Our team

As CEO of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA), Mary Wooldridge leads the Agency in driving gender equality in workplaces ensuring that women and men are equally represented, valued and rewarded.

Mary brings to the role a wealth of experience from a distinguished career in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. Mary served from 2006 to 2020 in the Victorian Parliament, including a term as Minister for Mental Health, Community Services and Women’s Affairs.

As Minister, Mary worked to implement the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children 2010-2022 and was instrumental in establishing Our Watch, the national family violence prevention agency. Mary was the Minister responsible for signing Victoria up to the National Disability Insurance Scheme. She established the Victorian Commission for Children and Young People, including the nation’s first Aboriginal Commissioner, Parkville College – an award-winning Public School in Youth Justice Centres and Australia’s first Mental Health Complaints Commissioner and the Family Drug Treatment Court.

Prior to being elected to Parliament, Mary was the CEO of The Foundation for Young Australians and worked with McKinsey & Company and Consolidated Press Holdings.

Mary also serves as a Director of Global Citizen (Australia) and Carey Baptist Grammar School.

Janette supports the CEO to manage the Agency and effectively perform its statutory functions.

Janette’s career in the Australian Public Service spans 25 years and multiple portfolios. She has a record of leading people to achieve results in a variety of operating contexts and partnering with business, community and all levels of government.

A qualified lawyer, Janette has led the full suite of corporate and enabling services; regulated the public and private sectors; developed policy and delivered multibillion dollar government programmes. Janette also spent time in the private sector consulting to organisations on culture, wellbeing and leadership development.

Anne is Operations Executive Manager and leads the team responsible for delivery of the cross-agency support functions of IT, human resource management, finance, procurement, property management, records management, governance and compliance. An integral part of this role is to provide leadership in the optimisation of resource and business planning.

Anne has worked in the Agency since 2006 as HR Manager and has more than 20 years' experience working as a human resource professional for corporate and non-corporate commonwealth entities. Anne holds a Graduate Diploma in Management.

Penelope is the Executive Manager, Education and Research at the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, translating research and evidence into guidance and resources that employers can use to understand and improve workplace gender equality in their organisation.

Penelope’s background is in consulting to organisations to execute change and improve performance through organisation design, leadership and capability. She has led award-winning programs across a range of sectors and held leadership roles in leading consulting organisations.

Recently, Penelope has researched the gendered effects of flexible work and she applies behavioural science in her work. Penelope is also a Director of Safe Steps, a Victorian family violence response service.  

Steven leads the Data and Technology team. He is responsible for transforming the organisation’s technology and transformation capabilities and managing and supporting WGEA’s major campaigns and programs. Steven brings with him a wealth of experience in cloud-enabled transformation with a focus on organisational strategy, operational innovation, technical delivery and service efficiency. Over the past 27 years, he has worked across the private, not-for-profit and NSW public sectors as an advocate of technology automation and strategic change.

Steven holds a Masters of Business Computing, MBA, along with industry certifications in Cloud Computing, IT Governance, Enterprise Architecture, Project Management and certificates in Training & Assessment and Electrotechnology.

Allie leads WGEA’s communications and campaigns team, working with our partners across business, government and policy makers to raise awareness of Australia’s gender pay gap and advocate for action to drive gender equality in the workplace.

Prior to joining WGEA, Allie spent two decades working in media and marketing in Australia and the United Kingdom. This included editorial roles with Australian Associated Press, Newsltd and the Financial Mail on Sunday. Her expertise includes digital, social, print and broadcast communication as well as strategic planning and events. 

Allie holds a Bachelor of Arts (politics and history) from the University of New South Wales, as well as a Graduate Certificate in Journalism from the University of Technology Sydney. 

Tori is the Executive Manager for Gender Equality Programs and is responsible for leading private and public sector reporting, as well as the WGEA Employer of Choice for Gender Equality citation.

Tori brings more than 15 years' APS experience in a variety of portfolios and has led high-performing teams responsible for service delivery, legislative implementation, and compliance and enforcement in fast-paced regulatory environments.

Tori is skilled in privacy law and practice and has strong stakeholder engagement experience including on interdepartmental committees, with state and territory government officials and the private sector.

Joel leads Data & Analytics, the team responsible for the transformation journey to provide better accessibility, usability, and quality data and insights for the organisation.

Samone is an experienced gender equality strategist, researcher and change management professional with expertise in gender equality programming, strategy and gender attuned leadership capability development.

She has post graduate qualifications in psychology and social work and holds a certificate in Gender Mainstreaming from the Civil Service College (London) where she studied under the Hon. Meg Munn - former Minister for Women in the Blair Government (2005-2007).

Samone has published research and analysis on a range of gendered workplace drivers including paid parental leave, flexible work practices and gendered workplace harm such as sexual harassment and workplace incivility.

She comes to WGEA with a depth of experience working in public and private sector enterprise, training and consulting to Government, NGO’s and small business on Gender Impact Assessment, gender metrics and designing people systems and processes that drive gender equal outcomes and experiences for employees and the community.

Samone joins us from her most recent position as the inaugural Gender Equality Adviser for Victoria Police, where she developed their first gender equality strategy and action plan in response to the Victorian Gender Equality Act (2020) and developed a gender attuned leadership capability framework and change methodology for gender segregated policing operations.