Regina Lane was raised in the heartland of Irish Catholic Victoria, if not Australia. One of ten children, she grew up on a potato and dairy farm, nestled in the shadows of an ancient volcano, called Tower Hill, in South West Victoria.

She was named Regina, in the Latin tradition, after the Queen of Heaven, and Brigid, after the patron Saint of their local church, St Brigid’s, in Crossley, where she attended Mass every Sunday as a child.

She began her professional life as a social justice worker, firstly for the Brigidine Sisters and then the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, advocating on rights for refugees, Reconciliation with Indigenous Australia, and anti-global poverty campaigns, among other issues.

She pursued her passion for social justice in the UK, working on the Make Poverty History campaign for CAFOD (The Catholic Agency for Overseas Development), the United Nations in New York and GetUp in Sydney, before joining the Australian Conservation Foundation in Melbourne in 2010 where she became a founding director of the Australian National Development Index, before becoming Director of Publishing at Garratt Publishing.

Saving St Brigid’s is her first book.