Dr Tessa Opie is the founder and director of inyourskin® and is an advocate for healthy and consenting relationships. She has extensive experience in education delivery, working as an educator across the government, not-for-profit, and private sectors, and a guest lecturer at various universities. Tessa has worked as an expert consultant for several Education Departments including, the South Australian Department for Education, the Western Australian Department of Education and the Northern Territory Department of Education.
In 2018, Tessa co-published a national position paper, as lead author, detailing comprehensive, evidence based sexuality and relationships education in Australian schools. She has also recently published a paper which considers the role of sex positive education in the prevention of sexual assault among high school students.
In 2019, Tessa worked as a consultant for a 4-part SBS series, The Hunting.
In 2021, Tessa was involved in the National Health and Physical Education Curriculum Leaders Forum, presenting her work on best practice consent education.
More recently, Tessa has been collaborating with Dr Monique Mulholland and Dr Fida Sanjakdar (Monash University) on a project exploring Relationships and Sexuality Education for multicultural classrooms. She has also been collaborating with Mancel College to develop a Relationships and Sexuality Education curriculum for young people with Language Disorder. Tessa has also provided expert consultation regarding the National Framework for Respectful Relationships Education that has been developed to provide guidance to primary and secondary schools in the delivery of evidence based respectful relationships education programs.
This year, Tessa has partnered with Kerrin Bradfield (Open Book Project) to establish Respect Collective: RSE for the real world. This project has seen the development of a contemporary, plug-and-play curriculum for years 7 – 12 which will be available to schools at the end of 2023.
Jana Gomes (she/her) is a Senior Sexuality Educator with a background in psychology, sexology and sexual health. Jana has worked with a broad range of audiences including primary and secondary school students, university and residential college students, teachers and parents, and professional athletes. Jana is our main Sexuality Educator for players in the Australian Football League and National Rugby League.
Jana’s approach is sex positive, evidence based, and harm reduction focused. It requires participants to actively consider their relationship values, attitudes, and expectations, in a social climate that feeds us often misleading messages about sex and relationships.
In 2022, Jana presented at the National Association of Australian University Colleges annual conference on the topic of, ‘Best practice consent education’.
Jana is the State Secretary for the Society of Australian Sexologists Ltd (SA/NT Branch).
The Society of Australian Sexologists is Australia’s leading peak body for the regulation and accreditation of psychosexual therapists and sexuality educators. Representing high standards and a commitment to the discipline, the Society have developed a system to ensure the public are protected with only trained, qualified and experienced sexologists providing sexuality education in Australia.
Dr Tessa Opie and Jana Gomes are members of the Society of Australian Sexologists.
inyourskin® is a proud supporter of Plan International.
