About Us

Find out more about ActionAid's 50 year history, our women's rights focus, and meet our Board of Trustees.

ActionAid's 50 Year History

Delve into our history spanning nearly 50 years as an international organisation, and 10 years since ActionAid Australia was founded.

2009

Building on our 42 year legacy as Austcare, we joined the ActionAid federation, a global leader in rights based approaches supporting people living in poverty to drive change from the ground up.

2010

We stood in solidarity with Palestinian women supporting 14 local organisations to advance women’s rights through public education on inheritance rights and grants for women to establish small businesses.

2013

We launched our ground- breaking transitional justice work to support women survivors of violence in Uganda, Kenya and Democratic Republic of Congo to define justice from their own perspectives.

2015

We launched a global campaign to make cities safer for women and responded to major emergencies in Vanuatu and Nepal supporting safe spaces for women and resourcing women’s leadership.

2017

We secured a major win stopping Australian funding of a proposed Australian-run coal mine in South Africa that would undermine women’s rights, and we launched the Shifting the Power Coalition in the Pacific.

2019

We drove gender responsive alternatives to climate change by supporting 8000 women in Vanuatu, Kenya and Cambodia to influence climate change policy from the local to the global and launched the Transform Trade for Women

2024

We celebrated 15 years as ActionAid Australia, and ActionAid’s global impact on the lives of 500,000 women in 70 countries.

ActionAid Australia was originally founded as Austcare, an NGO dedicated to defending rights of people seeking asylum and protection in emergencies. In 2009, Austcare joined the ActionAid Federation. 

Since then, ActionAid Australia has sharpened our expertise in human rights and poverty eradication, with a focus on supporting women in low-income communities around the world to campaign for their rights.

Over the years, we have firmly established ourselves in Australia as a global women’s rights organisation, supporting women living in poverty and exclusion around the world. We have also begun campaigning in Australia and across the globe to address the structural causes of injustice and inequality, using an intersectional feminist lens.

About our Human Rights Based Approach (HRBA)

Watch this video and find out more about the four elements that make up our approach to everything we do across programs, campaigns, and fundraising.

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Meet the ActionAid Leadership Team, Board of Directors and Executive Director.

With over 25 years’ experience across the women’s rights, not-for-profit, legal, and corporate sectors, ActionAid Australia’s Executive Director, Board and Leadership Team bring a wealth of strategic and practical knowledge to the organisation’s leadership and governance.

Executive Director of ActionAid Australia, Michelle Higelin

Michelle Higelin is the Executive Director of ActionAid Australia. She has more than two and half decades of experience working to advance women’s rights in Australia and internationally, including as the former Deputy General Secretary of one of the largest women’s rights movement globally, the World YWCA. Michelle has served on global advisory groups to the United Nations Population Fund and the World Food Programme, and chaired the NGO Working Group on Peace at the United Nations in Geneva. She is currently Vice President of the Australian Council for International Development and Co-Chair of the Australian Civil Society Coalition on Women, Peace and Security. Michelle has a Master of International Relations and a BA Communications.

Head of Resource Mobilisation, Maeva Freeman

Maeva is Head of Fundraising & Innovation at ActionAid Australia. She provides strategic and operational leadership of the organisation's fundraising strategy and team, particularly driving innovation in funding streams. Maeva was instrumental in establishing an ActionAid initiative, the Arise Fund – the first ever global fund resourcing women’s leadership in emergencies. She also has over a decade of marketing and communications experience working both in Sydney and London. Maeva is currently a Board Director of Emergency Action Alliance, and she served on the Executive Committee of the Women’s Electoral Lobby, NSW. Maeva is passionate about women’s rights and mobilising the public to create a fairer world.

Head of Programs, Sally Henderson

Dr Sally Henderson is the Head of Programs at ActionAid Australia. She is an ecofeminist and extremely passionate about women smallholder farmers, whom she believes hold the key to global food production. Sally holds a degree in agriculture science and a PhD in tropical plant sciences. Sally’s career has seen her live in various countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, working with men and women farmers.

Head of Policy and Campaigns, Katherine Tu

Kat is the Head of Policy and Campaigns at ActionAid Australia. She has ten years experience working in the progressive campaigns space, with expertise in digital campaigning and fundraising, corporate campaigning, and community organising She is particularly passionate about equity, racial justice, and intersectional feminism. Kat holds a combined Bachelor of Arts and Law from the University of Sydney.

