Our people

Executive

Chief Executive Officer: Collette Brennan

Chief Operating Officer: John Di Natale

Administration

Accounts Manager: Ilona Molyte
Accounts Coordinator: Casey Wood
Administration & Governance Manager: Luke Gianfriddo
Administrator: Lydia Kerrell-Vaughan
HR Officer: Bhawna Sharma

Building & Facilities

Site Operations: Jason Kain
Site Coordinators: Nick Ashwood, Paul Blakeney, Ryan Boutland, Jesse Brogden, Neil Richard Cook, Jason Hood, David L Morris, Lucien Perry.

Development & Fundraising

Head of Development: Enrica Longo
Grants and Administration Coordinator: Callum Stewart

Marketing & Communications

Marketing Manager: Anne McManus
Marketing Coordinator: Victoria Hermitage

Programming

Producer: Marcia Ferguson
Associate Producer: Sherry McLane Alejos

Tenancy

Tenant Community Manager: Leonie Wray
Tenant Community Coordinator: Shani Cowell

Venue Hire

Venues and Events Manager: Kristy Foulcher
Venue Hire Coordinator: Alex Hayes
Events and Venues Assistant: Tayzha Lee Tasman
Event Operations & Production Coordinator: Harvey Ogle

Board

Gillian Franklin, Chair 

Gillian Franklin is recognised as one of Australia’s most innovative marketers with a passion and commitment to supporting women in business. She is the Founder and former Managing Director of The Heat Group Pty Ltd – one of Australia’s leading personal care companies. Gillian is also an accomplished Company Director, with broad experience over 30 years in Director, Deputy Chair and Chair roles across business, sport, the Arts, community and medical industries. Previous experience includes Melbourne Theatre Company (10 years), CEDA (7 years) and Deputy Chair of The Australian Grand Prix (Director 23 years) amongst many others. Gillian is also a Founding member of the Australian pre-eminent women in business organisation, Chief Executive Women (CEW).

Justin Blumfield

Since retiring from a successful 148 game AFL career highlighted with the achievement of an AFL Premiership with the Essendon Football Club in 2000, Justin has spent the past 14 years working within the commercial property industry. Justin commenced his property career with top 50 ASX listed property company, The GPT Group. He held various positions during this time in both the retail and commercial office sectors including Marketing Executive, Retail Manager, Centre Manager and Regional Manager in Victoria.

Currently Justin is the General Manager Residential for Ingenia Communities. Prior to joining Ingenia Communities, Justin spent seven years at Vicinity Centres, a world leading top 30 ASX retail property group owning and managing circa $20 billion of commercial real estate. Most recently, he held the position of Director of Shopping Centre Management. In this role, Justin was responsible for the strategic asset management of Vicinity’s 56 core shopping centre assets across Australia, including the country’s leading outlet brand DFO.

Paul Bowers

A seasoned purpose-driven leader with a track record of building and leading high-performing teams and partnerships. I’m recognised as a supportive peer, a mentoring leader and a generous partner. Kind, insightful, driven and tenacious, I deliver nation-scale purpose while growing capability.

Values-driven, I’m both strategic and action oriented, delivering by balancing purpose, stakeholders, customers and profit. A noted specialism lies in connecting the big picture to all the tiny details: shaping strategy from vision, turning strategy into plans then delivering and operationalising. Adept at shaping and communicating a compelling vision and making complexity digestible, I am as comfortable in the Tea-Room as the Board Room.

Bridgid Cowling

Bridgid Cowling is a Special Counsel in Arnold Bloch Leibler’s renowned public interest law and native title practice. She provides advice in relation to corporate governance, structuring, taxation and commercial issues to a broad range of clients, with a focus on assisting charities and not-for-profit organisations, Aboriginal Land Councils and Native Title Representative Bodies. Bridgid began her legal career working across northern Australia as a native title and land rights lawyer before returning to her home city of Melbourne with her family and developing an extensive charity law and governance practice.

Bridgid is chair of the Law Council of Australia Charities and Not-for-profits Committee, former chair of the Tax Institute Not-for-profit Technical Committee and director of environmental charity Country Needs People Ltd

Paul Devlin

Born and raised in Ireland. Educated in California. Battle tested in Asia. Based in Australia.

Paul has over twenty years of experience driving business growth by partnering with ambitious organisations and serving as a trusted advisor to chief executives, senior management and boards.

He is known for starting, supporting, and scaling high performance, multidisciplinary teams that deliver great outcomes for customers on a commercially viable basis. His experience spans multiple sectors, consumer segments and competitive situations.

With expertise and connections from his experience serving global financial institutions, Paul counsels senior executives on their most challenging issues, including strategy, M&A, change & crisis management and improving organisational performance, through re-engineering processes, re-structuring operations and re-imagining product/service propositions.

