Monique Toohey, Managing Director; Psychologist & Cultural Intelligence Advisor

  • Worked for 30 years across a variety of industries and has gone on to provide consultant services based on her subject matter expertise (Education, Government, Youth & family Services, Multicultural organisations and in the commercial sector)

  • Founded Nasihah Consulting Group Pty Ltd in 2005 to deliver culturally safe psychological services, project and events to culturally and linguistically diverse and marginalised clients. She has project managed countless education, capacity building, leadership  and mental health projects within multicultural communities and provided consultative support and training to various organisations in Australia and abroad.

  • She has been a provider of various types of cross-cultural and cultural competence training since the late 90’s drawing on her own experiences as an Australian Muslim woman and her work with culturally and linguistically diverse and marginalised communities and clients. Here she fall in love with speaking to diverse audiences about culture, cultural differences, cross-cultural communication and developing an approach to speaking about culture with curiosity and kindness.

  • As a result of her clinical expertise and passion for intercultural education, she was approached by the Australian Catholic University after delivering in-house training to university staff to author the curriculum for a new unit in the Masters of Clinical Counselling course, ‘Multicultural Counselling’. She was subsequently the lead lecturer of this unit for 6 years (Melb & Syd). She continues to guest lecture in Cultural competence in Clinical Psychology masters courses at other universities.

  • By far the most robust training Monique has delivered to organisations wanting to improve their interpersonal and team effectiveness in multicultural contexts is Cultural Intelligence (CQ) training.

  • In 2007 she became a certified Cultural Intelligence (CQ) facilitator (Advanced) through the Cultural Intelligence Centre (CIC) (USA) and has trained staff from over 400 organisations.

  • Monique loves talking about all things culture and did so at TEDx Docklands with the keynote ‘Culture eats individuality for breakfast’, where she unpacks the importance of developing the relational skill set that is cultural intelligence.

  • Notable presentations or commentary featuring Monique’s work in the area of culture, psychology, cultural differences, racism and cultural intelligence include:

    • Amazon Prime docuseries ‘Unheard’ (2021),

    • TV interviews (ABC News, Lateline, Hungry Beast)

    • Press: The Australian, The Age, The Herald-Sun, ABC and 3AW radio.

    • Tasmanian Annual Peave Trust Lecture (2017)

    • Melbourne Writer’s Festival (2016)

Monique has a number of published works, drawing on her expertise in relationships, culture and social psychology.

AREAS OF EXPERTISE

  • Cultural Intelligence and embedding The CQ model.

  • Cultural intelligence and mental health service delivery

  • Cultural intelligence in psychological service delivery

  • Cultural intelligence in the counselling room

  • Culturally conscious leadership

  • Harnessing team strengths to build confident teams