Foundation Members

Kate is a wife and mother of four children. She has been involved at Lou’s Place in various roles for many years and is currently a volunteer in the kitchen. Kate is Chair of the Photography Collection Benefactors of the Art Gallery of NSW which raises money to buy photos for the collection. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Communications and has worked as a journalist and in newspaper management in provincial and metropolitan newspapers.

Pam Bartlett was born in New York City and raised in Arizona where she studied business and liberal arts before moving back to New York.  Pam came to Australia in 1984 with American Express where she had a career spanning 20 years as a specialist in Card and Traveler’s Cheque Operations.  Locally she has acted as a consultant to service based organisations, providing strategic advice in the areas of quality assurance, customer service, credit/risk management, staff development and operational profitability.

Pam is married to an Aussie and has three children.  In addition to a busy family life, Pam has a keen interest in American politics and social justice,

Carol Berg was born in New York City and holds degrees in music from University of Michigan and the City University of New York. Carol has spent 25 years in the field of music education and most recently taught music at Ascham (1982-1999), a private girls school in Sydney. She is Vice President of the NSW Chapter of The Australian Choral Association and a member of The Music Council of Australia. She served as a director on the Board of the Bundanon Trust (1999-2008). Interest in mental health led her to become involved with The Black Dog Institute, and in 2009 she became a member of the Board. Her first association with Lou’s Place was in setting up music sessions for clients and overseeing their specialist education programmes. Subsequently she went on to the Management Advisory Board of TMFI.

Jo Boney was born in England where she trained as a registered nurse at University College Hospital, London.  In Australia she worked in nursing education and was in the Faculty of Nursing, Sydney University for 13 years where she was Associate Dean for international students and postgraduate programmes for six years.  She has a Diploma in Nursing Education, a Bachelor of Advanced Nursing, a Masters of Clinical Nursing and a PhD in Nursing.  Jo has been involved with Lou’s Place since it first opened, as a volunteer where she conducted meditation sessions for clients and as a board member.  She was chair of the board from mid 2003 to 2007.

Julie Claridge has an honours degree in law as well as a Masters degree and a Bachelor of Arts. She has worked in project finance, mergers and acquisitions and corporate law.  She established knowledge management at one of Australia’s leading law firms and worked as business development manager for a small charity.  She joined the Lou’s Place management advisory board (the predecessor of the Board) at the end of 2003 and became chair in February 2007.  Other work in the not for profit sector has included honorary secretary of the Royal Women’s’ Hospital Foundation and voluntary positions in education.  She joined Lou’s Place as a volunteer in 2002.

Anne is the National Pro Bono Partner for Blake Dawson, responsible for developing and managing the Firm’s work in community building, with not-for-profit organisations and with people who can’t otherwise access legal services.  Anne supervises the legal practice at Lou’s Place and was a member of the Lou’s Place Management Advisory Board from 2001-2009.

Anne has a Master of Criminology, Bachelor of Law and Bachelor of Arts all from Sydney University.  Prior to Blake Dawson, Anne worked with the Legal Aid Commission of NSW primarily as a criminal lawyer but also in civil law and as a mediator in their family law conferencing program.

Anne has served on a number of not-for-profit boards and government committees including the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s International Pro Bono Committee, the Steering Committees for the National Pro Bono Resource Centre and the Homeless Persons Legal Clinic, the Board of the Intellectual Disability Rights Service and the Advisory Board for Kingsford Legal Centre, the clinical education program for the University of NSW.  She maintains a legal practice primarily assisting people with intellectual disability or mental illness and their carers and Indigenous organisations.

Julie Gardiner was educated in England and attended the St James Secretarial Academy for Young Ladies in London – truly! She spent her rather wilder years travelling and working for – among others – the up-and-coming rock band Queen; interior designers for wealthy Arabs in London; and an up-market resort on the Whitsundays.

Having settled in Melbourne, she worked for a rock & roll radio station, married, had children, squeezed in some time doing voluntary work with Odyssey House and moved to Sydney. She started volunteering at Lou’s Place in 2002 and took on the role of volunteer coordinator, where her responsibility is to ensure the team is happy, well informed, efficient and motivated. She joined The Marmalade Foundation in 2004.

