Ethnobility founder, disability rights activist and diversity advocate Sara Shams issued a rallying call to the media and marketing industry about the power of inclusion and representation at last week’s Inclusivity with Impact breakfast briefing. Here is a condensed, edited version of her powerful speech on why inclusion is important and what the industry needs to do better to get it right.
When you turn on the TV, scroll through your social media feed, or walk past a billboard, how often do you see someone who looks like you, sounds like you, lives like you? For some of us, that happens all the time in this room and anywhere else. But for others, people like me, it used to be very rare, and sometimes it still is.
And yet, every single time I see someone like me, it changes something deep inside me. It reminds me that I belong in those spaces, that my story, my culture, my disability, aren’t barriers, but a part of the rich diversity that makes Australia what it is.
That’s the power of representation, and that’s where cultural change begins.
Growing up as a brown South Asian woman and a double above knee amputee, I almost never saw myself represented.
When I did, the stories were one dimensional. People of Color portrayed three stereotypes, and disability framed it as either a tragedy or inspiration. So I began to shrink myself, and the more I shrank, the more invisible I became.
I was born with a little bit of a disability. As you can see, I felt ashamed of my cultural roots and my disability, two of the biggest parts of who I am. I hid my disability as much as possible and shied away from sharing my heritage, so I used to wear a lot of long skirts and stockings to hide my legs, and that’s really what I did for almost 30 years of my life, which is a big part of your life.
Today, I proudly wear clothes that show my legs and my Indian earrings wherever I can.
Performance vs representation
I remember once being invited to a diversity campaign. I was excited, until I read the brief. Everyone else was described as vibrant, dynamic, moving.
Mine said, sitting, smiling, holding the product. When I offered to pose, standing with my prosthetics, like I usually do, they said, ‘Oh, no, we want to highlight your difference’. That was the moment I realised diversity without dignity isn’t inclusion. If someone else is controlling your story to make themselves feel comfortable, that is they don’t want to sit in their discomfort. It’s not representation, it’s more performance.
When our stories are presented narrowly, the world learns to see us that way too. The gap between who we are and how we’re perceived shapes our careers, our social lives, the spaces we’re welcomed into and the spaces we’re shut out of. It impacts how we see ourselves and what we believe is possible.
For too long, inclusion has been spoken about as something nice to have. But inclusion done well is transformative and true. Inclusion isn’t about presence. It’s about power. Who gets to define the narrative, who decides what’s relatable, what’s beautiful and what’s normal? That’s the power of media and brands. [This industry] holds the power to reinforce stereotypes or the power to rewrite them.
Audiences don’t engage because they’re targeted. It’s because they feel seen. Australia is one of the most multicultural nations in the world. More than half of us were born overseas or have a parent who was and yet, when we look at our screens, that richness isn’t always reflected.
Shift 20 Initiative
Today, disability is too often framed as an inspiration or objects of pity. Around 21 per cent of the Australian population live with a disability, yet only 2 per cent are represented on screen. And when you add an intersectional lens to it, disability and cultural diversity, we don’t even have that data, but what we do know is those stories are missing a couple of years ago.
I was part of the Shift 20 Initiative, where I replaced a non-disabled lead in an existing ANZ TV commercial (see above). The goal was to normalise disability representation, to show how disabled people simply living, working, existing.
The impact was incredible. It normalized disabled people, doing everyday things, being successful, working in professional roles on acting and film sets.
I’ve learned that diversity isn’t just about who’s in front of the camera, it’s about who’s behind it.
When you have culturally diverse sets and disabled creatives in the room, you get richer, more authentic stories. I’ve been on sets where people took the time to ask how my lived experience could shape the scene, and that made all the difference. That’s what authentic representation looks like, collaboration and not assumption.
Through Ethnobility, I’ve seen how authentic representation can be both strategic and transformative. One of my favorite projects through Ethnobility was when we co-designed a campaign with community members, not just for them. At the end of the session, a young participant said to me, this is the first time anyone’s asked me how we want to be represented, not how others think we should be seen. That single comment stayed with me because it captured what authentic storytelling really is. It’s about shifting from speaking for, to creating with.
When inclusion is genuine, it builds three things that you just cannot buy.
- Trust, because people can tell when they’re being tokenised versus respected. Trust me, I know when it’s a box sticking exercise.
- Relevance because stories rooted in truth connect emotionally and culturally.
- Loyalty, because when people feel they belong, they stay, which leads to those profits.
Strategy vs charity
Authentic storytelling isn’t charity, it’s strategy. It’s what drives cultural change. But one campaign, one casting and one image isn’t enough. Real impact happens when representation moves into responsibility, when people of color, people with disabilities, people from intersectional backgrounds, are not just in front of the camera, but behind it, writing the scripts, making the creative calls, shaping the stories
Culture doesn’t shift when we feature diversity, it actually shifts when we center it, and that’s how we move from visibility to voice, from inclusion to influence.
Cultural change can’t be a campaign. It must be a commitment. It happens when inclusion becomes part of your brand, DNA, your values, when we start asking who’s missing, whose story isn’t being told.
As a pharmacist, a health advocate and a storyteller, I’ve seen that real systemic change doesn’t happen overnight. It begins when representation grows.
When people see someone who looks like them, whether it’s a woman in a hijab in a health ad, or a person with disability talking about medication safety, they’re more likely to engage. That’s the real world impact of authentic representation.
True inclusivity with impact means shifting the question from how do we include them to how do we work together to redefine what inclusion looks like.
I invite you to think differently, not just about who’s on screen, but also who’s behind the camera, not just about representation, but about resonance, and not just about diversity but dignity, because when people see themselves reflected authentically, not as stereotypes, It changes how they see media, how they see themselves, how they think what they can achieve, and how others see them as well.
So if you work in marketing, media or stereotypical storytelling, here’s where you can start bringing lived experience into the room early. Don’t just consult, co-create and challenge your defaults, your unconscious and conscious bias when you’re casting, briefing or storyboarding. Please ask who’s missing and what you can do to ensure that they’re there the next time.
