Eleanor Groat (she/her) | Founder and Developer of Leaders and Teams | Your Best Asset (Summit MC)

Eleanor is the founder of Your Best Asset and is a committed developer of leaders and teams. She is an engaging and experienced facilitator who has held a lifelong fascination with what makes people ‘tick’ and brings a unique perspective on human behaviour with a 20-year career in this field across the corporate, law enforcement, mental health, education, and not-for-profit sectors. She is passionate about working with people to find their ‘fit’ and to create psychologically safe environments and cultures which enable individuals to flourish and the business to thrive.

Eleanor holds an MSc in Forensic Psychology and a BSc (Hons) in Psychology, is an ICF accredited coach, and combines her background with other qualifications in training and design to create and deliver customised programs. These programs have a focus on engagement and implementation through which she works with individuals, teams, and leaders at all levels and then supports them to apply their learnings in the workplace.

Outside of her work, Eleanor is an ardent supporter and advocate of causes relating to child protection, human trafficking, and refugees and helps to run her local branch of the Disabled Surfers Association.

Samantha Abeydeera joined Council in April 2023 as the Divisional Manager, Transport for Brisbane. In this role Samantha is responsible for one of Australia’s largest public transport providers with more than 3,000 employees facilitating close to 50 million annual customer journeys across bus, ferry and e-mobility. Samantha and her team are committed to providing a world class public transport service for the people of Brisbane by delivering on Transport for Brisbane’s vision of every customer; every journey matters.

Prior to joining Council, Samantha was the Executive Director of Strategic Operations at Transport for NSW. This unique role was responsible for driving end to end multimodal strategy and continuous improvement in mass transport for up to 700 million annual customer journeys. Samantha previously held senior roles in the private sector including Managing Director of Transport and the group’s Chief Operating Officer for Maritime at the NRMA Group.

In 2018 Samantha was recognised as one of the Top 50 Women in NSW Government for her transformational leadership as Director of Train Crewing at Sydney Trains where she led more than 1000+ Drivers and Guards who delivered in excess of 400 million customer journeys annually. 

Samantha holds a Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor of Laws from Macquarie University and has also undertaken executive education in Boston at Harvard Business School.

Maryanne was appointed Acting Under Treasurer in February 2023. Previously, Maryanne was Deputy Director-General, Department of Employment, Small Business and Training where she was responsible for the department’s engagement with industry, peak bodies, and small businesses, and for overseeing regional service delivery. She has more than 20 years of leadership experience in the Queensland, Australian and United Kingdom public sectors.

As Deputy Director-General for Early Childhood, Tania leads the development and implementation of policy, funding and regulatory frameworks to ensure all children from birth to 8 years are engaged in high-quality programs and services that support learning and development, and successful transitions.

Key features of this work include the implementation of the Queensland Government’s Kindy for all funding reform package, which will support all Queensland children to participate in a kindergarten program by improving affordability and access for families.
An influential executive leader, with a strong background in early childhood education and more than 25 years’ experience in the sector, Tania is responsible for improving educational outcomes, by leading policy development and driving key reform to benefit Queensland children and their families.

Tania is invested in making positive change and is highly motivated to achieve this through successful collaboration and partnerships—supporting all our young children, no matter their location or life circumstance, to have a great start in life.

Erin is a skilled Senior Executive leading both clinical service delivery and investment and commission. She has lead teams of 500 + include large internal and outsourced service funding

Erin is currently a Senior Executive managing child safety service delivery and procurement at the Department of Child Safety, Seniors and Disabilities. Recently, she had oversight of domestic and family violence service sector performance, strategy and funding.

As a Senior Executive, Erin is skilled in strategic planning, change management, finance and HR management and project delivery. She has an ability to design innovative service delivery to meet demand, and is a psychologist by trade.

Kathryn McMillan KC was called to the Bar in 1987 and was appointed Silk in 2006.

Relevantly, she has been an ethics Counsellor for the Bar for many years and has been appointed to the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal as an assessor in legal disciplinary matters. She was an Adjunct Professor of Law at the TC Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland until late 2020 and lectured in a number of areas including ethics.

Kathryn practices in personal injuries (particularly cases concerning complex medical evidence and historic sexual abuse claims), public law, disciplinary matters, discrimination proceedings together with a long-standing practice in family law and child protection proceedings. Kathryn was recognised consistently in Doyle’s Guide as a “leading” Queensland barrister both in the Family Law and Divorce category and the Parenting and Children’s Matters category. She was “Lawyers Weekly” female barrister of the year in 2019.