Board Chair, Belinda Morrissey

Belinda joined the Board in 2018 and stepped into the Chair role in November 2022. She is the CEO of the English Family Foundation and brings with her deep experience within the Australian social enterprise sector and an extensive leadership background in both corporate and not for profit organisations spanning three continents. Belinda works across sectors to develop systems-based solutions that will mobilize capital and the ecosystems needed to create long term social change both within Australia and globally. She is also Chair of Social Enterprise Australia (our country’s first peak body for social enterprise) and is on the Board of the Social Impact Hub Foundation.

First Nations Advisor, Trent Wallace

Trent Wallace is a First Nations person who grew up in regional Australia where he started his career as a lawyer. Trent is currently the First Nations Advisor at Ashurst – the first and only Aboriginal person in this role in a global law firm. He is also a lecturer, writer, co-chair of the Legal Profession Reconciliation Network and is on the Executive of Just Reinvest NSW. Bringing lived experience and cultural knowledge to the forefront of social impact and change is essential, and Trent has been able to blend his cultural expertise into each role he has held, which has included being on the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability and Australian Government Solicitor. He resides on Meanjin Country – Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land.

Board Director, Jananie Janarthana

Jananie joined the Board in September 2020. She has worked extensively in political, union and non for profit spaces for the past 6 years; and takes a keen interest in women's rights and community organising to create social change. She received the Global Voices National Scholarship in 2018 and represented Australia at the Y20 Argentina in the 'Future of Work' taskforce. In 2021, Jananie joined the Sydney Policy Lab, at the University of Sydney, who are developing innovative strategies for impactful policy development across Australia.

Board Director, Georgina King

Georgina joined the board in August 2022 and has over 15 years’ senior fundraising experience with For Purpose organisations such as Cancer Council NSW, Taronga Conservation Society, National Heart Foundation and McGrath Foundation. She has been recognised as a Fellow of Fundraising Institute of Australia and is a certified coach with the International Coaching Federation. Georgina is passionate about building the capability, competency and wellbeing of our sector for greater social impact. She is a Culture and Development Consultant at UNSW and the Founder of Raucous Caucus which provides strengths-based mentoring, coaching and leadership development for social impact professionals.

Board Director, Nicole D'Souza

Nicole joined the Board in November 2020. She is an experienced government, regulatory, employment and litigation lawyer and domestic and international human rights advocate who has worked in Australia, Hong Kong, London and Geneva, for government, non-profit and private sector organisations, including as a legal and industrial officer for a trade union and before the UN Human Rights Council. Since 2018 she has worked in the corporate sector, promoting respect for human rights in business operations and supply chains, leading work on business responses to the risks of modern slavery and reporting under the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth).

Board Director, Kristina Stefanova

Kristina is the co-founder of Bundaleer Sustainable Investments and has more than 15 years of experience working with the public and private sector in Australia, the US, UK, and across regions.

Board Director, Jan Cossar

Jan has over 30 years’ experience working in international aid and development across the Asia-Pacific and Africa regions. She is Managing Director of Strategy Matters, a consultancy company specialising in program design, monitoring evaluation and research and organisational review and strategic development.. Clients include Australian Government departments, United Nations agencies, local and international NGOs, and private companies, helping them to think strategically and improve the quality and reach of their work. Jan holds postgraduate qualifications in Organisational Management and Evaluation, is a Board member of the EcoCentre in Melbourne and works as a pro-bono advisor to the Marninwarntikura Women's Resource Centre in Fitzroy Crossing, Western Australia. She loves to surf.

Board Director, Scot Ennis

Scot's early client side marketing career was at P&G and eBay, before co-founding Switched on Media, which won multiple advertising awards before successfully selling to WPP. Scot has since founded or invested in several companies in both Australia and the US, most notably Shines Digital, widely regarded as one of Australia’s best performance digital agencies. With 25 years of commercial experience, Scot is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and today spends increasing time on projects that create social value.

Board Director, Frank Burke

Frank has over 25 years’ experience in the finance and accounting field, specialising in operational and commercial support in fast growth environments. During his time in finance leadership positions, he has worked extensively with medium to large sized businesses from a range of industries including medical devices, fashion retail, telecoms, hospitality and manufacturing. By putting people at the source of the solution, Frank has led key finance initiatives to support the strategic goals of organisations, working closely with the management team, providing insight and analysis for informed decision making ensuring effective financial control and risk management within dynamic organisational environments. Frank has extensive board experience in the human services sector, serving as Treasurer to Prisoners’ Aid Association of NSW and Director on the Board of Living My Way. Frank is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD)

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