Advisory Board

Lesley Podesta (Chair)

Lesley Podesta is a former senior public servant, having held key roles leading Victorian government and Commonwealth government teams. She was the First Assistant Secretary with responsibility for leading the response to the Bali bombings, the development of the National Immunisation Strategy, the development of a National Health Incident Room to prevent SARS and Avian influenza transmission. She led the Office of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Heath during the historic Closing the Gap campaign and was the head of the Ageing & Aged Care Division.

She moved to the Fred Hollows Foundation ten years ago and led the Global Partnerships team working closely with WHO and global health development agencies to reduce avoidable blindness. She was appointed as CEO of the Alannah & Madeline Foundation in 2016, significantly growing the charity’s impact, finances, profile and support. She became a leading voice on the critical importance of children’s safety, privacy and rights, particularly digital rights.

Sunita Bose

Sunita Bose is the Managing Director of Digital Industry Group Incorporated DIGI, a non-profit industry association that advocates for the interests of the digital industry in Australia. Prior to joining DIGI, Sunita was the Head of Global Policy for the online petition platform Change.org for five years, based in San Francisco. She  developed the company’s Privacy Policy, Terms of Service and Community Guidelines and the company’s policy infrastructure to manage harmful user-generated content, in areas such as bullying, hate speech, defamation, fake news, copyright, personal information exposure, child protection and data sharing requests.

Sunita previously worked in strategic communications and advocacy at international aid agencies Oxfam and UNICEF, and has a Masters of Policy from the University of New South Wales, where she focused on organisational policy. Sunita’s opinions on Internet policy issues have been published in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, ABC Online and TechCrunch, and she has spoken at international Internet conferences such as RightsCon and Personal Democracy.

Anne Collier

Anne Collier is founder and executive director of national non-profit organisation The Net Safety Collaborative (TNSC), which runs NetFamilyNews and piloted a social media helpline for schools in California in 2016. She serves on the trust & safety advisory boards of Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube and Yubo and advises investors in tech innovation that supports youth wellbeing. Since 2017, she has worked with Google on its “Be Internet Awesome” safety and citizenship curriculum for elementary students worldwide.

Anne has served on three national task forces on youth and Internet safety, including as co-chair of the Obama administration’s Online Safety & Technology Working Group, which delivered its report to Congress, “Youth Safety on a Living Internet,” in June 2010, and the national Internet Safety Technical Task Force of 2008 at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center. From 2013 to 2014 she served on the Aspen Institute Task Force on Learning & the Internet.

Saffron Howden

Saffron Howden is a journalist, editor and media literacy advocate. She was a Google News Initiative Teaching Fellow for Australia & NZ, travelling to rural and regional newsrooms to provide digital news training to journalists and editors. She developed a digital citizenship curriculum for Facebook Asia Pacific.

As a journalist, she worked for The Northern Star, The Daily Telegraph,  Australian Associated Press (AAP) and The Sydney Morning Herald. She  was the co-founder of the national newspaper for children, Crinkling News. She also co-wrote a book, Kid Reporter: The secret to breaking news about teaching children journalism and media literacy skills

Suji Kanagalingam

Suji Kanagalingam leads Price Waterhouse Cooper’s Australia’s State Government Consulting Practice and is a member of the Australian Government and Public Sector Consulting  Leadership team.

Suji’s career spans listed multi-national corporations, start-up enterprises and professional services. He has a wealth of experience in Digital Transformation and has delivered substantial value to clients across a range of industries including Government (Federal and State), Healthcare, Financial Services, Telecommunication and Energy as well as at various levels within the private, public and not-for-profit sectors – both in Australia and overseas (Asia and US).

Amelia Loye

Amelia Loye is a social scientist specialising in community and stakeholder engagement, with deep expertise in digital engagement. She is passionate about representative open government, sustainable development, civic innovation and resilient communities and is committed to making these happen wherever she can.

Amelia spent her career helping governments to consult the community, work with stakeholders and consider social issues and impacts in the design and delivery of policy, programs and services. She has worked with governments across Australia and New Zealand, and British Columbia in Canada.

John Morley

John Morley is the Program Development Manager at Plan International Australia. He has an academic background in urban planning and science and a career that has covered environmental management, climate change and international development. He enjoys working across streams and with new and different partners.

Prior to joining Plan International, John worked for various State and Australian Government Departments, including Environment, Climate Change and AusAID/DFAT, working on a wide range of matters including running programs with States/Territories and commissioning of research, designs and program evaluations.

John has worked on a range of thematic issues like the Natural Heritage Trust, Australia’s Biodiversity Hotspots program, the Australia-China Climate Change Partnership, Australia’s First-Pass Coastal Vulnerability Assessment, advised on practical reconstruction in Afghanistan and managed regional climate and economic programming in the Pacific. With AusAID/DFAT John was posted to Afghanistan and Fiji.

Samantha Yorke

Samantha Yorke works as the Authority Lead on Telecommunications and Consumer matters at the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), with a focus on financial hardship, consumer protection and scams. She is an accredited mediator, technology lawyer and policy advisor with over twenty years' experience working within the digital media and technology sectors both in Europe and Australia.

Prior to joining ACMA, Sam worked in Government Affairs and Public Policy at Google Australia, established the regulatory function at the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Australia, and worked as General Counsel and Asia Pacific Legal Director for Yahoo!’s Australian business. Sam also spent ten years working in London as a corporate attorney for Microsoft where she supported the MSN business through a period of exponential growth and contributed to the launch of the Xbox consoles across Europe.

Sam has acted as a media spokesperson and is a regular public speaker on trends and challenges affecting the digital industry.

John Zoltner

John Zoltner is the Senior Director of Technology for Development and Innovation for Save the Children. His focus is on using technology to improve opportunities for the most resource poor communities in the world, while protecting children from the dangers technology can present for them. He speaks frequently on the topics of online child protection, digital child safeguarding and Artificial Intelligence for mission-based organisations (AI4Good) and is a constant advocate for organising the ICT4D community to take collective action to reduce internet violence against children.

John has held a variety of senior executive roles focused on the use of technology to benefit society. In addition to his staff roles, John has held a number of board advisory and governance roles, including for the WePROTECT Global Alliance Technology Working Group, NTEN, a membership organisation that helps non-profits use technology effectively, and for the Public Interest Registry (PIR.ORG), the internet registry responsible for all .org internet domains.