About Kelly
Kelly is passionate about working with clients in the public and social service sectors to design and implement solutions that improve people’s lives. Kelly leads our Service System Transformation practice.
Kelly brings over 15 years’ experience delivering strategic reforms, both as a public sector consultant and as an Adviser at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. She also brings experience on leadership teams and as a Board Director of a large early childhood provider. She currently sits on the Early Childhood Australia Victoria Committee.
Kelly has worked with Commonwealth, state and territory governments and with not-for-profit and community organisations across Australia on the design, implementation, evaluation and review of programs and services. She’s experienced in program, service and funding model design as well as reform implementation and sector capability building.
With a keen mind for strategy and systems, and a sensitive approach to stakeholder engagement, Kelly is an empathetic and compassionate leader committed to delivering high quality work for her clients.
Outside of work, Kelly loves spending time outdoors in Melbourne’s playgrounds and parks with her partner and their two young children. She also enjoys swimming, travelling and indulging in good food and coffee.
Experience | Highlights
Kelly's recent work includes:
Service system transformation
- Leading a team that supported hundreds of early childhood services across Australia to transition to a new funding model and make improvements to business operations to ensure their ongoing viability.
- Brokering a memorandum of understanding between government, mental health services, academics and consumers and carers with lived experience of mental ill health to work together collaboratively to implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System and improve outcomes.
- Facilitating a collaborative process between academics, service delivery organisations and consumers and carers with lived experience of the child and family mental health system to develop a collaborative approach to improving outcomes for children and infants experiencing mental ill health.
- Leading the development of journey maps of users of an inclusion system that provides supports for children with additional needs to demonstrate the challenges with the current system and inform the design of a new system that better supports children, families and early childhood services.
- Designing a new operating model for a child protection intake system to manage the increasing volume of child protection reports.
- Leading the development of a suite of tools, templates and resources to support the roll out of a new children and family services program in the Northern Territory and build the capacity of the workforce.
Evaluation and review
- Evaluating a national telephone and web-based service for women, parents and carers and recommending a range of potential improvements to the service to increase its reach and effectiveness.
- Leading the review of a legal referral service and making recommendations to improve its effectiveness and impact.
- Evaluating a national policy framework that coordinates efforts between governments, peak bodies and the not-for-profit sector to reduce child abuse and neglect over time.
- Shaping and leading a large national program of strengths-based reviews of grants to service delivery organisations using a first of kind evaluation methodology.
- Directing a review of the quality and safety of regional and remote early childhood services.
- Conducting an evaluation of a program that supports disadvantaged young people to remain engaged in education.
- Undertaking a review of community legal centres and making recommendations on improving the service and funding model.
Policy and strategy
- Re-designing a place-based program to improve engagement with First Nations community representatives in implementing the program in communities.
- Leading the development of a business case with a peak body in the disability sector to secure additional funding to provide support for First Nations people with disability across Australia.
Community and stakeholder engagement
- Leading a stakeholder review for a public sector organisation to inform the future focus and direction of the organisation and the shape of its operations.
- Facilitating consultations with vulnerable young people to inform a new strategy to improve the health and wellbeing of children and young people.
- Leading a diagnostic to inform a set of investments into building the skills and knowledge of the early childhood workforce.
- Leading and shaping the development of a suite of personas and journey maps for a peak body to identify the needs of different segments of its membership and opportunities to increase supports for its members.
Education | Accreditation
Bachelor of Arts (Hons) / Bachelor of Laws, Australian National University
Graduate Diploma of Legal Practice, Australian National University
Admitted as a Solicitor in the ACT Supreme Court
