Alison Barclay
Collective Action’s founder and director, Alison leads and drives our strategic direction. She has over a decade of experience working with clients to support the design, delivery, and evaluation of social justice and public health programs in the thematic areas of gender equality and social inclusion, the prevention of violence against women and children, LGBTIQA+ health equity and inclusion, sexual health, and social impact measurement.
Alison specialises in working with people and communities who experience structural discrimination, marginalisation, and social injustice to support their involvement in the research, evaluation, and design of programs that impact their lives. Alison’s approach is founded on a strong understanding of trauma-informed practices and best-practice safe and ethical engagement. She excels at creating supportive environments where participants’ rights and wishes are respected, their safety is ensured, and they are treated with dignity and respect.
Alison holds a Master of Studies in gender and development studies from the Australian National University and has advanced technical skills in research, program design, monitoring and evaluation, and instructional design.
In her eight years as the director of Collective Action, Alison has led a diverse range of projects in Australia and abroad. She takes great pride in taking on complex projects and delivering outstanding results to our clients. Some highlights of her work include:
Sarah Williamson
Our in-house editor, Sarah has been a core part of the Collective Action team since 2018. She develops, refines, and polishes the content we produce, ensuring that everything we deliver to our clients is clear, concise, and of the highest quality. She has a strong command of multiple internationally recognised style guides, and easily adapts her editing style to align with client requirements.
Additionally, Sarah has over 6 years’ experience teaching English as a second language in Italy, Jordan, and Australia. Sarah completed a Certificate IV in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) at UNSW Global in 2014. She later earned a Pass A on completion of the Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (CELTA) at Melbourne Training Associates in 2020, placing her among the top five percent of all successful CELTA candidates worldwide. Her experience as a teacher has strongly influenced the development of her skills as a plain English editor.
A language enthusiast, Sarah has been studying grammatical systems and language use for over two decades. She has completed multiple courses in the Arabic language, including Modern Standard Arabic and the Jordanian dialect, in both Australia and Jordan. She has also studied German, Italian, French, Spanish, and Indonesian. She speaks conversational Italian and Jordanian dialect Arabic.
Sarah also has extensive experience in communications and engagement roles in various Australian government departments and for APCO Worldwide in the United Arab Emirates, as well as expertise in government reporting and administrative roles.
Sarah holds a Master of Islamic Studies, a Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) in political science and philosophy, and a Diploma of Modern Languages in Italian, all completed at the University of Melbourne.
Mai Thi Ngoc Vu
Mai joined Collective Action as a research and evaluation project assistant in 2023. She works with Collective Action part-time and is also undertaking postgraduate qualifications in psychology. After graduating with a Bachelor of Science at Monash University in 2023, Mai completed an Honours degree in psychology at La Trobe University. Her thesis focused on approaches to working with parents from diverse backgrounds to enhance parenting efficacy and improve youth outcomes.
Mai has expertise in the fields of mental health, public health, and cross-cultural psychology. She is an experienced research assistant and has been involved in international collaborations with researchers from Australia, Burma, Cambodia, Malaysia, the USA, and Vietnam. She has three years’ experience working as a research assistant with Monash University, Auckland University, New York University, and Yale University. Her research covers topics about parenting and anxiety/depression, youth development, suicide prevention, noncommunicable diseases in the elderly, and parenting in multicultural families. She has helped to conduct rigorous systematic reviews to inform clinical interventions and policy changes for these populations.
Mai works across all projects at Collective Action, conducting literature reviews and research to ensure our work is always building on the latest evidence.
Ruth Pitt
Ruth is an evaluation specialist with diverse experience in consulting, government, and not-for-profit organisations in Australia and overseas.
Ruth has over a decade’s experience in monitoring and evaluation. She has planned and managed projects across the entire evaluation cycle, from facilitating program logic workshops to delivering high-quality evaluation reports. Ruth has training and experience in applied qualitative and quantitative research and data analysis, evaluation capacity building and training, research communication, and facilitation. Her experience spans the thematic areas of the prevention of violence against women, health promotion, sexual and reproductive health, and injury prevention.
Since joining the Collective Action team in early 2022, Ruth has played a key role in a range of projects, including qualitative and quantitative research, developing an evaluation capability assessment and an evaluation roadmap, writing briefs and submissions to advocate for the needs and priorities of LGBTIQA+ people, and designing monitoring and evaluation tools.
Before working at Collective Action, Ruth was the Director of Evaluation Capability at the National Indigenous Australians Agency, a role focused on the design and planning stage of evaluations, including conducting program logic and evaluation design workshops. Her government experience also includes Acting Director of Evidence in the Family Safety Branch at the Department of Social Services, where she led a team to deliver a range of projects to support data improvements and research on domestic and family violence, and Acting Director of National Initiatives, where she led a team to manage and evaluate programs relating to the primary prevention of violence against women and design new initiatives. In addition to her Collective Action work, Ruth is Evaluation Lead at Health Justice Australia, where her work focuses on supporting health-justice partnerships to plan and conduct evaluations.
Ruth’s qualifications include a Masters of Public Health and a Graduate Certificate in Conflict Resolution, which she completed as part of a Graduate Degree Fellowship at the East-West Center.
Tara Spokes
Tara is the founder and director of The Data Conversation, a consultancy that supports community organisations to develop simple, user-centred design systems. She specialises in developing data systems in a range of contexts, and has experience working within government, academic institutions, and as an external consultant.
With strong quantitative research skills, Tara has extensive experience designing research studies and instruments, collecting and analysing data, and producing research reports. She has a strong command of a range of databases, data analysis programs, and programming languages, including Salesforce, Socialsuite, R, and SQL, and she has experience conducting statistical analysis, including complex multivariate analysis. While Tara’s career started in the field of neuropsychology, she has led and supported research and data projects within a range of fields, including LGBTIQA+ health, aged care, Indigenous data sovereignty, and government response to natural disasters.
Tara holds a PhD in cognitive neuropsychology from Griffith University, a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from the University of New England, and an Advanced Diploma in Marketing and Management from the Australian Business Academy.
Tara has collaborated with Collective Action on numerous projects since 2022, including research and monitoring and evaluation projects.
Afu Billy
Afu is a women’s rights activist and a renowned civil society leader in Solomon Islands. She was instrumental in establishing numerous women’s organisations and movements in Solomon Islands, including the Solomon Islands National Council of Women and the Family Support Centre, and she has played a leadership role in many others.
Afu has expertise in the areas of gender equality, the prevention of violence against women and girls, women’s political leadership, human rights, children’s rights, youth empowerment, gender mainstreaming, and the field of women, peace, and security. She has worked in roles in civil society and media organisations, regional and international development institutions, and as an independent consultant. Notable roles include Regional Director for the Commonwealth Youth Program in the Pacific, Technical Adviser to the Pacific Islands Association of Non-governmental Organisations in Solomon Islands, Solomon Islands’ Country Manager for Save the Children Australia, and Senior Adviser for Gender Equality and Social Inclusion at the Strengthening the Electoral Cycle in Solomon Islands Project (UNDP SECSIP). Afu has experience working in Solomon Islands, Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea (PNG), Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu. In addition to her native tongues of Solomon Islands Pidgin and indigenous languages, she is fluent in English, PNG Tok Pisin, and Bislama.
Afu holds a Bachelor of Business Management and Certificate IV Workplace Training Assessment, Training of Trainers.
Afu has collaborated with Alison Barclay, Collective Action’s director, on numerous projects since 2016, including research into women’s leadership in Solomon Islands, an evaluation of a violence prevention program in PNG, and the development of a guide to mainstreaming gender, disability, and social inclusion in disaster response.
