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Marking International Women's Day 2022

International Women's Day

This International Women’s Day, we’re giving a shout out to the women we work with, both in our own team and across Australia and the Pacific. A strong mix of incredible women brings diversity of thought and approaches, so we can deliver projects that go above and beyond our clients’ expectations.

  • Dr Asenati Chan Tung is our resident gender expert, with over 20 years of gender research experience in the Pacific. Her knowledge and approach to projects is invaluable, ensuring we get the best insights in a sensitive way, so our project outcomes have impact.
  • Nicky Thatcher, our Executive Director, is one of our brilliant leaders and an expert evaluator. She has over 20 years of experience assessing the efficiency, effectiveness, and economy of public and private sector programs.
  • Alison May is our Principal Evaluation consultant, and she’s an evaluation expert, senior manager, strategic analyst, and social scientist.
  • Min Sul, operating behind the scenes as our Business Manager is a crucial team member keeping the Sustineo wheels turning day-to-day.
  • Dr Nicole Sweaney is our go-to statistician who we’ve been working with for over 6 years, delivering robust data analysis for a wide range of projects.
  • Steffie Calubayan-Frias, another data analyst, is a Philippines based consultant with expertise in survey design and management, data coding and cleaning, and data analysis and visualisation.
  • Nina Davis rounds out our internal cohort of women as a design and communications professional with skills in social media and website management, event management, and social research.

Adding to our internal pool of superwomen are a couple of stand-out associates we regularly collaborate with when a project calls for their expertise. A shout out to some of our recurring Canberra-based collaborators, Dr Kerryn Baker (elections, governance, and political participation, with a strong focus on gender), Dr Katja Mikhailovich (community health, gender and development), and Dr Lisa Robins (water, agricultural and natural resource management).

Further afield in the Pacific, we regularly have the privilege of working with many exceptional women who work in our space. A particular shout-out must go to Ruth Maetala and her team at Dignity Pasifik. Ruth established her women-led research firm in 2019, and we’re proud to have helped her grow from the beginning. Ruth is a leading gender, development, and climate change figure in Solomon Islands, with over 20 years of research experience.

Special mention also to others who are key to the work we do, including (but not limited to), Anika Kingmele (Solomon Islands), Tautalaaso Taulealo (Samoa), Eimi Pulitala (PNG) and Vanessa Korni (PNG).

Sustineo is committed to gender equity, and we consciously build diversity into our project teams and also into the way we approach project work to ensure as many opinions as possible are heard and taken into consideration in our research. These are actions we take to #BreakTheBias.