Dr Nivek Thompson MALP, LLB, BA is the founder and executive director of Deliberately Engaging.

She is highly experienced in designing, project managing, recruiting and facilitating stakeholder and community engagement processes, and is the authorised representative in Australia and New Zealand for the online crowdsourcing platform, Synthetron.

Prior to founding Deliberately Engaging, Nivek worked in the public and not for profit sectors. Amongst other roles, she was Project Director for the New Democracy Foundation and held senior positions with the NSW Premier’s Department and several line agencies.

Nivek has a special interest in democratic innovations and the application of engagement processes to further the UN Sustainable Development Goal 16.7 to enable more responsive, inclusive and participatory decision-making at all levels.

She is an Associate at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra; an Associate at the Sydney Democracy Network, University of Sydney; and recently completed her PhD at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney.

Her thesis is titled Deliberative mini-publics: institutional design and the quality of democracy, where she applied institutionalism and the theory of democratic functions to evaluate numerous deliberative mini-publics run in Australia.

Nivek has written a number of book chapters, including “Leading edge deliberative approaches to public participation” in the Handbook of Public Participation in Impact Assessment (edited by Burdett & Sinclair) Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, UK, 2024 and  “The role of elected representatives in democratic innovations” together with a co-authored contribution (with Parry, L. and Alver, J.) on “Democratic Innovations in Australia” published in the Handbook of Democratic Innovation and Governance (edited by Elstub, S. & Escobar, O.) Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, UK, 2019.

Nivek is also the host and producer of Real Democracy Now! A podcast where she converses with thought leaders from around the world about democracy and democratic reform. She is also the producer of other podcast series including Facilitating Public Deliberations.