ACWRA

Leadership Team

Project Team

Russell Bricknell
Russell Bricknell

Russell Bricknell

Chair

Russell was appointed as Chief Executive Officer of Uniting Church Homes trading as Juniper in December 2022 and is an ex-officio member of the Board. Russell has an extensive background in the aged care and community services sector. He was previously the Chief Executive of a faith-based aged care provider serving metropolitan and regional Western Australian communities. Prior to this role, Russell was Chief Executive of an Aged Care education provider, overseeing operations in Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and New Zealand. Prior to this role, Russell held several senior executive and CEO roles in not-for-profit and faith-based aged, disability and community services organisations in Queensland, NSW and Victoria. Russell has worked in the aged and community services sector since 2001.

Mark Diamond
Mark Diamond

Mark Diamond

Deputy Chair

Mark is the Deputy Chair of the Remote Accord.  He has worked extensively in the community services, health, and aged care sectors in five state and territory jurisdictions over the past 40 years. He has held General Manager, Executive Director, Regional Director and CEO roles in both metropolitan and rural public and non-government organisations. He has worked at state and federal level in undertaking system level reform and advocacy as well as responsibility for the development and delivery of services at regional and local levels.

Mark has skills and experience in hospital, health service and aged care management in metropolitan, regional and isolated remote areas, and has skills in leadership, operational management, project management, change management and service redesign. He has a strong interest in rural and remote health, mental health, Indigenous health, primary health care and aged care. He is a Fellow and Life Member of the Australasian College of Health Service Management after having served on the Board for over 10 years. He holds a post graduate degree in Social Work, is a former quality assessor with the Australian Council on Health Care Standards and has been a member of the Aged Care Remote Accord leadership group since its inception in 2018.

Mark’s work experience includes the management of regional health and aged care services based in Orange NSW, and Clare and Port Pirie in South Australia. He was the inaugural General Manager of Australian Regional and Remote Community Services Ltd (ARRCS) based in Darwin, and more recently the CEO of the National Rural Health Alliance – the peak national representative body for rural health in Australia. Since 2012 he has operated his own consulting business out of Adelaide – work which has included participation in the Commonwealth Service Development Assistance Panel providing assistance, training and support to aged care services in remote and very remote locations.

Praveen Gopal
Praveen Gopal

Praveen Gopal

Praveen has held various senior roles with QANTAS, Amity Group, Sodexo, Uniting, Aurrum and Summit Care over an aged care career that has spanned more than 20 years in Australia. He has direct experience managing COVID outbreak sites within rural and remote community and residential aged care services and has extensive experience in culinary and auxiliary hospitality services across Aged and Community care spectrum.

He is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Hospitality Management and holds formal tertiary qualifications in Gerontology, Quality Management, Project Management, Accounting & Strategy, and holds a Masters degree in business administration.

Praveen has spent over five years implementing and improving access to aged care services for remote and very remote indigenous communities in Northern Territory, New South Wales, and Victoria.

Wendy A Hubbard
Wendy A Hubbard

Wendy A Hubbard

Wendy Hubbard is the General Manager at Australian Rural and Remote Community Services (ARRCS), a not-for-profit Aged Care organisation with affiliations with Uniting Care Queensland. Wendy has significant management experience in Acute, Sub-acute, Community Services, and Aged Care with a particular focus on governance and systems to support quality care. She served on the Victorian Quality Council for 6 years and was also a member of the Clinical Incident Review Panel and the Cancer Survivorship Program Advisory Group in Victoria.

A qualified Physiotherapist with a Masters Degree in Business Administration, over her almost three years at ARRCS Wendy has become very familiar with the issues and challenges of providing culturally appropriate aged care in the Northern Territory, and in particular for indigenous people in regional and remote areas.

In her time at ARRCS Wendy has recognised the challenges of substantial workforce issues, skills shortages and transport and accommodation costs, and has worked to ensure ARRCS is addressing these challenges in sustainable ways that meet the consumer’s needs while meeting Aged Care Quality and Safety Standards.

Graham Aitken
Graham Aitken

Graham Aitken

Graham Aitken works as a Chief Executive Officer at Aboriginal Community Care, which is a Non-Profit & Charitable Organizations company with an estimated 40 employees; and founded in 1995. Graham graduated from Flinders University and is currently based in Mile End, Australia.

Mia Hampson
Mia Hampson

Mia Hampson

Mia is motivated by her personal passion, which has long been centred around strengthening community capacity and relations; and improving equity and community access to rights and entitlements for vulnerable groups. This includes, being a voice for those that at times, feel voiceless. Her personal passion has in turn shaped her professional career in the community services sector which has spanned across 20+ years, with a focus on youth, employment and training, homelessness, counselling, aged care and alcohol and other drug services. She has completed a number of tertiary qualifications to further enhance her theoretical knowledge in the application of a community services setting, this includes a Diploma of Community Services, Diploma of Justice, Diploma of Project Management, Diploma of Business, Cert IV Juvenile Justice, Certificate IV in non-clinical Mental Health.

