INTRODUCING THE PANELLISTS:
Dr Hector Georgiou – Melbourne IVF
Born and raised in Cyprus, Dr Georgiou’s Mediterranean upbringing has instilled in him a deep appreciation for family and community. He brings this ethos into his practice, working closely with patients to provide truly personalised care as they navigate their journey to building a family. He is especially passionate about supporting the LGBTQIA+ community in navigating donor conception and fertility treatment, helping make the dream of building a family a reality.
In addition to his clinical practice, Dr Georgiou holds a Clinical Senior Lectureship at the University of Melbourne where he leads research into improving women’s health. His research has been highly cited in respected medical journals and has been incorporated into professional society guidelines that influence global IVF practice.
After over a decade of practice in the UK, Dr. Georgiou now calls Melbourne home, where he lives with his husband Rob and their beloved black lab, Olive.
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Laura Villemagne-Sánchez – Senior Associate – Lander & Rogers |
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Laura is an Accredited Specialist in Family Law and a Senior Associate in Lander & Rogers’ Melbourne office. She believes in empowering her clients with realistic and empathetic advice as they navigate the family law system. Laura has specialist experience in surrogacy and fertility law, helping individuals and couples grow their families and surrogates achieve their altruistic goals. This includes drafting surrogacy agreements and obtaining substitute parentage orders in the County Court of Victoria and drafting donor agreements for intended parents and surrogates. Laura is originally from Argentina, having also lived in the United States and Spain before moving to Australia. She is fluent in Spanish and is attuned to the cultural, emotional and financially complex aspects of family law and has a particular interest in international family law and LGBTQIA+ community related matters. |
Rachel Morrison
For the past 10 years, I’ve known that raising a family is not for me. The financial commitment, the pressure of raising a child that will be “good”, the thoughts of how scary the world is, I couldn’t see myself being confident and comfortable raising a kid. But I had this body that did things, things that so many of my friends longed for theirs to do, and I felt a deep longing to experience pregnancy, without the long-term commitment of a child at the end. Thus started my journey into surrogacy. Through the help of a Facebook group, I found the most incredible couple, and we clicked like long-lost friends and fast became chosen family. In 2022, I brought their son Ari into the world. The process may seem daunting from both sides, especially when starting out. Still, I would go through it a thousand times over because the end result of this wild, amazing, smart, and crazily tall kid being with his dads is the literal best thing I have ever experienced.
Christina Georgiadis
