Violet is a national social enterprise, making a positive contribution to the last stage of life.

Peter Shorthouse is a Senior Partner and investment adviser with Crestone Wealth Management with over 25 years’ financial services experience.

Following 7 years as a Chartered Accountant and management consultant with Arthur Andersen in London, Peter spent 10 years as an Equity Analyst with UBS and ABN Amro in London and Sydney.

He has been with Crestone and UBS since 2005, advising UHNW and Family Office clients on portfolio construction and risk and liquidity management.

Peter has experience with NfPs, both as an investment adviser and as a Director on two school Foundations and with the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Peter joined the LifeCircle Board in August 2015.

Melissa brings a blend of personal and professional experience to her role as CEO of The Violet Initiative. Her personal experience gives her first-hand insight into the world of death and dying, while her deep experience developing brands and businesses with purpose keeps Violet on track as a national social enterprise. Violet designs and delivers solutions to guide and support the many thousands of people who are caring for someone through the last stage of life  (in both formal and informal roles). 

Melissa has led Violet’s transformation from a community-based 20C charitable organisation into a 21C social enterprise with a national agenda, tackling one of society’s most complex challenges. In 2011, she was selected as part of Sydney Leadership, a unique learning program exploring the dynamics and challenges of exercising leadership. In 2016, Melissa continued to deepen her expertise through the Executive Education program in Adaptive Leadership at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and is now a graduate of this program. 

Melissa draws on her expertise in purpose-led creative strategy, human-centred design and adaptive leadership as key responses to creative problem solving and change. Melissa is committed to exploring ways to work differently: mobilising new models and ways of working, sustaining large programs of change and reform, embedding resilience, capability and capacity in individuals, and across systems.

Debbie Nicholson is a Chartered Accountant, with a graduate diploma in Applied Finance from FINSIA

Debbie’s career spans many sectors, starting in the accounting profession, before moving into corporate roles in manufacturing, engineering, construction and then governance and technology. It includes over 20 years of experience as part owner of a manufacturing, design and distribution business.

She has worked in a number of NFP organisations, where she applies her business and professional experience to the challenges of striving for impact in an environment which faces increasing competition for philanthropic resources.

Peter Spicer is a senior executive with a long career in technology consulting and digital transformation primarily in financial services firms across Asia-Pacific. After a 25 year career with Accenture which involved working and living across a number of countries in Asia, he joined RoZetta Technology in 2016 as their Chief Technology Officer

As the CTO, Peter is focussed on applying analytics and data science to complex cloud-based "big data" solutions. During his time at RoZetta, Peter was seconded to the Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre as their CTO during their establishment phase. The DHCRC was focussed on improving patient outcomes through the partnership of technology-based academic research and the various dimensions of Australia's health system.

Peter has an interest in the not for profit sector and plays an active role in a number of organisations including Odyssey House, Cana Communities, Mentoring Men and previously at St Vincent de Paul. Peter also has advisory board roles at the University of Technology and Odyssey House.

Professor Rod MacLeod is recently retired from the role of Palliative Medicine Specialist at Harbour Hospice on Auckland’s North Shore but still works as a consultant to HammondCare in Sydney as well as Honorary Professor at Sydney University Medical School. He is also an advisor to Hospice NZ. He has published over 200 articles on palliative care in national and international journals and over 20 book chapters. He is one of the authors of The Palliative Care Handbook which has become a freely available standard text for healthcare professionals in New Zealand and more recently New South Wales. He is also co-editor in chief of the Textbook of Palliative Care recently published by Springer Publishing.

He was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the Queen’s birthday honours in 2015. He lives in Auckland.

Professor Ken Hillman is a practising intensive care specialist who is a Professor of Intensive Care at the University of New South Wales, the Foundation Director of The Simpson Centre for Health Services Research, and a member of the Ingham Institute of Applied Medical Research. He trained at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney and worked in London for six years before returning to Australia as Director of Intensive Care at Liverpool Hospital in Sydney. Professor Hillman is internationally recognised as a pioneer in the introduction of the Medical Emergency Team, which recognises and responds to seriously ill hospital patients early in their deterioration and has been adopted in the majority of hospitals in the United Kingdom, the United States of America and several European countries. He is also a passionate advocate of improving the management of the dying patient in acute hospitals.

Ms Nikki Johnston, OAM, Palliative Care Nurse Practitioner, is at the forefront of nationally and internationally acclaimed ground-breaking research to improve end of life care for older Australians living in residential aged care. Ms Johnston is a lead member of a multidisciplinary research team that recently completed the largest randomised trial of its kind anywhere in the world of a new palliative care model, the ‘Palliative Care Needs Rounds’ model, which integrates specialist palliative care into residential aged care facilities and aims to help people to live better and die well in their preferred place of death. Nicki was recognised in the 2019 Australia Day Honors as a recipient of a Medal of the Order of Australia for her contribution to nursing, winner of the inaugural Health Minister’s award for Nursing Trailblazing 2019, winner of Team of the Year Hesta Awards 2019, winner of the Australian College of Nurse Practitioners Mentor of the year 2019, and finalist for Palliative Care Australia’s excellence in aged care 2019. Currently working for Calvary Public Hospital Bruce, Clare Holland House, Nikki believes all Australia’s deserve access to quality care in their last months of life regardless of their age, diagnosis or where they live.

Dr Kathryn Mannix has spent her medical career working with people who have incurable, advanced illnesses. Starting in cancer care and changing career to become a pioneer of the new discipline of palliative medicine, she has worked in teams in hospices, hospitals and in patients’ own homes to deliver palliative care, optimising quality of life even as death is approaching. Having qualified as a Cognitive Behaviour Therapist in 1993, she started the UK’s (possibly the world’s) first CBT clinic exclusively for palliative care patients, and devised ‘CBT First Aid’ training to enable palliative care colleagues to add new skills to their repertoire for helping patients. Kathryn has worked with many thousands of dying people and has found their ability to deal with illness and death both fascinating and inspirational. She believes that better public awareness about what happens as we die would reduce fear and enable people to discuss their hopes and plans with the people who matter to them. Her account of how people live while they are dying, With the End in Mind, was published to universal acclaim and was shortlisted for the Wellcome Prize.

Professor Imogen Mitchell is the Dean of Medicine at the ANU Medical School, Senior Medical Advisor Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Healthcare and Senior Intensive Care Specialist at Canberra Hospital. Imogen graduated from the University of London and undertook her physician’s training in the UK and moved to Australia to complete her intensive care specialist training. She worked as an ICU specialist at RPA before moving to Canberra in 1999 to take up the Directorship of Canberra Hospital ICU. After 15 years as Director, building a unit from 2 to 11 specialists and securing C24 accreditation from the College of Intensive Care Medicine, she became the Deputy Dean at the ANU Medical School in 2014 and was worthy recipient of the prestigious Harkness Fellowship in Health Policy and Practice and spent 12 months at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Ms Jo Wood has been a qualified social worker since 2001 and also holds undergraduate qualifications in psychology and a postgraduate qualification in bereavement counselling. She trained at The University of Melbourne and has spent her career working in public healthcare. Jo is currently working as the sole palliative care social worker at McCulloch House Supportive and Palliative Care Unit – Monash Health, Melbourne and is also the Chairperson of the State Palliative Care Committee. Her role requires supporting patients and families who are admitted to the palliative care unit, and also providing bereavement support to family and carers. Jo has an interest in holistic healthcare assessment, compassionate care, communication skills and a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach to healthcare. Jo also assists in the administration of the Facebook education page, Palliative Medicine Teaching – an initiative that was developed by two palliative medicine specialists.