Our Executive
Our Executive Group Members are the driving force behind Family Life’s vision of capable communities, strong families, and thriving children. With a wealth of experience and a deep commitment to social impact, they bring strategic leadership, innovative thinking, and unwavering dedication to every initiative.
Their collaborative approach fosters an environment of empowerment, guiding teams and stakeholders toward sustainable, long-term solutions that create lasting change for individuals and families.
Allison Wainwright, Chief Executive Officer
Allison has over 20 years of social work experience spanning government and not for profit sectors in senior and executive management roles. She has expertise in the areas of community change, family violence, children, youth and family services both in Australia, and overseas.
Allison’s specialist skills focus on programmatic design of community change and therapeutic systems that provide trauma informed interventions and family sensitive practice including crisis services, residential care, child protection, family support and community based models.
She has provided international leadership over collective impact, community change and primary prevention initiatives. Designing place based and community centred models around HIV/AIDS prevention, family violence prevention, sexual health and place based responses to vulnerable families and children.
In South Africa Allison held the position of State Director for Integrated Services for Women and Children impacted by family and sexual violence and led the South African government reform agenda from 2005 to 2011, rolling out community based responses to victims of crime and violence. This led to the successful launch of over 70 victim empowerment centres, in partnership with local police to provide 24 hour access services for women and children. Allison led the extensive funding of the NPO sector to support these sites and served as the head of the Premier’s taskforce to respond to violence against women. She also led the interdepartmental committee reporting to the Minister for Community Safety.
Allison has been with Family Life since 2013. She held multiple positions before becoming the organisation’s Deputy CEO in 2016 then CEO on Monday 6 April 2020.
Qualifications: Executive Management Development programme – University of South Africa
Master’s degree in Mental Health (Social Work) – University of South Africa
Honours degree in Psychology – University of South Africa
Bachelor of Social Science Honours in Social Work – Rhodes University
Brian McDowell, Director Services
A highly experienced social worker with over 20 years experience working as a practitioner and senior manager in the health and human services field across a range of areas including, community development in Aboriginal communities, youth justice, homeless, child protection, disability services, maternal and child health, alcohol and other drugs and mental health.
Brian led the Victorian Government’s commitment to increase access to early parenting supports to improve the lives of children 0-4 and their families through the establishment of 7 new early parenting centres across Victoria. He also provided leadership across numerous areas of State Government investment in the Victorian Alcohol and Other Drug sector with the expansion of residential rehabilitation and improving responses to those in the experiencing and perpetrators of family violence.
Brian has been with Family Life since 2021 in the role of Director Services.
Qualifications:
Bachelor of Social Work (James Cook University, Cairns),
Executive Consequence Management (Barrington Centre),
Emotional Release Counselling and Anger Management (Expressive Therapies Institute – Dulwich Centre).
Kate Saporta, Chief Financial Officer
Kate is Family Life’s Chief Financial Officer, guiding the financial and social enterprise strategy for the organisation.
Kate is a highly experienced chartered accountant who has held prior CFO roles both here in Australia and in Tanzania. Kate is a strategic CFO who demonstrates strong person-centred leadership skills with strong communication capability. She has worked for a number of foundations and supported not for profits.
Kate has spent a decade working with corporate and for-purpose organisations to improve capability, sustainability and impact, developing deep knowledge of social enterprise. As a Chartered Accountant Kate is passionate about enabling financial literacy amongst for purpose organisations. With expertise in financial modelling, business model innovation, strategic accounting, and social finance she guides social enterprise to set up and run impactful and sustainable enterprises.
Prior to joining Family Life, Kate worked in the social enterprise environment supporting start-ups and scaling new social enterprises at the Centre for Social Impact. She specialises in strategic business and financial modelling and design, growth strategies, capital raising and implementation support.
Qualifications:
Chartered Accountant – Institute of Chartered Accounts
Bachelor of Commerce, Accounting and Finance – University of Melbourne
Alida Williams, Director Strategic Development and Innovation
Qualifications:
Bachelor of Commerce – University of Natal (South Africa)
Tony Johannsen, Executive Manager Clinical Practice and Quality
Tony draws on his extensive clinical and leadership expertise in his role as Executive Manager, Clinical Practice and Quality at Family Life.
A psychotherapist and clinical supervisor, Tony has 10 year’s experience delivering trauma-informed leadership and resilience training to corporate and non-profit clients.
He started his clinical career in the Alcohol and other Drugs (AOD) sector, working as an AOD forensic clinician, clinical supervisor and program manager. After upskilling as a Men’s Behaviour Change Facilitator, Tony broadened his clinical expertise beyond AOD to include working with men who use Family Violence (FV).
Spurred by his passion for innovation, Tony realised there were gaps, deficiencies and opportunities for improvement within the mainstream approaches to working with men using FV. He later went on to develop bespoke interventions aimed at working more effectively with men who use FV to help combat these shortfalls.
Qualifications:
Bachelor of Counselling (Australian College of Professional Psychology)
Graduate Certificate – Male Family Violence (Swinburne University)
Certificate – Clinical Supervision (LaTrobe University)
Graduate Diploma – Psychology (Monash University)
