Violet is a national not-for-profit, proudly supporting more than 50,000 Australians through life's final chapters.

Meet our Board of Directors

Our purpose

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  Kate Carnell AO FAICD FAIM AFACHSM

  Chair, Violet

  Kate Carnell knows firsthand that experience and expertise are no protection from the challenges of caring for ageing parents. Despite decades at the highest levels of Australian health and public policy — including as ACT Chief Minister and Health Minister — she found herself just as unprepared, overwhelmed and unsupported as millions of other Australian families. That experience is what brought her to Violet, and what drives her commitment to making this stage of life better for every Australian. A pharmacist by training, Kate has led some of Australia's most significant organisations — including beyondblue, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and as Australia's inaugural Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman. She was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2006. She brings to Violet not just three decades of leadership, but something rarer: the willingness to say that she didn't have the roadmap she needed — and the determination to help build one for everyone else.

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  Duane Attree

  Director

  Duane Attree has spent his career asking one question: how do we leave this better than we found it? It's a question he has applied to startups, to large healthcare organisations, and to the systems that shape how people experience care. It's also what brought him to Violet — and what keeps him here. With more than 25 years at the intersection of healthcare, strategy and digital innovation, Duane brings rare breadth to Violet's Board. He is the Founder of The 4th, a boutique firm specialising in organisational strategy and healthcare innovation, and currently serves as Chair of Core Schedule and Chair of the Innovation Committee at Murrumbidgee Primary Health Network. His career spans the full spectrum — from scaling early-stage companies to driving transformation inside complex health systems — always with a focus on the human outcomes that sit behind the commercial ones. What Duane brings to Violet is both the strategic rigour to build something that lasts and the values to make sure it's worth building. He is a difference maker in the truest sense — someone who shows up with high standards, genuine care, and a deep belief that the right combination of innovation and humanity can transform the way Australians experience the last stage of life.

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  Dr Jessica Dean

  Director

  Jessica Dean has spent her career at the place where medicine, law and ethics intersect — and nowhere is that intersection more profound than at the last stage of life. As an Intensive Care Fellow in Quality and Safety at The Royal Melbourne Hospital, she sees firsthand how complex decisions during this stage affect patients, families and the healthcare teams caring for them. It's what drives her commitment to doing it better. A medical doctor and lawyer, Jessica lectures in Health Law at Monash University and directs the Medicolegal Consultancy Group, with research focused on clinical ethics and moral competency in healthcare. A former Director of Beyond Blue and current AMA Director, she brings more than a decade of board experience across governance, clinical quality and risk. She brings to Violet something rare — the ability to hold the clinical, legal and human dimensions of this stage of life together, and the conviction that every person deserves both clinical excellence and genuine compassion when it matters most.

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  Professor Imogen Mitchell

  Director and Chair, Clinical Committee

  Imogen Mitchell has spent a career in intensive care medicine watching how Australia handles the last stage of life — and believing we can do far better. As Executive Director of Research and Academic Partnerships at Canberra Health Services, she has dedicated herself to challenging the systems and silences that make this stage harder than it needs to be. A professor and clinician, Imogen bridges academic research and frontline practice in ways that drive real change. Her work has focused on developing care models that place dignity, family support and honest conversation at the centre — not as afterthoughts, but as fundamentals. She brings to Violet the authority of deep clinical expertise and the urgency of someone who has seen, up close, what happens when families face this stage without the support they deserve.

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  Melissa Reader

  Managing Director and CEO

  Melissa Reader believes our systems consistently fail people at the moment they need support most — and has dedicated her career to changing that. A social entrepreneur with a background in adaptive leadership and purpose-led strategy, she is an alumna of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and INSEAD's AVIRA program, and has been recognised through the Chief Executive Women's Entrepreneurs Scholarship and the Westpac Social Change Fellowship.