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Mac
Lemon

CHAIR

 

Mac (Robert) Lemon has a background in Management Consulting focussed upon business and technology strategy. He is cofounder and former Managing Director of FromHereOn P/L, a professional services firm specialising in business technology strategy and architecture and business model innovation and service design. Mac is now a non-executive director of FromHereOn remaining active as a board member, mentor and advisor.

Mac joined Enterprise Architects in 2007 as Director Consulting & Advisory Services and in this position, he established EA’s consulting division and oversaw its growth to become the region’s premier practice focussed on the delivery of IT strategy and architecture and capability uplift. This business was separated from Enterprise Architects to run under the FromHereOn brand in 2017.

Mac formerly held executive roles at Telstra dedicated to technology strategy and architecture; implementing processes for the management of Telstra’s technology architecture, driving strategies for the adoption of emerging technology, implementing architecture and governance frameworks and providing strategy and design services for Telstra’s commercial products and services.

Mac is a former chair of the Industry Advisory Committee of the School of Computer Science at RMIT.

Doug
Bourne

TREASURER

 

Doug Bourne has been a supporter of Kids Thrive since its inception and we welcome his return to the Committee of Management as Treasurer.
Doug is a founding member and director of Bourne and Romeo Pty Ltd, Accountants & Auditors, and brings with him 49 years of experience in the field.

His expertise in superannuation, business services and management consultation, along with his considerable experience in tax matters for the arts, is of particular importance for the continuing function of Kids Thrive.

Dr Andrea
Lemon

SECRETARY

 

Dr Andrea (Ande) Lemon is the Co-Founder CEO and Creative Director of Kids Thrive, Victoria’s leading arts and community development organisation committed to child-led community change. 

Andrea is at heart a story-maker and director in her roles as playwright, theatre director and community cultural development artist, working with communities throughout Australia, and touring professional productions through Australia, Britain, Europe and the US; and as an ethnographer, historian, dramaturge, curator and author.  

 Her talent to write and direct stories is what drives the creation and success of Kids Thrive as a ‘new cultural work’ being written and directed in the creative gaps of hybrid, cross-sector, co-design space.  She has built Kids Thrive from an initial, disruptive concept to a resilient, innovative and robust organisation. She leads Kids Thrive as a creative strategist, bringing together people, ideas and approaches from the arts, health, social welfare, education, community development, philanthropy and social justice sectors to find new solutions for old problems. 

Andrea has been a freelance Writer, Director and Dramaturge developing and touring award-winning performance projects across Australia and internationally. She was Artistic Director of Melbourne’s Women’s Circus – for women who identify as survivors of sexual abuse or assault. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Centenary Federation Medal for Services to Society through her contribution to the Arts; Third Sector Board Director of the Year Award (Finalist 2017); VicHealth Improving Mental Wellbeing Award (Kids Thrive 2017); NAB Schools First – Schools and Community Partnerships Awards (2014 and 2015); plus gold and silver awards from the Australian Writers’ Guild (Theatre and Film), Victorian Green Room (Theatre) and Edinburgh Fringe (performance).  

She was recipient of a multi-year Australia Council Senior Artist Fellowship; and nominated for the University of Melbourne Chancellor’s Award for her doctoral thesis: Tough as Buggery – Traditional Australian Circus, Community and Belonging. Her research, including oral histories and photographic portraits with elderly circus performers throughout Australia, formed the basis for a major exhibition, The Circus Diaries at The Arts Centre, Melbourne. 

John Paul
Fischbach

 

John Paul brings extensive experience and skills in arts management to the Board. John Paul, better known as JP, was a well known theatre director in Canada before moving to Australia in 2004. As the CEO and co-founder of Auspicious Arts Incubator, John Paul travels extensively around Australia as well as the US and Canada, helping independent artists, organisations, and venues make more money by learning to use value-based language for their marketing and communications. He has a long history of producing and directing theatre, film, festivals, and site specific events, from the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles to the International Puppet Carnival in Melbourne.
In 2014, he launched the Artists Transformation School, an online resource that teaches artists everything they need to know about how to turn their creative passion into a business. Additionally, he launched the Artist’s Mojo to help artists get out of their own way and find greater success. Throughout his career, he has worked with more than 4,000 artists, arts organisations, local and state governments, and art centres.
He has transformed the lives and careers of individuals in a wide range of disciplines, including those in visual art, ceramics, music, jewellery, photography, writing, acting, dance, illustration, filmmaking, and animation. John Paul’s professional associations include the Canadian Actors Equity, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Americans for the Arts, the Creative Skills Training Council, and the Deer Tribe Metis Medicine Society. He has travelled and worked all over Australia, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Bali, Costa Rica, Mexico, Denmark, Hawaii, Ireland, Scotland, South Africa, Botswana, Greece, and Turkey. John Paul Fischbach is the author of ‘No More Starving Artists’, a guide written by an artist for artists, and lives in Victoria, Australia.

Fred
Clarke

 

Fred has been a Victorian school principal for more than twenty-five years and served for five years as a Senior Education Officer. He has been a head teacher of small rural primary schools, a leading teacher in a large metropolitan school and principal of medium and large primary schools.

In 2019 Fred retired as College Principal of Northern Bay P-12 College, a large multi campus school in Geelong. It was during this time at that he became associated with Kids Thrive, through the Geelong Kids as Catalyst program.

Fred is currently a school reviewer for Monash University, an Intern Facilitator for the Bastow Unlocking Potential program and a principal mentor under the DET Principal Health and Wellbeing Strategy. He is also an accredited GROWTH Coaching International coach, working with secondary school teachers under the Middle Years Literacy and Numeracy Support initiative.

Andrea
Rieniets

 

Andrea Rieniets is the Co-Founder, Programs Director  /Lead Artists  of Kids Thrive, Victoria’s leading arts and community development organisation committed to child-led community change.  A singer, songwriter, composer, musical director and community development artist, Andrea leads development and delivery of arts for social change programs and approaches with, for and by young children. 

She was the first Australian composer to be an Australian Antarctic Fellow; is a recipient of the Centenary Federation Medal for Services to Society in Theatre, and was awarded the Australian Arts Business Foundation Community Award for Good Practice in Partnership. In her music performance role Andrea was drummer for Templedance, and in her solo persona was one of the first Anglo Australian artists to acknowledge the traditional caretakers at the beginning of each performance and to hold smoke-free gigs to mainstream music audiences. Her performance was a mix of Atari computer on an Art Deco stand with live all women band.

Andrea was founding Director of Adelaide’s Before You Were Blonde contemporary community choir, and Guest Director of Sing It Up Big Australian Indigenous Choir.  

Her compositional works and concerts have featured in the Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide festivals, ABC radio and television, Opera SA and The Finnish National Opera. She has created recordings for solo, stage and film works, and is founder of Gorgeous Girl Records, Cha Cha Sam music for big-spirited kids and their grownups, as well as  Kids Thrive. Andrea performs for adults under her own name, and for children as Cha Cha Sam. 

Kids Thrive.