Michael Weston

About Michael

Michael Weston spent more than twenty years in the mining industry, latterly as a leader within it, before a sudden collapse left him with a life-changing acquired brain injury. What followed — a long recovery, and the depression and PTSD that came with it — reshaped what he understood about resilience and about the cost of getting work and life out of balance.

He now speaks as a mental health advocate, and the industry background is what makes him effective rather than merely sympathetic. Weston knows the environments where talking about mental health is hardest, because he led teams in one of them, and colleagues from before the injury describe him returning to speak to their crews and changing how people thought. His keynote Head Above Water tells the story straight: the collapse, the recovery, and what he has since worked out about preventative measures and coping strategies that apply at every level of an organisation.

Weston's argument to employers is practical. He works with organisations on creating psychologically safe and sustainable workplaces — building and embracing a mentally healthy team, and taking seriously the influence leaders have on the wellbeing of the people around them, above and below. For safety conferences, leadership programs, mining and resources events and mental health awareness days, he offers lived experience of great adversity delivered with enough candour to prompt genuine self-reflection, and enough structure to leave an audience with something to do about it.