicoli is dedicated to ongoing professional development and delivering high-quality, ethical, and compassionate care aligned with best practice standards.
Zeynep (Zee) Terzi
Practice Manager
Zee is the backbone of day-to-day operations at Empowered People & Co, bringing clarity, structure, and calm to the complex moving parts of a growing practice.
With a strong background in Human Resources, Organisational Psychology, Recruitment, and Customer Success, Zee oversees clinic operations, compliance, systems coordination, and stakeholder communication with exceptional precision and care. She is deeply trusted for her discretion, attention to detail, and ability to manage sensitive information with professionalism and respect. Her calm, approachable manner creates a sense of stability for both the team and clients, and her work behind the scenes enables clinicians to focus fully on therapeutic and assessment work.
Beyond operational management, Zee plays an integral role in the ongoing development of the practice. She contributes to the refinement of systems and workflows, supports the planning and implementation of new projects, and brings thoughtful input into how the business evolves. Her strength lies not only in maintaining what works, but in helping shape what comes next.
Zee is known for her ability to create order without rigidity. She supports clinicians behind the scenes while ensuring that clients, referrers, and stakeholders experience the practice as seamless, responsive, and deeply people-centred.
Guided by strong values around trust, collaboration, and quality, Zee helps ensure Empowered People & Co remains not only well-run, but deeply aligned with its mission to provide thoughtful, ethical, and high-quality, client-centred care. Her blend of strategic thinking, organisational leadership, and genuine care for people positions her as a key contributor to the practice’s long-term stability and future growth.
Deslinder Gimble
NDIS Advocate | Founder of DBG Consultancy
Deslinder began her career with a degree in Anthropology, driven by a genuine curiosity about people, cultures and the way we experience the world. She travelled extensively and spent 10 years living and working overseas, gaining a broader perspective on people, families and different ways of life. Today, she brings those experiences together in her work at DBG Consultancy.
She understands that navigating the NDIS can feel complicated, frustrating and, at times, completely overwhelming. Her teaching qualification, strengthening her ability to take complicated information and make it easier to understand.
Her approach is practical: cut through the jargon, understand what really matters and work out what needs to happen next. Deslinder believes families should understand their options and feel confident asking questions and advocating for the supports their loved one needs.
No unnecessary jargon. No judgement. Just clear, practical guidance. Because sometimes you don't need another complicated explanation — you just need someone in your corner who knows how to help.