Margaret is the Executive Director, AIDR, and leads AIDR’s work to enhance Australia’s resilience to natural hazards.  She is committed to working across the system to reduce risk and the potential for harm and loss, and to enhance resilience.  She also works to include diverse voices to inform disaster risk reduction and resilience research, policy, and practice.

 

Margaret’s first career was with the federal government, working in a range of social policy and program areas and preparing advice for successive governments for more than 33 years.  Motivated by her own experiences during the 2003 Canberra fires, and the 2009 Black Saturday fires in Victoria, Margaret undertook original community-based research focussed on the key factors that contribute to disaster recovery and resilience.  She gathered and compared the views of national leaders of recovery, and community leaders who had been directly affected by emergency events across Eastern Australia. 

 

Since then, Margaret has worked as an independent consultant and advisor, and with the non-government, philanthropic and business sectors.  Margaret’s work with AIDR now builds on strong relationships and partnerships with researchers, community leaders, NGOs, all levels of government, emergency services and the business and philanthropy sectors.