Julie Chai

President

Julie brings 15 years’ experience from private, public, and not-for-profit sectors working in Diversity and Inclusion, Organisational Development, Human Resources and regularly advises on Boards.

She is the first culturally diverse woman elected as President of NEEOPA, since its not-for-profit establishment in 1985 and is an Advisory Board Member at Women & Leadership Australia (WLA).

Julie previously served as State Vice-President and Councillor for the Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI) and worked at Australia’s peak diversity body advising to hundreds of organisational members across various diversity dimensions.

​

Asian Leadership Project, Founder & CEO

Fiona Davies

Vice President

Fiona Davies is the Diversity & Inclusion Lead at Australian Red Cross.

Fiona is results focused and experienced in developing and executing on Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) initiatives across complex organisations. Fiona has broad D&I subject matter expertise and is adept at applying a commercial lens to D&I as well as using data to tell a story. She demonstrates leadership to influence stakeholders at every level to deliver cultural change.

Fiona was the winner of AHRI’s 2019 HR Diversity Champion Award and inaugural Sandra Cormack Practicing Certification Scholarship. Fiona’s experience is from across corporate industries, small businesses and non-profit environments in a variety of roles.

.

​

Australian Red Cross, Diversity & Inclusion Lead

Gudrun Elms

Treasurer

A passionate and enthusiastic advocate for building diverse and  
inclusive culture and workplaces whilst linking Diversity & Inclusion  
initiatives to business outcomes and people strategies.
An experienced Diversity & Inclusion and HR specialist with strong  
communication and stakeholder management skills. Broad experience  
project managing and delivering diversity and inclusion programs and  
HR projects across the Telco, Financial Services, Media and Legal  
sectors.

​

Endeavour Energy, Diversity & Inclusion Manager

Alice Young

Alice is currently the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Leader at IKEA Australia and has been a NEEOPA member since 2013.  Her role is focused on three pillars as she builds the function – enabling diversity within IKEA’s workforce, integrating equality into the business, and supporting IKEA to model equality, diversity and inclusion in the community.

Alice is passionate about human rights and human potential and has worked in HR for over 20 years in the commercial, not-for-profit and international development sectors both in Australia and overseas.  She has held national, regional and global roles.  HR qualified in Australia and the UK with a Certificate in Human Rights Law, Alice comes to Equality, Diversity & Inclusion from a rights-based perspective and leverages her cross-sectoral experience to deliver practical people strategies that benefit individuals and organisations alike.

​

IKEA, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Leader

Jackie Khoo

Jackie Khoo is Managing Director, Accenture and heads the cloud orchestration practice helping clients digitally transform, grow and create sustainable value in tandem with investor and societal outcomes. At Accenture, Jackie is also the inclusion and diversity lead for Technology in A/NZ. Prior to joining, Jackie held a number of leadership roles at NBNCo and Unisys.

She is passionate about creating great inclusive workplace environments where people can feel a sense of belonging and has led a number of inclusion and diversity programs including Project Evolve, a TechDiversity Award winning program dedicated to improving the gender diversity in technology and encouraging greater participation of young women and girls into STEM.

​

Accenture, Managing Director, Cloud Orchestration

Jen Lanahan

Jen has extensive experience in both strategy development and implementation of successful D&I programs, leading practice HR operations and ways of working across Australia and internationally. She has worked at international and Australian professional and financial services firms including Link Group, Deloitte Australia, Gilbert + Tobin and Norton Rose Fulbright, in learning, organisational development and diversity and inclusion roles.

She is a collaborator and committed to working to understand people’s needs to create solutions that are meaningful and make an impact.

Jen was appointed to the NEEOPA Executive Committee in 2019 and would be delighted to help NEEOPA progress into 2022.

​

Sparke Helmore Lawyers, Manager, DEI & Employee Experience

Lauren Levin

Lauren is a Diversity & Inclusion specialist with deep professional services firm experience across the full spectrum of the Diversity & Inclusion agenda. Beginning as an employment lawyer, Lauren has worked in human resource and talent management, diversity & inclusion and flexible & agile work specialist roles in both global and Australian top tier law firms.

Lauren is passionate about creating supportive, inclusive workplaces in which people can thrive by bringing their whole selves to work, and where flexibility and agile working are a strong part of the workplace culture.

Lauren's vision is to build a strong and inclusive peer support community – a place to share thoughts and ideas to enable continuous improvement and progress the Diversity & Inclusion agenda.  

​

Minter Ellison, Head of Diversity & Inclusion 

Myreen Aronowitz

As Program Manager of the Paralympic Workplace Diversity Program Myreen has helped organisations across Australia employ suitably matched Paralympians and benefit from the inclusion of these ‘Diversity Ambassadors’ in their workplaces. More than 100 Paralympians have received career support with over 50 joining organisations that value and celebrate diversity.

As an active member of NEEOPA since 2010, Myreen continues to break down stereotypical barriers that exist in the workplace, passionately promoting diversity and inclusion for all!

​

360HR, Senior Consultant

Suzanne Fawcus

As an HR practitioner and educator, Suzanne has approximately 15 years’ experience as a D&I consultant/specialist across the finance, transport and higher education industries.

Her strengths include, designing, implementing and facilitating women in leadership programs, drafting and implementing strategies for advancing progressive workplace change in areas of multi-culture, disability, sexuality and gender.   

Suzanne has been teaching and designing HR programs for 11 years at Macquarie University.  She is on the D&I committee for Macquarie’s Business School. 

She will bring to the Executive Committee, her varied D&I experience and the opportunity for NEEOPA to connect with D&I researchers at Macquarie, who are always willing to share insights and conduct progressive discussions to help facilitate knowledge sharing across a broad sector of industries.

​

Macqaurie Business School, Sessional Academic