Professor Melissa Green

Chairperson

Professor Melissa Green   is a researcher and professor at UNSW Sydney, specialising in psychiatry and mental health and expertise in childhood trauma and psychosis; childhood developmental risk for mental disorders; cognitive neuroscience. She currently serves as Director of Research in the School of Clinical Medicine. She also leads the NSW Child Development Study, a collaboration with various government departments. Professor Green has also received international fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Jim Goodin

Vice-Chairperson

Jim Goodin is a former Vice Principal with 30 years’ experience in regular, secondary and special needs schools. Currently the Vice-Chairperson of the Mental Health Foundation Australia and co-chair of the Victorian Mental Health Month Advisory Committee, Jim is also a committee member on many other Boards and Committees including the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, Chisholm Institute Course Advisory Committee and the Melbourne Bipolar Network. Jim was also the former Vice-President of the Australian National Association for Mental Health and former President and Secretary of the OCD Foundation (now ARCVic). Jim’s knowledge of mental illness comes from professional, voluntary and family experience. 

Adam Williams 

Secretary

Adam is the Director of Bunji Enterprises, where he proudly and authentically represents Indigenous Australian heritage, working to redefine the narrative of Indigenous business success through a range of high-quality, industry-leading products and services. Since 2019, he has also served as the CEO of SupplyAUS Pty Ltd, a 100% Indigenous-owned and managed procurement business. SupplyAUS is a profit-for-purpose organisation aimed at enhancing the business profile of Indigenous people. He has received multiple awards recognizing his contributions to Indigenous business and community development.

Peter Delis

Treasurer

Peter is the Director of Oakwood Partners, specialising in Business Advisory, Tax, and Forensic Litigation Support. He has over thirty-five years’ experience as a principal in an accountancy public practice CFO, and executive director for various small to medium sized companies and business community groups. Outside his accounting work he chairs the board of directors for FGD Legal and the Trident Group of companies. His volunteer work spans over 12 years, including 3 years as Treasurer for the Wesley College Parent Support Group and 4 years as Auditor for the Babirra Music Theatre Company. He also collaborates with various organisations in the health sector, including Rehabilitation and Recovery Hospitals, NDIS service providers and property developers focused on expanding hospital portfolios to address the growing demand for aged care and mental health services. He is also a Graduate Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Daryl Williams KC

Director

Daryl Williams KC is an experienced barrister with a practice spanning commercial disputes, corporate governance, insolvency, professional negligence, misleading conduct, land tax, and appeals. He represents clients in courts and tribunals across Australia and is also an accredited mediator specializing in resolving substantial commercial disputes. Daryl began his career in 1991 at Blake Dawson Waldron (now Ashurst Lawyers) before taking silk in 2010. Outside his legal work, he has served as a Board Director of the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and its Foundation, is a Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and chairs the Professional Standards Committee for several Anglican dioceses - Melbourne, Ballarat, Bendigo and Wangaratta. 

Maria Vamvakinou

Director

Maria Vamvakinou is the Federal Labor Member for Calwell and the first Greek-born woman to serve in Australia’s federal parliament. She is Deputy Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Migration and a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Trade. A strong advocate for local manufacturing, she was formerly Chair of the Industry, Science, and Innovation Committee. Maria is committed to supporting local businesses, vocational education, and apprenticeships, ensuring access to sustainable jobs and skills training for the community. She continues to work towards a stronger, more secure future for her constituents.

Professor Peter Barlis

Director

Peter is an internationally-recognised Interventional Cardiologist with the Northern and St Vincent’s Hospitals in Victoria and Professor of Medicine with the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry & Health Sciences, the University of Melbourne. After graduating from the University of Melbourne, he completed cardiology training at Austin Health followed by a Master of Public Health with Monash University. In 2006, he secured a fellowship and scholarship at the prestigious Royal Brompton Hospital, London and then completed his PhD at the Thoraxcentre, Erasmus University the Netherlands, on the use of optical coherence tomography (OCT) in cardiology. OCT harnesses the properties of infrared light to look inside blood vessels in ultra-high resolution. Peter has since overseen OCT’s uptake across the region with over sixty centers in Australia and New Zealand benefiting from his foresight. He is internationally renowned for his interventional and imaging academic output, and early development programs for novel therapies in cardiovascular disease. He has maintained connections all over the globe and continues to attract industry support for his research. He runs an active research group in biomedical engineering focused on coronary imaging and computational modeling with an interest in the development of innovative cardiovascular technologies.

Luul Ibrahim

Director

Luul Ibrahim is an early childhood educator and emerging community leader, the founder of Somali support Perth, and has been advocating and building community capacity for the Somalis in WA. She works with both government and non-government policymakers in understanding the needs of a multicultural community, she Australian multicultural council representing Western Australia. She has won the African women in leadership 2022 and 2022 Human Appeal Muslim volunteer awards. She is also an Australian mental health foundation advocate and emerging Author who is launching her first children’s book.

A/Prof. Scott Clark

Director

Scott Clark is the Discipline Head for the University of Adelaide Discipline of Psychiatry. He coordinates the Adelaide Medical School’s Psychiatry program and is a consultant psychiatrist in the Western Community Mental Health Service. Scott’s research focuses on novel clinical trials and the use of biomarkers and biotypes in the prediction of outcomes in serious mental illness. Scott was awarded the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists Early Career Psychiatrist Award 2017 for his work on the use of simple Bayesian models to combine multimodal clinical and biological data to predict the first psychotic episode. He is a principle investigator for the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence (CRE) in PREdiction of Early Mental Disorder and Preventive Treatment (PRE-EMPT), the NIMH funded Accelerated Medicines Partnership Schizophrenia (Prescient), the NHMRC TMS for social cognition in Autism study, and the Welcome Trust funded Cannabidiol for Youth at Risk (CanARY) study. He is a lead investigator in Defence funded projects exploring the genomics of cognitive function and the use of novel aperiodic analyses of EEG in combat trauma.

Vasan Srinivasan

Chief Executive Officer

Vasan Srinivasan is the first person of Indian origin to be appointed as a member of the Australian Multicultural Council. He has held several notable positions, including former President of the Federation of Indian Associations of Victoria (FIAV) from 2009 to 2014, and former member of the Victorian Government Ministerial Advisory Ethnic Business Council from 2011 to 2014. Vasan has also served as the Chair of the Confederation of Indian Australian Associations Inc (CIAA) and was awarded the Meritorious Service Award for excellence in multicultural affairs by the Victorian Government. Additionally, he was a former member of the Victorian Government International Education Board.

Vernon Victor Da Gama

Legal Advisor

Mr Vernon Victor Da Gama is a barrister and very well known in the Community. Vernon helped several members of the Indian Community in giving legal advice whenever required.Vernon is an active member of the Goan Overseas Association of Victoria and the Federation of Indian Associations of Victoria Inc (FIAV), representing the Goan Association. He is also currently a trustee of the FIAV. In October 2008, he received the Victorian Parliamentary Friends of India of the Parliament of Victoria “Award of Excellence”.