She has appeared in five Royal Commissions/Commissions of Inquiry: the Public Hospitals Commission of Inquiry (as Counsel for the Medical Board), the Queensland Child Protection Commission of Inquiry (as Senior Counsel Assisting), the Barrett Adolescent Centre Commission of Inquiry (as lead Counsel for a health authority), the Royal Commission into Institutional Sex Abuse (as Queen’s Counsel for the State of Queensland) and the Youth Detention Review as Commissioner. She is currently briefed in two Royal Commissions – into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation into People with Disability and Defence And Veteran Suicide.

Kathryn has held a number of Ministerial appointments, including on the Child Death Case Review Panel and until recently the Premier’s Domestic & Family Violence Prevention Council. She has previously served on the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal, the Psychologists Tribunal and the Mental Health Review Tribunal.

Kathryn was appointed on 16 December 2022 for a five-year term.

Deputy Director-General and Chief Biosecurity Officer, Biosecurity Queensland.

Rachel Chay was appointed as Deputy Director-General and Chief Biosecurity Officer in early 2023.

Before this appointment, Rachel served as the Chief Operating Officer for the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority. With 25 years of experience in animal health, regulatory affairs and government leadership, she is a strong advocate for lifelong learning.

Rachel holds an undergraduate qualification in veterinary science, along with master’s degrees in both human resources and organisational development, and public administration. Her primary focus lies in effective public sector leadership, building organisational capability, and fostering strong, collaborative partnerships with stakeholders.

Rachel is dedicated to ensuring Biosecurity Queensland continues to protect the ecosystems, industries and way of life in Queensland. She is committed to maintaining our reputation for product safety and integrity, while securing ongoing market access for its commodities.

Louise is a proud queer woman and the Deputy Chair, Queensland Public Sector LGBTIQ+ Steering Committee. Louise is passionate about inclusion, human rights, equality, and fairness especially in relation to employment opportunities and access to services and believes everyone has a leadership role to play in building inclusion in our society. As a Diversity and Inclusion Practitioner Louise understands the impact inclusion can have on individual mental wellbeing and the flow on benefit of more inclusive communities and believes Public Servants and public sector leaders have a unique opportunity to create safe places and services for everyone and create a workforce that truly represents the community we serve.

Stacey is a Proud Gamilaraay woman who grew up in St George, Queensland. She has over a decade of leadership and executive roles in community controlled organisations, private sector consultancy and state and federal government in First Nations public policy, strategy, governance, program design and collaborative change processes. An experienced Director, a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors Course, a Fellow of the Australian Rural Leadership Foundation and holds a Graduate Diploma Public Administration (Policy) and Graduate Certificate in Research.

Stacey is an unapologetic advocate for self-determination, community decision making and grassroots policy solutions.

As leader of the state’s first dedicated prevention agency, Dr Littlewood is a passionate advocate for health promotion in Queensland.

Dr Littlewood believes every Queenslander has the right to better health, with expertise in driving outcomes for individual patients and populations in the area of non-communicable diseases. She is relentless in driving policy and action to achieve fairness for all and reach the right communities at the right time.

An experienced leader, researcher, clinician, academic and educator, Dr Littlewood has more than 25 years’ experience working with the most vulnerable patients and families across paediatric obesity prevention, nutrition and dietetics.

Dr Littlewood holds a raft of formal qualifications in dietetics, business, research and executive leadership from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), James Cook University and The University of Queensland (UQ). These include a PhD, Master of Business Administration, Master of Medical Science and Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. As such, bringing universities, industry, government and communities together to solve problems is key to her work.

She currently holds three Adjunct Professor appointments with Griffith University, QUT and UQ, and is proud to be working with these outstanding teaching and research universities. Dr Littlewood remains passionate about education, fostering student learning opportunities at HWQld.

Before her Chief Executive appointment in 2019, Dr Littlewood was a member of the inaugural HWQld Board and held titles including Director, Health Services Research, Children’s Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service and Conjoint Associate Professor, Nutrition at UQ. While Director of specialist private nutrition practice ChildD, she led the first national paediatric dietetics training course in Australia, alongside Dietitians Australia.

Dr Littlewood has been awarded for her work and proudly accepted the QUT Outstanding Alumni Award (Health) in 2020. She has also held several Board roles including Board Director, Dietitians Australia, and has been awarded Fellow, Dietitians Australia for her service.

Dr Littlewood holds a range of national and Queensland clinical and academic positions and has been an invited speaker at state, national and international conferences. Her extensive list of publications includes co-authoring ‘Digital health and precision prevention: shifting from disease-centred care to consumer-centred health’ in peer-reviewed journal, Australian Health Review.

She is most passionate about children’s health, especially those who need it the most. Through her role at HWQld, Dr Littlewood’s focus remains firmly on driving an agenda of equity to ensure the next generation of Queenslanders live healthy and active lives.