He is passionate about coaching teams and individuals to cut through complexity, implement their ideas and realise outstanding results.

Ruth Jones

Ruth Jones is Director, Global Markets, for AVPN, a funders’ network based in Singapore. Prior to this, she was CEO of the Social Venture Partners Network and held senior roles at Community Foundations of Canada and Philanthropy Australia.  She was Chief Executive of the Australian Film Institute before moving to the field of philanthropy.

Judy Williams, Deputy Chair

Judy Williams has extensive arts management experience, having previously worked at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) for almost two decades. From 2004 – 2014, she was Head of Foundation & Fundraising, where she was responsible for the development and implementation of the NGV’s fundraising strategy, including bequests, legacies and annual giving. As part of her role, she developed and implemented the NGV’s 150th Anniversary fundraising campaign – Masterpieces for Melbourne. Prior to this role, Judy was the NGV’s Manager of External Relations & Events, where she oversaw the planning and delivery of events for the opening of the Ian Potter Centre and the re-opening of NGV International.

Roger Macmorran

Roger’s expertise lies in major project implementation and organisational transformation. Previously, Roger worked in international property development across the UK, Russia & Australia.

Roger is driven by a passion for maximising the potential of people and delivering real and meaningful change to organisations and projects. He believes in the need to think differently, and for organisations to become the self-authors of their futures. Rather than being disrupted by external influences, Roger believes in the need for organisations to become the disruptors of their professions and industries.

Roger co-founded THE GREEN BOAT in 2018 with Claire Vallis to help organisations simplify their business, evolve their culture and design their future. He is currently complimenting his business and corporate experience by becoming an accredited practitioner with the Adaptive Cultures Group.

When not working, Roger loves to climb mountains. His big unresolved challenge is to write a book about his 6 years living and working in Russia.

Tim Northeast

Tim Northeast is an entrepreneurial owner and operator of several hospitality and music venues in inner Melbourne including the iconic Corner Hotel.

Having built all of his businesses from the ground up, Tim has a strong understanding of the issues facing small and medium sized businesses and has extensive experience in the entertainment and hospitality industries as well as strong skills in team building, financial management and property management. Tim’s previous Director appointments include Board Director and Chair of Music Victoria, the peak body for contemporary music in Victoria.

Peter Summers 

Peter is a Chartered Accountant with extensive management experience. For much of his career he was employed with the AV Jennings Limited Group, a well-known residential development company. In total he spent 37 years with the AVJ, 15 as Finance Director/CFO and 13 as Managing Director/CEO.

In recent years Peter has moved into the areas of non-executive directorship, consultancy and executive coaching. Peter is currently Chair of the Advisory Council for the Burbank Group.

In 2021 Peter became a member of the Abbotsford Convent Audit and Risk Committee and in late 2021 was appointed Chair of that Committee.

Peter also spent 10 years on the Board of St. Kilda Football Club, the last 5 as President. During his time, St. Kilda undertook a number of significant initiatives including hosting the first ever AFL Pride Game and the introduction of women’s football. The Club also returned to its spiritual home at Moorabbin with a complete rebuild of facilities. This involved considerable fundraising, member and stakeholder engagement, and support from Local and State Governments.

He is currently a Non-Executive Director of AFL New Zealand.

Peter is passionate about people and the “why” of organisations and creating successful, sustainable businesses. Peter is also strong in terms of governance with a focus on strategy, business drivers, financial results and accountability.

Michael Sokulski

Michael Sokulski is a chartered accountant and finance professional. Michael has worked at Medibank and previously worked 10 years with Ernst & Young where he accumulated significant experience in the accounting field, including the delivery of financial assurance projects, internal audits, compliance work, financial reporting analysis and accounting advice across a broad spectrum of private and public clients. He has advised on a variety of transactions including IPOs, acquisitions and business divestments. Michael has also chaired the Young Professionals’ Panel for the Institute of Chartered Accountants, promoting the interests of young members and driving engagement with the broader community.

David Yip

David is a senior technology executive with over 20 years of experience leading high-performance teams and managing large budgets to deliver enterprise-scale systems and services.  He has held regional leadership positions with global technology giants such as IBM, DXC and Salesforce, driving change and delivering high-impact business value to enterprise clients across industries.  David is also a recognised thought leader in higher education and digital health, with a track record of bringing cross-industry innovation to these sectors and launching significant digital transformation programs.  David’s expertise lies in creative problem solving, opportunity identification and realisation, executive stakeholder engagement, delivering strategic value through tight partnerships between business and IT, and leading large cross-functional global teams to deliver complex technology projects.

David has a double bachelor’s degree from the University of Melbourne, an Executive MBA from UNSW, and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.