Committee of Management

Play Australia is operated by a volunteer Committee of Management and managed on a daily basis by the Executive Director, Barbara Champion.

	Cathy Kiss (President) Cathy has a Bachelor of Arts in Recreation and has specialised in recreation planning and management. She has worked in recreation planning and management in the local and regional government sectors for over 20 years. She has practical experience in all aspects of play space management - from writing strategies for a municipality to implementing that strategy through the development of play environments. She is currently employed as a Senior Parks Planner at the City of Melbourne. Cathy was Project Manager for the development of The Good Play Space Guide: "I can play too".
	Joey Boothby (Vice President) Joey is a Landscape Architect with experience in the public and private sectors, and is currently on leave from the Manningham City Council, Victoria where she is employed in a recreation and open space planning role. As part of this role, she co-ordinates the playground replacement program and manages all aspects from strategic planning to construction including consultation and participation. She has traveled extensively and was an intern in New York with Leathers & Associates community playground builders. She is currently leading a project to establish a Bush Kindergarten in Melbourne, whilst being actively engaged in the parenting of Georgia and Tom.
	Felix Hemingway (Vice President) Felix is a Landscape Architect with a background in Site Design and construction as well as Urban Design. He is the Manager of Urban Design at the City of Greater Geelong in Victoria.
	Jeff Speake (Treasurer) Jeff has a background in Sales Management, Product Management and Marketing. He is the Director of Safe Play Systems Pty Ltd who distributes play equipment and outdoor furniture in Victoria for Forpark Australia. Jeff has a lengthy involvement with Play Australia (formerly PRAV).
	Sue Elliott Sue is an educator in the Early Childhood field, was the co-founder of Environmental Education in Early Childhood (EEEC). She currently works sessionally as a lecturer and part-time as Training Co-ordinator for the Commonwealth Child Care In-service Training Project based at Community child Care Victoria.
	Cormac McCarthy Cormac has been at Maroondah City Council for 4 years in the role of Open Space Planner which involves a myriad of projects and tasks from developing policy for open space use and planning to implementing capital works projects to improve parks and reserves. This also includes public toilets, playgrounds, bike paths, sportsfield drainage and irrigation systems and any other park infrastructure. Another major component of the job is fund raising to get grants from State and Federal Government agencies to fund major projects often in the environmental area. His largest projects in the past 2 years have been building a stormwater treatment wetland in a degraded creek line with EPA funding, creating an accessible sensory playspace based on the theme of earth, wind, fire and water and a skate park in Ringwood. Cormac is the Acting Coordinator for the Play Australia Local Government Play Network, Eastern Metro Chapter representative on the PLA Victoria/Tasmania Region Committee, and joint convener of the Open Space Planners Network.
	Pattie Morgan Pattie began her working life as an Infant Teacher in NSW, and retrained at the Institute of Early Childhood Development in the late seventies as an Eraly Childhood educator. Her experience includes working in sessional preschools, piloting the mobile preschool program in socially isolated communities, working as a preschool field officer after completing her Graduate Diploma in Special Education (Early Childhood), then back to grass roots to work in sessional preschool programs again, mentoring both teachers and pre-service teachers. Her extra curricula activities include assisting in developing quality professional practice, culminating in a City of Knox-wide Philosophy of Education, presenting workshops for teachers and long day care educators in outdoor programming and preparing a poster presentation on "Outdoor play spaces that enhance the social and emotional development of children with Additional Needs”. Currently she is a consultant in outdoor programming and play space design, and a trainer for all sectors of early years education.
	Danny Wain Danny is currently Manager Finance Services at Monash City Council. The City of Monash is one of Melbourne's most populous municipalities, with around 172,000 residents. It is located 20km south east of the CBD in Melbourne's fastest growing population corridor. Danny is an active participant in the local government industry as an Executive member and Past President of FinPro, the peak body serving local government finance professionals in Victoria and now a member of Play Australia. Danny has been is various Local Government roles over the past 26 years with a focus on responsible fiscal management and prepared many budgets based on sound long-term financial policy. This experience, the majority in financial management, also includes, good working knowledge governance issues, Local Laws, Rating and IT functions.
	Paul Grover Paul is a Civil Engineer with over 15 years experience, primarily in the inspection of infrastructure in relation to maintenance, conformance and safety issues. In early 2001 Paul undertook his first project directly relating to playground infrastructure and immediately decided to endeavour to specialize in playgrounds as the work was more interesting, challenging and rewarding than other types of infrastructure. Paul has since completed a broad spectrum of projects such as: comprehensive audits; strategy reports; guidelines documents; policy development; design checks; undersurfacing tests; and design of a playgrounds reporting system. Paul is currently the Manager of the consulting firm Play DMC and has two young children that he loves playing with and they prove to be very useful as test pilots when auditing playgrounds.
	Barbara Chancellor Barbara Chancellor is a lecturer in the School of Education in the Portfolio of Design and Social Context at RMIT University, Melbourne. Her research interests are focused on playspaces for children in the outdoor environment, in both early childhood, school playgrounds and public open spaces.
	Alison Curtis The buzz of racing down a slide or reaching for the sky on a swing has never really left Alison. After completing a double degree in Engineering and Science at Monash University, Alison travelled to Germany where she worked for Berliner Seilfabrik, a leading playground manufacturer. Upon returning to Australia, she has been working for Playspace Playground. Here she develops new products, manages Australian Standard compliance issues and definitely tests out the equipment! Alison is passionate about developing natural playspaces and creating excitement and variety in playgrounds.
	Rachel Carlisle Rachel Carlisle is the Manager, Physical Activity, Heart Foundation (Victoria). 2011 Rachel’s role with the Heart Foundation manages a suite of projects related to boosting levels of physical activity and active living in the community, in order to improve heart health. The projects include Heart Foundation Walking, a community based walking group program, Heartmoves, a fitness trainers training program, Space for Active Play, a project that seeks to address the provision of play space for older children (8-12 years) by involving them in the park planning process, and work related to the built environment and raising awareness amongst the planning profession of the importance of providing suitable infrastructure and a ‘supportive environment’ for walking, cycling and public transport use, including the recent creation of a tool on Food-sensitive planning and urban design. Her background is in developing and implementing sustainable transport community education projects for a small environment NGO, assisting in health promotion research at Deakin University and delivering community care for Boroondara Council.
	Barbara Champion (Executive Director) Barbara is the Executive Director of Play Australia. She began work at PRAV in 1998 following a history of employment in the Education, Local Government and Community sectors in Victoria. Her experience includes a variety of leadership positions and involvement in a number of community based education, arts and health organizations. Barbara chaired the Australian Standards Committee on Playgrounds Safety for 6 years, and supports the development and work of Play Australia across all areas of play.