After several years of helping the Benevolent Society with fundraising events, Helen Tribe and I decided that we wanted to do more, having many professional friends and colleagues with time and expertise on their hands. With the assistance of Keith Bryant and Tracey Fay-Stammbach at the Benevolent Society, in 2011 “Step into Work” was born.
It is really heart-warming for me to see that what was then a 3 women volunteers’ program (Helen, Victoria O’Neil and myself), is now a thriving group of professional women all wanting to contribute. Having the support of Australia’s first charity has enabled us to grow and assert our program to the point that, in 2018 we became fully autonomous.
After 13 years of leading the organisation, I decided that it was time to pass on the baton.
Founding and watching “Step into Work” grow has been, for me, one of the most rewarding experiences.

Jane has been volunteering with Step into Work since 2018. She has a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Sydney, where she was the Coordinator of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and later spent ten years in New York at the UNDP in its Environment and Energy Group as part of the Water Governance Team. She is passionate about sustainability and peace with justice, and keen to promote the UN’s 17 Sustainability Goals. She is a founding member of the Sydney Peace Foundation. For Jane, Step into Work embodies many of these core objectives, especially helping women reach their full potential.

With over 30 years’ experience in Human Resources and Career and Executive Coaching, Mary has worked across senior positions in the private and public sectors, and with individuals through her current business, Manta HR Consulting.

Mary’s previous employers include BHP, Ansett, Ford and NSW Treasury, working with individuals at all levels, and across many industries.  She also has many years of volunteer experience including NSW Cancer Council, The Helmsman Project and the Glebe Justice Centre.

In recent years Mary has specialised in Career Coaching. With empathy, gentle motivation and a sense of humour, Mary builds confidence, provides job search skills, and ensures individuals have a resume, an engaging LinkedIn profile, and networking, application and interview skills that will get them the interviews and jobs that best fit with the next step in their career.

Mary holds a Master of Organisational Coaching, Coaching Psychology from the University of Sydney and a Master of Business in Employment Relations from the University of Technology, Sydney.

With 30 years as a Career Counsellor gained in a number of Sydney’s preeminent High Schools, Jean has a wealth of experience in supporting students to make important choices regarding career and tertiary education. Jean has focused on personal development qualifying in MBTI and NLP methodologies to support others to build the awareness needed for career decision making.  She holds a Post Graduate Education Counselling degree from the University of South Australia.

Jean’s style is collaborative, warm and personable.  She works to meet the needs of the individual and is concerned with helping women to reach their full potential. Throughout her career she has experienced and worked with many cultures and is passionate about the advancement of women, particularly in the world of work.

Ruta is a human resources professional, executive coach and leader of change in large organisations. As a director she has led large human resources teams in Australia and across Asia Pacific. She has been based in Hong Kong and Shanghai for part of her career and has worked across a broad spectrum of industries including financial services, retail, information technology, engineering and energy generation. 

Ruta is qualified as an executive coach and has spent the last 11 years supporting senior executives. Ruta senses people, deeply enabling them to face their gremlins recreating their own pathways to success. Her passion is to help women to break the barriers they personally face in taking the next steps. Ruta was able to practise this passion for many years running programs for Women on Boards. She now does that with Step Into Work.

Ruta holds a Master of Business Administration from York University, a Master of Library Science, and a Bachelor of Arts (Psychology) from University of Toronto. She is a Certified Professional Co-active Coach (CPCC) and is certified in six diagnostic tools which aid the journey to self-awareness. 

Özlem is a positive psychology practitioner with a corporate background spanning over 15 years, which included secondments to the UK, India and Dubai.

During her corporate career, Özlem witnessed a crippling pattern of burnout among women, including herself, which led her to post-graduate studies in well-being science.

Özlem works with women to prevent and overcome burnout; and with organisations to drive systemic changes that enable women to flourish in the workplace. Her work includes designing research-based programs and coaching individuals. She has a soft-yet-strong approach steeped in compassion. Özlem is passionate about amplifying the voices of minority and multicultural women.

Özlem holds a Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) from the University of Melbourne and a Bachelor of Business from the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). In addition, she is an IECL-accredited coach and certified in several diagnostic tools designed to empower individuals with self-awareness and self-development.

Lorraine is a global leadership and culture strategist, executive coach, and founder of LF Leaning Forward. With over 25 years’ experience across banking, finance, technology, and consulting, she has helped leaders, teams, and organizations unlock potential by shaping cultures where people thrive and performance excels.

She has held senior roles in ASX-listed companies, global multinationals, and high-growth enterprises—leading culture transformations and designing leadership frameworks that have influenced thousands across APAC, EMEA, and the Americas.
Lorraine works at the intersection of strategy, leadership, and identity, supporting senior leaders to lead with authenticity, scale influence, and align values with impact. Her global perspective—shaped by her German and Indian heritage, UK upbringing, and Australian base—brings deep cultural intelligence to her work.

She is especially passionate about supporting women into senior roles, helping build the confidence and presence to lead with impact. Lorraine volunteers with Step Into Work, a grassroots program supporting women returning to meaningful employment.
She holds a BSc (Mathematics & Statistics) from the University of Sydney, is a Fellow Certified Practitioner of AHRI (FCPHR), a certified IECL executive coach, and accredited in a suite of 360° tools that support self-awareness and leadership growth.

After many years in scientific research and diagnostics, I started my independent Facilitation career working casually for the Job Network in 2004. This role enabled me to support underprivileged clients at Parramatta, Blacktown and Mt Druitt to be job ready. It was a very challenging role for a new Facilitator, and of course, also a very rewarding one.

20 years later, I have developed my business as a Learning and Development consultant specializing in leadership, collaboration, sales and strategy in the corporate sector.

My expertise is in creating bespoke tools and engaging workshops that integrate neuroscience, critical high leverage microskills and simple pragmatic processes to enable new habit formation.

Clients include Novartis, Menarini, Grey Wolf Therapeutics, Canon Medical, Apex Pharmaceuticals (now Dechra), Johnson and Johnson, Oracle, Telstra, Optus and Kimberly Clark.

As a Korn Ferry Master Trainer for nearly two decades, I have also gained extensive experience training Sales, Negotiation, Strategy and Coaching in the Finance, Professional Services, Mining, Construction, FCMG, Retail and the Medical industries.

Apart from my Korn Ferry certifications, I am accredited in Neurolinguistic Programming, The Leadership Circle, Power Intelligence 360, Immunity to Change Facilitation, Leadership Effectiveness Training, DiSC, Spiral Dynamics, Prism Brain Mapping, and am a Coaching Room Certified NLP Coach.