Anne Kirwan CatholicCare, CEO

Ms Kirwan is thankful for her “amazing” staff, about 80 per cent of whom are women, and that she can rely on them to look after the details while she has learned to step back and look at the bigger picture.

While she has had to relinquish much of her clinical caseload, she has found her psychology training and experience useful in running an agency that needs to be financially and politically savvy while maintaining its community focus.

“In a leadership role, I need to remain calm and steer the ship,” she says.

“I strive to be a role model for my staff – I think that’s quite a compliment if people can say that you’re a role model.

“At the same time, I see myself as quite a work in progress.”

Helen Delahunty, Archdiocesan Financial Administrator

HELEN Delahunty freely admits if she had known what lay ahead when she accepted the job as Archdiocesan Financial Administrator in April 2011, things might have been different.

As it was, she was hesitant to even apply for it. She was “crook as a chook” in hospital at the time, had four busy sons to wrangle and enjoyed her work as chief financial officer with Greening Australia.

But her friend Francis Sullivan, later to become CEO of the Church’s Truth, Justice and Healing Council, encouraged her to go for it.

 “I thought it was going to be a doddle,” she says. “Go to a few meetings, prepare a budget – I could do that in my sleep.”

She soon realised that “looking after the temporal goods of the Archdiocese” encompassed “just about everything”, from managing priests, property and staff to liaising with the parishes and overseeing the Manuka Precinct development.

And all this in the shadow of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and other Church scandals. On top of that, her husband, leading trauma doctor Damian McMahon, died suddenly a year after she started.

But it’s turned out to be “the best job I’ve ever had”. “I love the people, I love the work, I love the Archdiocese,” she says.

Camilla Rowland, Marymead CEO

She took over at a time of change for Marymead, which marks 50 years in Canberra this year.

The organisation has moved into autism care and has developed its mental health services for young people.

It has also set up co-location arrangements with CatholicCare and the St Vincent de Paul Society in some rural areas.

At the same time, though, it has lost its foster care work, in which it has “a long, solid history”.

It is also adjusting to the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the government move away from block grants to individual funding, which Mrs Rowland says poses issues for community services.

The challenges don’t faze her, however. “I am known as a bit of a change agent. I’ve always been passionate about ensuring services meet community need.”

Mrs Rowland’s interest in building communities also dominates her limited spare time. “Some people cook as a hobby – I join committees. Social policy and good strategy are passions of mine,” she says.