Dr Pamela Kinnear

Dr Pamela Kinnear

Principal consultant

Pamela is an experienced policy professional, skilled facilitator and strategic thinker. Her consultancy work is grounded in a successful 20 year career at senior leadership levels across government, non-government and research sectors, backed up by a strong academic background. Her public policy, research and advocacy background means that Pamela can understand issues from a variety of perspectives, fully aware of the tensions and challenges involved in policy  – especially in time-pressured, high-profile, and complex work. To surface and work through these issues, Pamela draws on her advanced facilitation skills, building dynamic group interactions that support innovative but realistic insights and transformative change for teams and projects.

Pamela has successfully assisted a diverse range of clients such as the Defence Forces, community services and peak bodies, statistical agencies, private sector firms and various Commonwealth and State/Territory Government departments.

Key positions Pamela has held include:

  • Group Head, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
  • Deputy Chief Executive, Universities Australia
  • Senior Executive, Band 1, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (various positions, social policy)
  • Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, various roles incl. 4 years as Senior Executive Band 1
  • Senior Research Fellow, The Australia Institute

Pamela maintains active memberships of professional associations:

  • Fellow, Institute of Management and Leaders (IML)
  • Member, Institute of Public Administration of Australia (IPAA)
  • Member, Institute of Public Participation Australia (IPA2)
  • Member, Australian Social Policy Association (APSA).

Commonwealth Departments & Agencies: Various engagements for multiple Commonwealth Departments and agencies (e.g., Australian Bureau of Statistics, Defence Housing Australia, Dept of Social Services, Dept of Education to support: risk management; risk communication and social licence; stakeholder engagement and consultation; change planning, team capability & culture change; strategic positioning and planning.

ACT Government: Working with various Directorates to build team capability and planning for major long-term policy change initiatives; consult with the community for policy and program reform.

Community sector: facilitated ‘Ideas Day’ for community organisation innovation workshop with a wide range of government and non-government stakeholders, to build 5-year advocacy agenda.

Australian Defence Force: Various ongoing engagements for Emotional Competence Training, Air Force; facilitate gender diversity and equality conferences, meetings and policy directions for ADF Chaplaincy; broker discussions with Defence Industry, Department and Military.

Leadership and policy development: Design and deliver courses and workshops for conferences and gatherings on topics such as: Policy leadership; Stakeholder engagement; Emotional intelligence; Women in leadership; Communication; Ethics and public sector management.

Mentoring/coaching: Assisting a number of individuals as they manage policy challenges, career pathways, workplace relationship issues as well as participation in formal mentoring and advisory programs.

Key areas of policy with which Pamela has been closely involved include:

  • family policy, payments and programs including; reforming the Australian Child Support system (2004-2008); Family Tax Benefit, Family Relationship Program; family research – inc. family change, domestic violence, elder abuse
  • population issues, including: population ageing; skilled and humanitarian migration programs/settlement services
  • reforms to public policy in areas such as housing reform, gender equality, problem gambling, disability reform, veterans compensation, service delivery
  • welfare reform – working with NGOs as well as managing the evaluation of welfare reform programs in government
  • higher education policy and reform
  • coordinating the Australian Government’s Disaster Recovery for the 2009 Victorian bushfire disaster and the 2010-11 Queensland floods
  • managing national data collections for welfare in Australia – including child protection, aged care, mental health, disability, juvenile justice.