Ciara Sterling - CEO

As Founding CEO and Director of the Thriving Communities Australia a for-purpose charity, Ciara Sterling convenes over 350 organisations across sectors, together with people with lived experience, to forge deeper understanding of vulnerability and drive ecosystem change through social design innovation.

Ciara is also a Non-Executive Director on the Board of Consumer Action Law Centre (CALC), is a member of the White Ribbon Advisory, the Monash Safe and Equal Advisory board and a founding member of the Economic Abuse Reference Group (EARG) and sits on various corporate, government and regulatory advisory committees.

She has over 20 years’ experience collaborating across corporate, government, regulators, Ombudsman, community sectors and lived experience to address the root causes of vulnerability, domestic abuse and inequality.

A key example of this is the development the One Stop One Story Hub a world-first cross-sector digital wrap around support platform enabling frontline workers in corporate, community and government organisations to connect and refer people to a range of supports through a single access point. She believes in the power of cross-sector collaboration to create genuine systemic change

Emma Martin - General Manager, Partnerships and Thriving Communities Foundation

Emma has over 13 years’ experience in partnering in the not for profit sector and is passionate about bringing together partners that have a shared vision to solve complex and systemic societal challenges.

Inspired by the powerful change collaboration can bring to some of the significant global challenges we face in the world today, Emma’s partnering approach is centred around Partnership Brokering - and to continually aim to create value for all involved.

Katrina Moore - General Manager, Strategy & Programs

Katrina is a passionate social innovator, specialising in developing strategic programs in response to complex societal challenges and has run successful programs across the public, private and community sectors. She is in her element when experimenting with new ideas and exploring the impact that collaboration can make to embed sustainable and impactful change. These interests have driven her career so far and allowed her to work on some amazing projects addressing complex societal scenarios through innovative ways of thinking and approaching complex challenges globally.

Paul Oglethorpe - Head of One Stop One Story (OSOS) Hub Operations

Paul is an experienced People and Project Management professional with a proven record of accomplishment in planning and implementing people, customer and technology projects, predominantly in the corporate sector. He is experienced in customer process change and building teams in support of business goals and objectives, including through major transformation projects. Paul approaches work in a logical, objective and energetic way, who is action oriented and able to communicate directly and openly with people of all levels. He is a strategic thinker with the ability to remove complexity from everyday people management, customer process and operations through communication and a flexible approach. During his time at TCA, he has learnt more about the collaborative approach across the partnership and applied these learnings in his role at TCA.

Bridgette McManus - Manager, Innovation & Partner Experience

Bridgette joined the team as a Service & Strategic designer in 2020.  Her career started out in healthcare before moving into TV and design industries in Melbourne, UK & Ireland.  Bridgette brings experience in research, co-design, facilitation, ideation and delivery. 

Throughout her time at TCA she has led the co-design and community engagement strategy to support the launch of the One Stop One Story Hub.  She loves that human centred design is a practice that considers people, products, partners and processes holistically and how they interact;  and always tries to bring it into her work.

Sophie McKenna - Design Lead

Sophie is the Design Lead in the TCA Communications team, where she brings stories to life through thoughtful, user-centered design. With a passion for gaining deep user insight and building empathy, she transforms complex ideas into clear, compelling visual content. Sophie's work blends creativity with strategy - ensuring every message and design resonates with the people it's intended to reach.

Maria Woodend - Office Manager and Executive Assistant to the CEO

Maria has over 16 years’ experience supporting CEO’s, CFO’s and Managers across corporate, utilities and not for profit organisations. Her mission is creating the environment for others to be able to excel in their roles in a collaborative, safe and creative way.

Maria is also a qualified Naturopath and brings a lens of holistic wellbeing to her work in supporting others.

Kerryn Jennings - Partnership Coordinator

Kerryn joined TCA as Office Manager and EA to CEO, Ciara Sterling, managing the growing team before stepping into her role as Partnerships Coordinator alongside GM of Partnerships, Emma Martin.

Working with the extensive and ever-growing list of TCA Partners, Kerryn has always enjoyed meeting and connecting people across the broad ecosystem of organisations within the TCA community and greatly values the lasting professional and personal friendships this has afforded her.