Founder & Program Director
David Giovenco
Practitioner, educator and advocate — turning lived experience into real change for the people who need it most.
David Giovenco built KICKS Empowered on a simple conviction: that the people furthest from work are rarely held back by a lack of advice — they’re held back by what life has done to their belief in themselves. His work is about rebuilding that belief, and doing it where it counts.
Real-World Impact
Change measured in people, not paperwork
David has spent years working directly with the people most employment and support systems struggle to reach — individuals carrying trauma, disadvantage, mental ill-health and long histories of being talked at rather than worked with. His focus has never been theory. It’s been the room: who’s in it, what they walk in carrying, and who they are by the time they leave.
Through KICKS Empowered, that approach now reaches participants across employment services nationwide — women, men, young people and First Nations communities — in programs designed to create a genuine shift in self-belief, not just tick a compliance box. The results speak in completion rates, in repeat bookings from providers, and most of all in participants who arrive withdrawn and leave ready to face work and life differently.
Works where the need is
Directly alongside employment services participants facing real barriers to work and wellbeing.
Outcomes that hold
Change designed to last beyond the room, supported by an ongoing network of care.
Trusted by providers
Relied on by employment services partners who see the difference in their own participants.
DV-Informed Government Instructor
Trained to teach where safety and trauma intersect
David delivers domestic-violence-informed instruction within government and community settings — work that demands far more than technique. Teaching personal safety to people who have experienced abuse, coercion or violence requires an understanding of trauma, triggers and trust, and a way of holding a room that keeps everyone safe emotionally as well as physically.
This DV-informed lens runs through everything KICKS Empowered does. It’s why participants — particularly women and those who have survived violence — describe the programs as a rare space where they feel genuinely safe, respected and able to rebuild confidence on their own terms.
Life Coach — Becoming a Counsellor
Deepening the craft of helping people change
As a qualified life coach, David has spent years helping people set goals, shift mindset and move forward when they felt stuck. But he’s never treated that as the finish line. He is now training as a counsellor — formalising and extending the therapeutic skills that already sit at the heart of his work.
That commitment to going deeper — to meeting people not just as a motivator but with genuine clinical understanding — is what keeps KICKS Empowered grounded in real allied health practice rather than slogans. It’s the difference between encouraging someone and actually equipping them to change.
Where It Started
A martial arts foundation
David’s background is in martial arts, and it’s where he first learned how a structured, physical environment can transform the way a person sees themselves. That insight became the engine for everything that followed — but today it’s the method, not the message. The goal was never to make people fighters. It was to use experience, not lecture, to help them stand taller.
KICKS Empowered 