Our Team

Margaret has a background in project management, business development, fundraising, health promotion and peer support, moving from engineering and managed services to the NFP sector after having children. A bereaved parent, Margaret recently developed and delivered Red Nose’s pilot Hospital to Home program with her team providing peer support and navigation to bereaved parents in the acute stages of grief following a stillbirth or neonatal death. She was also a consumer member of Safer Care Victoria’s Safer Baby Collaborative faculty.

As well as championing improvement in care and well-being for parents, Margaret is passionate about social justice and equality being a first generation Australian to parents who arrived in Australia as refugees without English as a language. She provides personal insight as a consumer and carer on a number of diversity and inclusion working groups in healthcare and is a Board Director for Transcend Australia.

Margaret joined Red Nose from Sands Australia in November 2020. She is responsible for ensuring our education and prevention programs continue to deliver on Red Noses’ mission to save little lives and ensure the wider community understands the devastating impact felt by families whose baby or child has died.

Currently CEO of Netball Victoria and Melbourne Vixens, Andrea has held executive leadership roles in some of Australia’s leading organisations, including CEO of Inclusive Australia, Australia Post, NAB, Fosters and Telstra, for over 20 years. She has experience in brand and reputation management, stakeholder relations, marketing, corporate social responsibility, and community investment practices, across a broad spectrum of industries and sectors such as the government, corporate and not-for-profit sectors.

Ari Magalhaes is a bereaved parent from Tasmania. Ari experienced the 2019 and 2020 stillbirths of daughters Mia and Lily due to a genetic condition.

Originally from Brazil and educated in Europe, Ari is an economist with a Masters’ Degree in International Management. She has been highly engaged with local not for profits in Tasmania.

Ari has been engaged with Red Nose and Sands remotely and is thoughtful about way that we can be more engaged with people in communities like Tasmania where we don’t currently have any paid team members.

Bonnie Carter (OAM) is a bereaved parent from the ACT. Bonnie tragically experienced the stillbirth of Grace in 2016 and then Matilda in 2017, and has also experienced early pregnancy loss.

Bonnie and her husband have been active in advocacy through the stillbirth inquiry and community events through Red Nose, local family led initiatives. Bonnie’s key interest is holding space for bereaved families in the community. Drawing on her experience as Assistant Director in DFAT’s Diversity and Inclusion space, Bonnie believes there are small, but meaningful steps to make our community activities more inclusive.

Professor Craig Pennell was the Foundation Scientific Director Raine Study (2008-2012) and presently the Leader of the Genetics SIG. Craig’s research centres on personalised medicine in perinatal health and the developmental origins of health and disease. His current research is focused on prediction of preterm birth in early pregnancy, prediction and prevention of stillbirth, prevention of maternal mortality in low- and middle-income countries and the role of genetics in the relationship between early life events and adult disease.

Craig has an outstanding global academic and research excellence record in obstetrics, gynaecology and maternal fetal medicine and the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease. He has been instrumental in establishing the collaborative relationships with a multitude of national and international consortiums. He has more than 290 publications, received $33M of competitive national and international research grants and filed three patents.

Professor Craig Pennell is currently the Chair in Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Professor of Maternal Fetal Medicine within the School of Medicine and Public Health (Obstetrics and Gynaecology), University of Newcastle, and the Co-Director of the Mothers and Babies Research Program at the Hunter Medical Research Institute. He is also a Senior Staff Specialist in Maternal Fetal Medicine at John Hunter Hospital. In his roles, Craig provides academic leadership and fosters excellence in the management of high-risk pregnancies, research, teaching, professional activities, and policy development.

Craig is the former Chair of the Red Nose National Scientific Advisory Group (NSAG) and is the current Board representative on NSAG.

Neonatologist and Clinical Senior Lecturer, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital The University of Sydney

Adrienne is a Neonatal Staff Specialist in the RPA centre for newborn care and an NHMRC Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Sydney. She has a Masters of Public Health and a PhD on risk factors for stillbirth for which she received an NHMRC Public Health Scholarship. She is particularly interested in perinatal topics with a public health impact that have the potential to improve pregnancy and newborn outcomes.

Adrienne is on several State and National Committees that are directly responsible for policy and practice in the provision of perinatal care. She is Deputy Chair of the National Scientific Advisory Group of Red Nose, a member of the IMPACT network for improving health through perinatal clinical trials, represents NSW on the National Perinatal Mortality Report project and has close links with perinatal consumer groups such as Miracle babies and the Stillbirth Foundation Australia. She is an avid supporter of evidence-based policy and practice and is passionate about translating research into clinical care.

