Lorena Allam is a four-time Walkley Award–winning journalist descended from the Yuwaalaraay and Gamilaraay people of northwest NSW, with forty years’ experience working in the media. Until recently The Guardian Australia’s Indigenous Affairs editor, Allam is now Professor of Indigenous truth-telling research at the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous education at the University of Technology, Sydney.
Lorena’s work at Jumbunna is to produce research and information that will help set the foundations for an ongoing process of truth telling in Australia, and continue to produce impactful journalism about Indigenous issues here and overseas.
Lorena spent 30 years as journalist and broadcaster at the ABC, working in News, Triple J, Radio National, TV and online. Lorena presented and produced Awaye!, Radio National’s Indigenous arts and culture program, for 14 years, and was the program’s first Indigenous executive producer. Lorena worked on many RN programs including Background Briefing, Breakfast, and Earshot, and was ABC Radio’s first Indigenous editor, overseeing all programming, staffing and employment strategies across the division.
In 2018, Lorena joined the Guardian Australia as its first Indigenous Affairs editor, winning four Walkley awards, two Kennedy awards and the NSW Premier’s History award for her reporting on issues including Aboriginal deaths in custody, frontier colonisation, and the Juukan Gorge disaster.
Lorena has trained broadcasters in mainstream and community media, mentored students and currently sits on the board of the Community Broadcasting Foundation.
In forays outside journalism, Lorena worked on the landmark Bringing them home inquiry and helmed the Indigenous collection at the National Film and Sound Archive.