Sam Alderton-Johnson is the Founder and Director of Impact Policy, a social policy consulting firm working at the intersection of co-design, systems reform, and lived experience. His work focuses on redesigning complex public systems including child protection, justice, health, and community services through approaches grounded in power-sharing and relational accountability.

A childhood survivor of forced child removal and foster care systems, Sam brings lived experience into spaces where policy and design decisions are made. His work interrogates how power operates within institutions and challenges designers to move beyond consultation toward structural change.

Sam’s River System co-design model reframes co-design as a decolonising practice one that recognises sovereignty, redistributes decision-making authority, and centres communities who have historically been designed for rather than with.

At UX Australia, Sam argues that if co-design does not shift power, it is not co-design and challenges the design community to reckon with its role in either maintaining or dismantling inequity.