She led the Sydney Stillbirth Study which assessed modifiable risk factors for late pregnancy stillbirth across nine different hospitals. The results of this project have contributed to the recent establishment of a specialised bereavement support service (iSAIL – integrated support after infant loss) within Sydney Local Health District. Adrienne is also Project Lead for the Charles Perkins Centre’s BABY1000 Study. BABY1000 is a visionary project which will provide a major contribution to knowledge regarding early life predictors of health and disease and the interventions that will ultimately improve health for our future generations.

Dr Susan Arbuckle is a senior Staff Specialist at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead in Histopathology. She is on the NSW Maternal and Perinatal Committee and on the Perinatal Outcomes Working Party. She also sits on the State Birth Defects Committee and has been involved with PSANZ and with the Stillbirth Project. In the past she has been involved with college committees and organising the paediatric and perinatal component of various meetings.

She has been an author on a number of papers, the majority of which have been in paediatric and perinatal pathology. Her particular interest has been the aetiology of stillbirth and placentas.

Susan has set up and organised a Perinatal Service, which is now used by Western Sydney, Central & South West Sydney, Gosford, most private hospitals in Sydney and many of the country hospitals. The quality and care offered by this service is much appreciated by those using it. Careful examination is made of every perinatal case to find, if possible, the aetiology and possible cause of the perinatal death. Education of clinicians and providing answers and appropriate care of the babies for the parents and clinicians is a focus of the service.

Dr Carrington Shepherd is a Senior Research Fellow (PhD, Curtin University) at the Telethon Kids Institute (TKI), and Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at Murdoch University and the University of WA.

He has led the Child Mortality Research program at TKI since 2010, which features the use of unique population data to investigate ways of reducing preventable and unexplained deaths in the early life course.

Dr Shepherd’s collaborative networks include the Western Australian Perinatal Epidemiology Group and the newly formed Australian Stillbirth Awareness & Prevention (ASAP) Collaborative —which brings together Stillbirth Parents, Educators, Awareness Advocates and Researchers with a passionate interest in reducing preventable stillbirths.

He also leads a research program that aims to bridge the knowledge gap on social inequalities in Aboriginal health in Australia and his research explores how social determinants and pathways can lead to enhanced life outcomes and a reduction in preventable deaths.

Nicole is a bereaved mother to her daughter Isla who lived 6 days in NICU after suffering birthing complication at 38weeks in 2016.

Since then she has become incredibly passionate about the bereavement support offered to maternity staff and families experiencing child loss in hospitals.

Nicole has developed ISLA grief & loss, a service which works to improve the confidence and capabilities of front-line maternity staff through perinatal bereavement education.

On her journey since October 2017, Nicole has delivered dozens of talks to many hundreds of maternity professionals, developed a resource folder for maternity staff which is used at 21 different maternity hospitals in Melbourne, created the private Facebook group ISLA grief & loss NETWORK for providers, and surveyed hundreds of front-line staff to understand their challenges and current practices.

Nicole’s background is a postgraduate trained physiotherapist and mother to her living boys. She has completed Certificate IVs in Bereavement Support and Training & Assessment and is also a trained Peer Supporter with Red Nose.

Andrew Hutchins in an experienced CFO with 30 years of experience in financial and corporate services, having worked across a number of industries and in both the corporate and not-for-profit sectors.

Andrew commenced with Red Nose in April 2018 and is responsible for stewarding our financial resources to secure our long-term sustainability.

Rachel Ficinus is a registered psychologist with 16 years’ experience working in mental health, youth and family counselling, and paediatric palliative care in the public health and not-for-profit sectors.

Rachel commenced at Red Nose in May 2020 and is responsible for clinical management of Red Nose’s Bereavement Services, ensuring we continue to provide high quality and evidence-based bereavement support to all Red Nose families.

Assoc Prof Fran Boyle is a social scientist at The University of Queensland’s Institute for Social Science Research and Co-lead of the Care after Stillbirth Program at the Centre of Research Excellence in Stillbirth (Stillbirth CRE).

Fran has a background in psychology and public health and is engaged in health services research and evaluation in a range of hospital and community settings. She is strongly committed to ensuring that care is informed by the latest best-practice evidence. Fran’s work is also driven by the firm belief that consumer perspectives and understanding of people’s lived experiences of health and their health care systems are essential to developing responsive and effective policy and practice.

Fran is passionate about improving perinatal bereavement care and ensuring that all parents receive the best possible care when a baby dies. She co-led the development of the 2019 Perinatal Society of Australia and New Zealand/Stillbirth CRE Clinical Practice Guideline for Respectful and Supportive Perinatal Bereavement Care.

Like many who are drawn to research and practice in this area, Fran’s involvement began with her own lived experience of the loss of a baby soon after birth. Her PhD looked at the psychosocial consequences of stillbirth, neonatal death and SIDS on families over time and she has since published numerous articles on the topic of perinatal bereavement care.

Fran has a deep understanding of the widely varying needs of parents following pregnancy loss and the essential role of parent-focused organisations such as Red Nose in helping to address those needs.