Chair

Ange (she/her) has worked in the not-for-profit sector for 20 years. During this time Ange has worked in Out of Home Care, specifically foster care and residential care, and homelessness. She has also worked at a Program Manager level overseeing a number of programs including housing and homelessness, financial counselling, gamblers help and intake teams. Ange has also volunteered her time as a foster carer for a number of young people.

Ange has also had experience with helping her workplace become Rainbow Tick accredited and embedding inclusive practice throughout her workplace, and is committed to inclusion and diversity across her local community of Ballarat.

Deputy Chair

Rachel’s work examines how design thinking can facilitate self-determination and thrivability, particularly in communities subject to structural inequity.

Rachel earned their PhD in Social Work from Federation University Australia in 2022 where they investigated the role of community support to enable parents receiving a family support service to thrive. Since then, Rachel has been employed as an academic at RMIT University.

Treasurer

Laura (she/her) identifies as a woman and as a lesbian.

Despite knowing her gender was incongruent to her presentation at age 4, she only transitioned in her early 30s after becoming independent and working through the fear of potential career loss and family / friends / wife abandonment.

As part of transitioning in the workplace, she first had to work with HR to develop guidelines and policies prior to actually going through it herself. This was in addition to her normal job as an aeronautical engineer.

She is generally both outgoing and outspoken and not afraid to call out any injustice she sees, especially in terms of all aspects for diversity and inclusion. Since her transition, she has provided diversity and inclusion training to multiple engineering organisations.

Laura moved to the Ballarat area in June 2020 during the pandemic to fulfil a life long dream to live closer to nature as I previously only lived in Sydney. She still works as an aeronautical engineer.

For a decade she was involved with not for profit NSW association, SydBricks, raising money for children's charities. For the majority of that time, she was the treasurer of Sydbricks. She plans to leverage this experience to support and grow Tiny Pride with a focus on governance and responsible delivery of goals to the community.

Ordinary Board Member

Yvette (she/her) is the mum of one incredible human.

She has over 10 years experience working for community based not-for-profit organisations and is deeply community minded, including volunteering locally.

She is passionate about equality and supporting the most vulnerable members of our society and brings strengths in strategic thinking and growth mindsets to Tiny Pride, drawing on experience of working closely with NFP boards and regional governance structures for over a decade.

Ordinary Board Member

Ramsay (she/her) was the Board Secretary since Tiny Pride became incorporated in 2021 until September 2023. Ramsay is a proud member of the Asexual community. Ramsay has a background in social work as well as quality and compliance in the community services sector. Ramsay's skill set lends itself to advice as a Board Member with a constant eye to systems and processes. Ramsay has a passion for ensuring vulnerable community members, regardless of their background or story, have a voice and are seen within the community.

Ordinary Board Member

Maria (she/her) is a parent to 3 wonderful human children and one fur baby, a greyhound named Bea.

She has been with her partner forever and a day. They moved to Ballarat 12 years ago and have been so lucky to make many beautiful connections.

Maria identifies as Pansexual, meaning that she is attracted to who a person is as a human rather than their gender, focusing on their values, terrible/humour, taste in music and willingness to support my unhealthy love of attending conferences.

Maria works as a clinical psychologist and naturopath. She loves learning about the mind body connection, neurology and trying to find sneaky ways to incorporate dance, movement and music into sessions.

She loves music and dance, the beach and the forest, spending time with family and friends, dress up parties and living room karaoke.

Chief Executive Officer

Ange has worked in the private sector as a project manager and innovation consultant and in the public service as a vocational education and workforce development policy practitioner. She also has extensive experience in governance and whole of government stakeholder engagement, working for Ministers and senior executives in the South Australian and Victorian public service.

She has had an extensive career as an inclusion and diversity specialist working on gender equity, women’s health, disability, LGBTIQA+ inclusion and reconciliation action planning and has a passion for community-based innovation, mobilisation and empowerment.