Naomi Fox

Chair

Naomi is founder of Culture Co- Lab, a boutique consultancy who partners with clients to help them align, learn and grow. Naomi works across diverse industries with executives, leadership teams and professionals to develop strategy and align culture, customer and employee experience. Underpinning her work is a generative, human centred approach that values all stakeholder perspectives. Prior to this, Naomi’s 20+ year corporate career involved working in human capital and organisational development consulting roles across ANZ, HK and the UK. She has consulted with a broad range of organisations including NFP, Government, Corporate who have a local, regional and global remit. Her most recent corporate role was Head of Culture, Customer and Employee Experience with Telstra. Naomi has an Executive MBA and a Graduate Certificate in Change Management, both from AGSM, UNSW and a Bachelor of Arts (First Class Honours) from University of Queensland.

Naomi began as a Ready Set volunteer stylist/dresser before working closely with the Board in 2019 to develop the #IMPACT5000 growth strategy to uplift impact from helping 1500 people to 5000 people p/a over a 3 year cycle. It’s an exciting time for Ready Set, and she feels privileged to enable this journey with them. 

Edmund Waters

Board Secretary

Edmund is a qualified Australian lawyer with over a decade of in-house experience
with a major Australian healthcare organisation. Edmund also holds a Graduate Diploma of Applied Corporate Governance from the Governance Institute of Australia and is an Affiliate of the Chartered Governance Institute.
He has excellent regulatory, litigation, employment law, privacy and mergers and
acquisitions experience. In his current role, he provides governance advice and
company secretarial support to numerous boards.

Edmund is keen to support people to achieve their career goals, having managed interns as part of the CareerTracker Indigenous Internship programme. He is committed to Ready Set’s mission and making a positive impact on the lives of jobseekers.

Peter Pryn

Treasurer / Financial Controller

A board member since 2016, Peter is a Chartered Accountant, business advisor and Director at Hall Chadwick Melbourne. He leads the firm’s finance, human resources, IT infrastructure and general management. He also manages the offshore outsourcing team and turnkey services offered in the Back Office Support team.

Peter has over 30 years experience as a Chartered accountant, both in industry and professional practice, including ten years running his own accountancy practice. Peter became a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in July 2008. Outside of work Peter has been actively involved in an array of community service groups, business chambers, sporting clubs and charity organisations over many years. In addition to sitting on the board, Peter volunteers as Treasurer and manages the financials for internal reporting requirements and ANC compliance.

Through Peter, Hall Chadwick provide much valued pro-bono accounting services to Ready Set

Liam Hayes 

People & Culture

Liam joined the Ready Set board in 2016 and is also the Chief People Officer at Aurecon. As part of Aurecon’s global leadership team he leads the People team, which focuses on providing solutions that enable Aurecon to attract the best talent and develop their people to meet our client’s current and future challenges.

At Aurecon his team partner with the Aurecon leadership team to execute culture change, organisational and leadership development strategies, and programmes such as the award-winning Mind Matters programme, which won the Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI) Award for Mental Health in the Workplace and the Māori cadet programme, which won the Māori and Pacifica Diversity award at the ‘Young at Heart’ Youth Employer Pledge Awards.

He loves the impact Ready Set has on so many lives. The combination of his professional background and his passion for seeing people succeed enables Liam to make a positive contribution to Ready Set, particularly regarding our volunteer workforce.

Margot Stevenson

Corporate and NFP Partnerships

Margot is an innovative and highly commercial executive HR leader. She has diverse experience leading national and global HR teams for corporate and not-for-profit organisations spanning employment services, higher education, technology, transport & logistics and financial services.

She has built organisational capability and created thriving cultures and she is passionate about enabling organisations to reach peak performance through highly engaged and motivated employees.

Margot leads the People and Culture function as Executive, People and Culture at Wise Employment, a national not-for-profit employment services provider, which connects and empowers job seekers and employers.

Margot joined the board  in 2018, where she also volunteers as a career coach, helping clients build confidence; supporting people on their journey towards employment and to realizing their potential.

Passionate about the work she does at Wise Employment and Ready Set. Margot is proud to be part of organisations making a positive impact on the lives of less advantaged people in our community.

Charlotte Webb

Charlotte joined the Ready Set board in late 2021. Until very recently she has been the Chief Fundraising and Development officer for Movember, with a depth of experience in revenue raising within the not-for-profit space and a personal commitment to making a sustainable, positive impact on society.

Ready Set looks forward to benefiting from the significant expertise Charlotte brings, and her strong alignment to our values and organisational mission.

Julie Quirk

Volunteer Representative

A founding volunteer of Ready Set and Volunteer Representative on the board, Julie is deeply committed to the continued growth of our organisation and the integrity of our service.

After a successful career in fashion retail and recruitment, Julie was gaining enormous personal satisfaction at Ready Set. Wanting to take this further, she attained Diplomas in Community Services Work, Case Management and a Certificate IV in Community Services Work. 

Julie worked in various roles in the welfare sector before moving to her current role at the Sacred Heart Mission Women’s House in St Kilda, where she sees first-hand the challenges faced by the most vulnerable in our community. 

She believes passionately in the capacity of Ready Set to support people facing barriers to succeed in having the life they deserve.

Wendy Draayers

Chief Executive Officer

Wendy Draayers joined Ready Set in February 2021. 

She has worked for over 30 years in senior roles across the education, not-for-profit, community and business sectors within Victoria, nationally and internationally. Wendy is passionate about driving innovation and creating sustainable positive change at both an individual and community level. For many years, her work has focussed on education as the most effective way to achieve this. Most recently Wendy has been employed as the Chief Executive Officer of the International Specialised Skills Institute.

Wendy is very excited to be joining the Ready Set team as their new CEO and looks forward to working with the Board, employees, volunteers, and stakeholders to grow the organisation and support more clients to reach their full potential and build the life they dream of.

Elizabeth Redfern

Volunteer Representative

Elizabeth Redfern was elected to the Ready Set board in August 2021 as Volunteer Representative. 

Originally from the UK, Elizabeth moved to Australia from Hong Kong in October 2016 and commenced volunteering with Ready Set in 2017. She has over twenty years’ experience in the fields of publishing, marketing and communications, and business development. While in Hong Kong, she headed the Asia-Pacific marketing and communications teams for U.S. based law firms. She also established a boutique consultancy which provided bespoke marketing and PR services to SMEs and multinational companies in Asia.

Drawing on her corporate experience, Elizabeth has worked as an executive coach for the past ten years. Her work crosses industries, geographies and hierarchies and includes corporate and individual clients from professional services, media/PR, human resources, and education. She coaches on a wide variety of areas including career and leadership development, work-life choices and transitions including parental coaching, and communication and presentation. She has a special interest in helping high potential leaders, particularly women, build their personal brand and develop their executive presence and skills to board level. She is passionate about helping her clients change and transform to reach their fullest potential.

She currently volunteers at Ready Set as both a dresser and career coach and loves helping people restart their work journey. Along with her professional expertise, Elizabeth will bring the voice of the volunteers to the board, helping ensure strong connectivity between the volunteer base and the strategic decisions made by the board.