Originally from California, Dr Sally Gibbons received her B.A. from Harvard University in biochemistry, her M.A. in counselling psychology from Lesley College, and her D.Phil. in philosophy from Oxford University. Her book, Kant’s Theory of Imagination: Bridging Gaps in Judgment and Experience, was published by Oxford University Press. Prior to moving to Sydney, she was the founding Associate Director of the Center for Society and Genetics at UCLA as well as an adjunct member of the UCLA Philosophy Department.  She designed and for several years taught with two biologists a yearlong course for first-year university students entitled “Biotechnology and Society”, in which she lectured on the ethical and social dimensions of new genetic technologies. She has also been in clinical practice as a psychotherapist.  Prior to UCLA, Sally taught at Georgetown and Yale universities.  She is currently writing her first novel.

Rachel Hawekeswood was born in Auckland, New Zealand and took an  MA (Hons.) in English at Auckland University. She has worked in the hospitality industry in both Australia and the UK and came to live in Sydney in 1982. For the last ten years she has volunteered at Lou’s Place, where she has run the invaluable clothing room, creating order out of chaos and helping our clients find the sort of clothes which will set them up for everyday living, as well as occasions such as job interviews. For the last three years she has been the secretary of TMFL and  regularly involved with the day to day activities at Lou’s.

Kim Last has been volunteering at Lou’s and the Marmalade Foundation since she moved to Sydney eight years ago. Kim is originally from California.  After graduating university with degrees in economics and accounting, she spent 15 years working in finance in the Silicon Valley high-tech industry.  Prior to moving to Sydney Kim spent ten years living and working in South East Asia.  During her time there she also served on the Board of Governors for two private international schools and was President of the AWA, an international women’s organization comprising more than 400 women from over 30 nationalities whose activities focused on community services and fund-raising for local charities in Malaysia.  Kim now runs a financial consulting company.

Susie Manfred has been involved with Lou’s Place since she walked the streets of Kings Cross looking for a suitable site. She is a founding donor and has worked as both a generalist volunteer at the centre and behind the scenes.

Susie’s professional background is in marketing, in particular, advertising. She has worked solely for major multinational advertising agencies locally and in London, rising to the position of World Wide Account Director with Saatchi and Saatchi.

Susie continues to do part time consulting work in marketing and is a member of Cranbrook School Council. She has a Bachelor Degree in Commerce UNSW, a Graduate Diploma in Financial Planning with the Securities Institute of Australia and a Masters Degree in Professional Ethics UNSW.

Dr Lisa O’Brien has over 20 years experience in a diverse range of senior management roles in the health care, community services, bio-medical and information technology industries.  She is a Medical Practitioner registered in New South Wales, a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Medical Administrators and has a Masters of Business Administration and a Masters of Human Resource Management and Coaching.

Currently Lisa is the Chief Executive Officer of the Skin and Cancer Foundation Australia. This not-for-profit Foundation provides specialist Dermatology and Dermatopathology services and has a charitable mission to further teaching, training and research in dermatology. The Foundation has an annual turnover of $12 mil, employs over 100 staff and provides 80,000 episodes of patient care per annum.

In addition Lisa is a non-executive director of Immune Systems Therapeutics Pty Ltd (formerly Pacmab Pty Ltd). This biomedical company currently valued at $24mil is currently undertaking a Phase I clinical trial as commercialisation of a monoclonal antibody treatment for multiple myeloma. She also sits on the council of the Australian Private Hospital’s Association.

Ilse O’Reilly grew up in England, modelled for several years and also worked in the equestrian world. She married and moved to Australia in 1992. Ilse holds a BSc in Ecology and is completing a Masters in Environmental Science and Law.  She is active on various charitable event committees and in organisations including as Lou’s Place.

Delia Rothnie-Jones gained an M.A. in PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) at Oxford University. She spent nine years working in advertising and was a founding member of a small London ad agency. She spent four years travelling with her husband and during this period started writing travel articles. She spent a few years living in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she first started getting involved with community teaching work running a weekly writing workshop at Homeless Talk, a monthly paper produced by homeless writers. Moving to Sydney in 1997, she met Susie Manfred who was setting up Lou’s and offered her services as a creative writing teacher. She has been running this service at Lou’s since it opened.