Your Facilitators
Melanie Fleer
Melanie has worked in Victorian local government for over 20 years, including 15 years in leadership roles spanning the areas of communications, governance, legal, marketing, risk, property and customer service. She holds a Bachelors in Public Relations, and Graduate Diploma in Group Facilitation. Melanie has worked at Brimbank City Council Maribyrnong and Darebin councils. Melanie now works as a governance consultant to the government sector.
Chris Eddy
Chris is an enthusiastic and experienced executive with more than 30 years of management experience in the private and public sectors, including 18 years as a senior Local Government executive. As CEO at Hobsons Bay from 2012 to 2018, Chris led the organisation through a time of great sectoral change including the introduction of rate capping. Chris continues to be very involved within the sector; active across a number of organisations, including recently as the Interim CEO at LGPro.
Mark Davies
Mark Davies is a Chartered Accountant with more than 30 years experience in both the private and public sectors. Mark held a number of senior roles in Local Government including Chief Executive Officer and has since worked with Local Government Victoria in the design, development and implementation of Local Government Performance Reporting Framework, key author of the financial provisions of the Local Government Act 2020, Commissioner on the Ararat Rural City commission of enquiry and Interim Administrator at Central Goldfields Shire.
Ruth McGowan
Ruth helps both experienced and emerging leaders to master the power of politics to deliver exceptional outcomes. Ruth is a sought-after trainer, speaker, and executive coach. She is well known throughout the local government sector for her political intelligence training, gender equality advocacy and candidate workshops. Ruth is also an accredited trainer in political intelligence with the UK-based, Academy for Political Intelligence.
Janet Cribbes
Janet Cribbes has a career spanning three decades, working in State government, community services, the private sector, Local Government and more recently Not for Profit. Janet specialises in governance, ethical and authentic leadership coaching and mentoring in the non for profit and Local government agencies. Her community engagement saw her elected to Port Phillip Council in 2004 to 2008 with one term as mayor in 2008. Public life has many rewards and challenges, having a sense of humor is great life skill. Following Council, Janet went to establish and manage the Community Bushfire Recovery Service after the Black Saturday 2009 Bushfires, on behalf of the Archdiocese of Melbourne delivered through CatholicCare. Janet is currently a director and co-chair on a not-for-profit Board and Chairs 2 other not for profit Board.