Kirra Pendergast
Speaker
Kirra speaks to leaders who are ready to stop performing safety and start practising it. Her keynotes are built to cut through, bringing clarity to complexity, urgency to risk, and humanity to digital culture. From Professional Learning at schools to conferences and leadership retreats Kirra's keynotes are up to date, engaging and informative.
Strategic Intervention
Kirra is brought in when organisations need to pivot fast, fix blind spots, or lead through uncertainty. She mentors leaders to recognise hidden risks, strengthen culture, and navigate digital and human crises with clarity and conviction. She diagnoses where harm hides, where policy fails, and where trust breaks—and helps rebuild from the inside out. Actionable, accountable, and always aligned to reality.
Advisory & Leadership
This isn’t coaching. It’s consequence-aware, outcome-focused partnership. Whether behind closed doors, on retainer, or mentoring emerging founders and startups, Kirra advises those making high-risk, high-impact decisions—and brings the kind of judgement that only thirty-five years of industry and frontline lived experience can deliver.
"Kirra Pendergast is one of the most respected voices in digital safety, strategy and leadership. Globally"
She’s worked across state and federal government, advised tech start ups scaling under scrutiny, and transformed the way schools and systems protect people online.
Her career spans:
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Building national safety programs still in place more than a decade later
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Leading frontline responses to cyberbullying, image-based abuse, grooming and hate
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Partnering with regulators to make laws practical, not performative
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Guiding senior leaders through reputational crisis and legal risk
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Designing real-world, human-first solutions in a digital-first world
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Media commentator and writer
Kirra’s work isn’t theoretical. It’s what you call in when there’s no room for error.
And when she speaks, people don’t just hear it—they remember it.
In 2009, Kirra founded the world’s first consulting firm solely focused on Social Media Risk Management successfully scaling it to create Safe on Social, which is a globally trusted provider of unbiased cyber safety education in schools and businesses. Kirra continues to bring the foresight, clarity, and operational discipline that keep organisations ahead of human digital risk.
For over three decades, she has stood at the fault line where human behaviour, digital culture, and systemic risk collide. Kirra doesn’t just talk about online safety—she build a the frameworks that make it possible.Long before “online safety” became a buzzword, Kirra was designing whole-of-government cybersecurity and safety strategies, identity and access management systems for hundreds of thousands of public servants, and by the mid-2000s, she was already shaping social media risk policy and advising governments in Australia and New Zealand.
Kirra saw clearly what others didn’t yet recognise: that trust and safety would define the next era of governance, education, and business.In 2013, her life was violently interrupted by a relentless cyberbullying campaign at the hands of someone she once trusted. What could have ended her career became the crucible that forged her leadership. Kirra calls that experience her superpower because it gave her the lived experience and a deep understanding of what victims of digital abuse endure, and it sharpened her resolve to design systems that don’t just respond to harm but prevent it.
Kirra has spoken directly to well over two million school students, and to hundreds of thousands of adults through global conferences some in front of audiences of 5,000 or more, other times in schools with as few as nine students in regional Australia. That range matters, because online safety isn’t a metropolitan luxury; it is a universal necessity and a public health issue.
Governments, education institutions, law firms, small businesses, regulators, and Fortune 500 enterprises retain Kirra to deliver solutions, not opinions, she helps leaders anticipate the risks they can’t yet see, redesign policies to withstand pressure, and create online safety frameworks that are not only compliant but also defensible, inclusive, and trauma-informed.
Human Digital Risk Management
Leadership
Real leadership shows up when no one’s watching. Kirra briefs boards, founders and decision-makers on what’s coming so they’re not caught off guard when it does.
Culture
Culture is shaped by what you permit, not just what you promote. Kirra helps organisations rewrite the rules around safety and power so the quiet harm doesn’t stay hidden.
Trust
Trust isn’t a brand value. It’s a daily decision. Kirra advises organisations on how to build trust from the inside out so when safety is tested, it holds.
Capability
Safety isn’t soft. It’s operational.
Kirra trains teams from frontline staff to executive leaders, to detect harm early, respond with clarity, and hold the line when it matters.
Systems
Public systems don’t get second chances. Kirra supports governments, infrastructure leads and institutions to design responses that are trauma-aware, regulator-ready, and built to withstand scrutiny.
Responsibility
This isn’t about managing risk. It’s about owning it. Wherever there are people, there is digital vulnerability. Kirra works with leaders to move safety from the policy shelf to the frontline before harm becomes a headline.
Leadership
In a world where digital risk is no longer theoretical—where harm unfolds in real time and public trust can evaporate overnight, Kirra equips leaders to respond, recover, and rebuild with precision.
This isn’t mindset work. It’s operational clarity. Coaching rooted in the reality of human digital risk: the reputational, legal, emotional, and systemic toll when safety is overlooked or under-resourced.
Kirra works with founders, executives, board chairs, principals, and public leaders navigating high-pressure environments where harm isn’t just likely—it’s already happened. Her leadership coaching builds posture under pressure, so you can act with integrity before the headlines hit, not after.
This is coaching for people who hold real responsibility.
It’s not about sounding confident in the boardroom.
It’s about knowing what to do when a child is doxxed, a whistleblower speaks up, or your platform is weaponised.
This is human digital risk leadership.
Not reactive. Not cosmetic.
Strategic. Lived. Unshakeable.
Testimonials
Kirra’s practical advice resonated strongly with our people, who were eager to know how to better understand the emerging risks and challenges of keeping themselves and their loved ones safe online.
Kirra’s straight talking approach, practical examples and advice, plus her willingness to address sensitive issues kept the audience fully engaged.
We received wonderful feedback about Kirra’s presentation from our team, which in turn has sparked further conversations on how we can improve cyber safety at home and at work.
Andrew Cresp - CIO
Bendigo Adelaide Bank
Staff reported after the session it was the best PL they had had they were grateful for the opportunity to up-skill in a world so familiar to students and their families but not always understood by them. Kirra's presentation skills are exceptional, sharing of her past experience allowed our staff to see her passion for the content and it was clear her knowledge in the area of staying safe as a professional on social media are second to none'.
Carly
Head of Wellbeing
I left the conference wanting to share every bit of advice with all my colleagues and family. Great presenter.
Kirra was engaging, easy to listen to, extremely knowledgeable and extremely enlightening. I could have listened to her for 3hrs
Australian Federal Police Officer
Conference Co-Presenter
Kirra's was really engaging and provided up-to-date information that we, as teachers, need to be on top of to best support our students.
Kirra’s stories are based on real life examples and her cheat sheets are excellent resources for staff, students and parents.
I highly recommend her. We will definitely have Kirra back annually.
Nicole
Principal
Kirra clearly has so much passion for her subject and is making a real difference to families and kids in the positive way that she does.
I just really wanted to leap on stage and give her a big hug and a cup of tea (and maybe a gin or two). I think Kirra is fabulous for being able to take her own terrible experiences and delve into this area with others with so much compassion, understanding and honesty.
The journey she has been on is helping countless others, I am sure.
Jessica
Conference Delegate
Kirra’s comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the field has been of huge benefit to growing the capability of our staff to help better tailor the supports we’re providing to students and families in our schools to manage social media. Kirra’s presentations were interactive and engaging and the flexibility of delivery has enabled us to deliver high quality professional learning across our whole organisation.
Lachlan Ellis - Child Safety
Canberra Golburn Catholic Diocese