Meet Our Career Ambassadors

Eva-Lee has been involved in community work since she was a teen, volunteering from the age of 18. During her teens and early adulthood Eva-Lee experience severe trauma and struggles, seeking support from local services. Since then, Eva-Lee has been able to use her experience to join the sector.

She began in the Drug and Alcohol sector as an Aboriginal Peer Support Worker 5 years ago. During that time, she was able to relate to clients, and build trust and rapport. This allowed her to connect with others and work to achieve their goals and outcomes.

Eva-Lee is the recipient of the 2021 ACT NAIDOC award for Indigenous Community Sector Worker. The award acknowledges her community involvement, outreach work, and designing, developing and facilitating Drug and Alcohol groups solely for the community. Eva‑Lee sees the award as a win not only for her but also for her family and community.

Building on her skills, in mid-2022 she began working as an Aboriginal Engagement Officer which is where she plans to stay.

Eva-Lee is well known and respected in her community and has been for the past 20 years.

Watching your people have positive outcomes – I don’t know anybody that doesn’t want to help their community and give back to their community. And we got to cherish our young, they’re going to be our future leaders. So give them more encouragement and praise and positivity to get into the community sector and flourish.

Hannah’s introduction to the community sector was a unique one, and started back in 2017 when she was on maternity leave with her second child. After wanting to donate her second-hand baby items to those in her community in need and not finding easy avenues to do this, she decided to do something about it, and started Roundabout Canberra; a registered charity which rehomes baby and children’s goods to local families in need.

For the first few years, Hannah ran Roundabout as a volunteer alongside her paid job in the Commonwealth Public Service. Through this experience she was introduced to the world of fundraising, grant-writing, volunteer management, and not-for-profit governance and reporting.

In 2022 she resigned from her job in the public service to take on the paid role of CEO at Roundabout, and hasn’t looked back. She receives immense satisfaction from working with a passionate and dedicated team of staff and volunteers, working alongside a network of community services across the Canberra region, and making a material difference in the lives of families in need.

For me, it’s just about feeling like you’re doing something good every day. My background’s been in the public service, which is a lovely, stable place to work, but you don’t get out of bed knowing that you’re going to go and do something wonderful and help people in a really meaningful way. My experience of being in the community sector has been that you do that every day and it’s pretty special.