Van Badham is a writer, activist, feminist, unionist, occasional broadcaster, theatremaker and one of Australia's most controversial social commentators. Her professional interests range from politics, economics, media and environmental causes to technology, travel, the arts, pop culture and urban design.

In addition to a weekly column for Guardian Australia, she is a regular guest on ABCTV’s The Drum and Politics HQ on SkyNews, and has repeatedly featured on the ABC’s Q and A, Channel 10’s The Project and Channel 7's Sunrise. Her writing has appeared in The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Cosmopolitan, Daily Life, Southerly, Women's Agenda, Britain's Daily Telegraph, Broadly in the USA, and in anthologies for UQP, Hardie Grant and Monash University Press.

A popular and lively panellist and MC, she has hosted or participated as a speaker in conferences and events for the Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Sydney Opera House, Ethical Jobs, the Women’s Legal Service Queensland, the Summer Play Festival in New York, the University of Rome, the Institute of Ideas UK, the Women Playwrights International Conference in Stockholm, the Melbourne Writers Festival, Jobs Australia and many, many others. She also runs a campaign consultancy, specialising in media and social media training; her clients have included the Australian Council of Trade Unions as well as tutoring media masterclasses for the Guardian.

As a theatremaker, Van’s plays The Bull, The Moon and the Coronet of Stars and Muff have been published by Currency Press, and a novel, Burnt Snow, by Pan Macmillan. As a playwright, her work has been performed across Australia and the UK, in the US and Canada, and in Iceland, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia, Germany and Austria, and she is the recipient of three Premier's awards for stage writing.

She is presently also the Vice President of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance Victoria, the Chair of the Queen Victoria Women’s centre and sits on the Women’s Ministerial Advisory Committee for the state government of Victoria.