The heart of community care in Melbourne since 1896

Jodi is a highly experienced and qualified early childhood, human services’ professional. She has had extensive management and leadership experience, spanning over 28 years, across an array of complex statutory and management roles, within local, corporate, not for profit, state, and federal agencies.

Kirsty comes to Kids First as a seasoned senior executive with experience gained across a diverse range of professional services businesses including NFPs, large corporates and private businesses. With over 15 years of experience in leading diverse, geographically distributed and multi-dimensional shared service teams across all areas of Corporate Services, Kirsty is passionate about driving sustainable growth, implementing transformative change using technology and business process improvement, and ensuring operational excellence in complex environments.

Suyin's passion for social rights of women, children and young people combined with a strong commitment to gender equality, inspired her to want to join our Board.

“By supporting kids to have a great start in life through strengthening family relationships and through early childhood education, Kids First can have a major impact on those children, their families and communities.”

Suyin's work experience covers many sectors including legal, strategy operations and management consulting in publishing, not-for-profit, government and health. Suyin describes her pride in the relationships she has formed with colleagues and team members as a career highlight.

Stephen has a passionate belief that every child has the right a healthy, happy and fulfilling life. He is proud to be part of the Kids First Board, joining a team that is dedicated to fulfilling one of the most valuable roles in society – the protection and wellbeing of our children.

“It is an absolute privilege for me to serve in an organisation that supports, protects, and empowers one of the most vulnerable sections of our community – our children.”

Stephen’s 40-year career draws on his engineering and business leadership experience, and has seen him deliver significant and complex projects both in Australia and internationally. He has had leadership roles in Asia Pacific operations in global engineering and construction organisations, and is the Founder and CEO of MarginPLUS, a management consulting company focused on business strategy and B2B development and sales. Stephen takes great pride in his contributions to the growth and development of his family as a father and a grandfather.

Simon has vast experience across policy development and advocacy, with a focus on social policy across senior roles in government and as a policy advisor in the Commonwealth Parliament.

He is most proud of the role he played in introducing universal three year old kindergarten in Victoria, and the reform of equity funding in Victorian Government schools and its introduction to early childhood. Simon sees benefits of these reforms in increasing opportunity across the community, particularly for those who need it most. He has also enjoyed nurturing the professional development many talented public servants and watching them grow and seeing their continuing contribution to good public policy and outcomes.

Simon believes that Kids First’s impact can be felt at a local scale in helping the people we work with every day, while also using scale and influence to advance practice and policy that can be adopted elsewhere.

A senior executive from the world of business, Paul brings a wealth of business acumen and experience to the board. He has worked for industry leading corporations, top-tier investment banks and the 'Big 4' accounting firms, and has expertise in finance, operations, assurance, commercial, strategy and corporate development.

Big on corporate responsibility, a career highlight for Paul was leading the well-publicised 7-Eleven wage repayment program, returning over $170 million to 4,000 employees and helped transform the organisations’ corporate culture, governance and operating standards.

Paul understands the impact that troubled family situations can have on kids. As a long-term member of our Finance & Investment Committee, he sees Kids First making a real difference to the lives of families going through tough times. As a business leader and a father, Paul sees the immense value in the programs and staff of Kids First Australia.

Drawing on thirty years of public sector experience across several jurisdictions in corporate, policy development and program management roles, Kathryn brings with her a passion for supporting families to hold kids together, and enabling children and young people to get the best start in life.

Kathryn joined our Board post Whitelion merging into Kids First, having served as Whitelion's Deputy Chair.

Prior to joining Cube Group in her current role as Partner, Kathryn worked as a Deputy Secretary in the Victorian Public Service, firstly at the Department of Health and Human Services, and then for five years at the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning. Her skills in organisational development, transformation and driving change are underpinned by a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Kathryn is a Fellow of the Institute of Public Administration Australia (Vic) and was named one of the Top 50 Public Sector Women in Victoria in 2019.

Jay is a Partner at Grant Thornton, one of the world’s leading independent assurance, tax and advisory firms. He is a Chartered Accountant, having started his professional services career in 2007.

Jay joined our Board post Whitelion merging into Kids First, having served on the Whitelion Board.

Jay prides himself on his ability to provide the efficient delivery of external audit engagements. His role at Grant Thornton includes providing advice and resolutions which address the key financial and accounting risks faced by his clients.