Mia has held leadership positions across a number of different organisations, including, Your Town, Evolve, Shell, Honeywell and more recently as the Strategy Manager for Pinangba. The purpose of this role is to effectively lead the development and implementation of Pinangba’s short and long-term strategies that supports and strengthens Pinangba’s vision, values, service model and needs of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. There is an applied focus towards leading and facilitating strategic discussions and project manage the implementation of strategic initiatives.

Ben Poona
Ben Poona

Ben Poona

Ben Poona has been employed with Tangentyere Council Aboriginal Corporation in Alice Springs, Northern Territories for almost 10 years, where he currently co-manages the Family Safety & Social Services Division – 17 programs from various sectors that deliver services to local community members. Some of these programs include Aged & Community Services, Disability, Chronic Disease Care Coordination, Family Violence Prevention, Family & Kin Care, Harm Minimisation, Tenancy Sustainability, Emergency Relief and Creative Arts. With over 20 years of operational experience working in the Health, Business & Arts sectors, Ben is excited to share experiences of working with an extremely diverse and vulnerable cohort of people living in rural and regional areas of Central Australia.

Jenny Beath
Jenny Beath

Jenny Beath

Jenny Beath is the General Manager of Service Delivery and Aboriginal Home Health at Australian Unity.

Jenny is a proud Wiradjuri woman and a weaver of words who uses the platforms of leadership and business to educate, influence, and engage to unite passion for purpose. Jenny has been at Australian Unity for over four years and prior to that was Managing Director at Beath Consulting.

Mary Quinlan
Mary Quinlan

Mary Quinlan

Director

Mary begun her career working with asylum seeker children in community detention, and then with children and families in out of home care programs across the ACT, with a strong focus on cultural safety and trauma informed care.

Mary was involved in the redevelopment of Mental Illness Education ACT’s program to reduce instances of eating disorders in young women. Mary was also involved in the establishment of the 50/50 by 2030 Foundation at the University of Canberra, which is a research and advocacy centre with a focus on achieving equal representation of women in leadership and key decision-making roles in all levels of government and public institutions around Australia.

With a background in direct service delivery, Mary was drawn to policy and advocacy as a way of addressing the systemic challenges commonly faced by services in the not-for-profit space. Mary is an alumni of the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University, where she completed a degree in Public Policy, specialising in economic policy.

Mary has been working with the Remote Accord since late 2019.

Mary Quinlan
Mary Quinlan

Mary Quinlan

Director

Mary begun her career working with asylum seeker children in community detention, and then with children and families in out of home care programs across the ACT, with a strong focus on cultural safety and trauma informed care.

Mary was involved in the redevelopment of Mental Illness Education ACT’s program to reduce instances of eating disorders in young women. Mary was also involved in the establishment of the 50/50 by 2030 Foundation at the University of Canberra, which is a research and advocacy centre with a focus on achieving equal representation of women in leadership and key decision-making roles in all levels of government and public institutions around Australia.

With a background in direct service delivery, Mary was drawn to policy and advocacy as a way of addressing the systemic challenges commonly faced by services in the not-for-profit space. Mary is an alumni of the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University, where she completed a degree in Public Policy, specialising in economic policy.

Mary has been working with the Remote Accord since late 2019.

Matthew Blunden
Matthew Blunden

Matthew Blunden

Project Manager

Matthew has been the Project Manager for the Implementation Project since October 20before assuming this role, he was the CEO of Aged Care Group in QLD, Workforce Development Manager at Public Hospitals Victoria and an Executive Leader at Disability, New Zealand. He also worked as a Recruitment & Training Consultant at Healthscope Pathology, New Zealand. He was appointed Managing Director of the Nursing Agency & Registered Training Organisation, New Zealand & Fiji, and Managing Director of the Nursing Agency & Registered Training Organization, Adelaide. Matthew spent the first 15 years of his working life as a nurse in rural & remote parts of Australia.

Kerry Grant-Mackay
Kerry Grant-Mackay

Kerry Grant-Mackay

Project Officer

Having held numerous managerial positions in the private and public sectors, Kerry possesses a strong background in Finance, Project Management, Business Processes, Training, Governance and Economic Development. With qualifications in Commerce, Economics and Project Management, these foundations have enabled Kerry to undertake roles throughout Australia and overseas in varying capacities. Having travelled extensively, Kerry currently resides in the Murdi Paaki region of Western NSW; however, she spent most of her younger years in North Queensland. In the current position as Project Officer for the Aged Care Workforce Remote Accord Implementation Project, Kerry will draw upon these transferable skills to apply my clear, methodical, and pragmatic approach to achieve project outcomes.