A seasoned professional and hands-on practitioner, with over 30 years industry experience gained in both the UK and Australia. Since migration in 2017, I've worked for Monash University, Yarra Ranges Shire and Mornington Peninsula Shire. I was snapped up by Votar Partners in 2022, and now work for them full time as a Principal Consultant.
My work for Votar has been varied and straddles all things records management from RM101 up to Executive Engagement and Strategies, and everything in between. I also have carried out numerous PDSP audits for agencies to help them with compliance towards the VPDSF here in Victoria, as well as carrying out program and business system level audits against recordkeeping, privacy, information security, hosted technologies, copyright, etc. My work seems to be more of a mix of information governance, data archiving and information security these days!
My first love is Archives about which I am a total nerd, closely followed by wider ecologies of information management (particularly relating to information architectures, mapping against PROV standards, and intersections with our data and digital friends), with particular geeky interests in ethics around data and information, and how archives can be appropriated to serve all kinds of socio-cultural purposes.
I also play an active role in the IM/InfoSec conference circuit, having presented papers at both CyberCon Melbourne October 2023 and COSAC APAC Melbourne February 2024. I also presented at the RIMPA Roadshow Melbourne this year. I am also a member of the Australian Information Security Association (AISA) and a member of the SABSA Institute. I am speaking again at CyberCon Melbourne November 2024 (on joining the dots between digital archiving and cyber security) and also at the Health Information Management Conference in October 2024 (a paper on achieving a data governance baseline and a workshop on IARs). My paper at COSAC APAC 2025 will focus on the intersection between digital information management and data classifications and their interactions with enterprise security architecture.
I am also currently a local Ambassador for RIMPA, and this year's winner of the J Eddis Linton Outstanding Individual Award for 2024. I also collected the Star Contributor to this Community Forum Award at RIMPA Live for 2024!
I have also undertaken sessional academic teaching in recent years, within Curtin University's School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry, where I have carried out assessments of Masters theses as well as practical teaching and marking. I have, in the past, both written and delivered many training courses for RIMPA in Records Management, Digitisation, Archiving, Sentencing, and Digital Preservation. I have also served as both Vice Chair and Secretary to the Local Government Information Governance Committee at the Municipal Association of Victoria and was RIMPA Vic's Vice President and Local Gov Chapter Lead in 2019/2020.
Beyond the office, I enjoy writing fiction and I'm an active member of creative writing group, Mountain Ash Chapter, as well as being a member of the Australian Society of Authors, Writers Victoria and a graduate of the Faber Writing Academy at Allen & Unwin in Melbourne. I also enjoy spending time with friends and family in my beautiful home district of the Dandenong Ranges, just outside Melbourne. I'm also in recovery from Stage 3 breast cancer so bear with me! It's been one helluva ride of late!!!