Chief Executive
Niall Fay
Our Chief Executive, Niall, stewards aligning our strategy with our purpose. With a diverse background in innovation and Research and Development across sectors, he brings a fresh perspective to the Foundation. At the heart of Niall's approach lies a deep belief in the power of community partnerships to address complex social challenges. He champions innovative and collaborative approaches, embracing the potential of interdisciplinary collectives. Niall's engagement spans every facet of our work, fostering a culture of learning and adaptation. He ensures that our values resonate not only through our partnerships but also within our team. With a deep passion for creating sustainable pathways of change, Niall supports our partners to make a lasting impact with and for communities. He envisions a future where collaboration with those most impacted and possessing valuable insights takes precedence, and where our Foundation plays a role in positive and transformative change within philanthropy.
Administration and Projects
Megan Maxfield
In her role of Administration and Special Projects support, Megan keeps the wheel turning, supporting us all to do our work, while undertaking discrete projects like capturing the history of the Foundation and our Founder. Megan brings her extensive administrative experience developed across sectors to support both Niall and the operational team to be supported in their own functional roles. This level of organisational support requires a high level of understanding across all of the Foundations focus areas. Reach out to Megan if you’re interested in the design of organisational architecture to support an independent team, or would like to know more about our process of capturing the Foundations history and legacy.
Grants and Operations
Kate Arnold
As our Grants and Operations Manager, Kate ensures our mental health and wellbeing grants support communities and individuals to explore their big ideas. Kate is the Foundation’s lead support on the Our Town initiative and leads the design and implementation of our mental health grants: Spark, Discovery, and Strategic Partnerships. Through her role she ensures alignment of the Foundations strategy and operations. Kate joined Fay Fuller from the Don Dunstan Foundation with a background in community development and community services, and an educational background in Management and International relations. This experience informs and grounds Kate’s understanding of the challenges within the charity and non-profit sector when it comes to sourcing ongoing funding that is fit for purpose. In our current partnerships Kate supports strategic planning; balancing different needs, lenses, and priorities and bringing together the small details and the big picture. Kate is great to chat to if you have general grant enquiries, need support with an application, are interested in the philanthropic funding landscape or want to know more about our approach to granting and partnering.
Grants and Engagement
Marla Briscoe
Marla is a proud Warlpiri woman, who has been working and living on Kaurna Land for the past 20 years. In her role as Grants and Engagement Manager, Marla supports the First Nations-Led Philanthropic Funding working group and the work to establish a First Nations Led Fund for South Australia. Marla brings her experience holding relationships and bringing people together to support the First Nation’s led health funding model and holds the Secretariat role for the First Nations Philanthropic Funding Working Group (FNPFWG). Marla also coordinates and supports community organisations leading an engagement process with their communities. Marla’s experience spans managerial and coordination roles across the arts, health and corporate sectors. Marla brings this lens across to weaving and connecting groups, organisations, and people together and identifying opportunities to support community to reach their goals. Get in touch with Marla if you want to know more about the community engagement process, the establishment of a First Nations Led Fund for South Australia or would like to connect with the FNPFWG. Marla’s also happy to meet with First Nations peers and those interested in pathways into philanthropy.
Social Impact and communications
Victoria Halburd
As the Foundation’s Social Impact and Communications Manager, Victoria makes sure that we understand the impact of both the Foundation’s work and the work of our partners and shares what we are seeing and learning with others. Tori leads the implementation of our Social Impact Measurement and Learning Framework internally and with our partners. On the communications side Tori is responsible for our external communications and building the Foundation’s narrative, brand, and website. In our Town she plays a support role, managing the Our Town website and supporting learning experiences around storytelling and communicating impact. Tori transitioned to philanthropy from the international development sector where she worked in program management for development projects in the Pacific region. She has a Masters in International Development and feels her educational background equipped her to notice the flow on impacts of actions within and across systems. Chat to Tori if you’re interested in how we designed and implemented our Social Impact Measurement and Learning framework, communicating complex ideas in accessible formats, or working with community to tell stories of their own impact.
Chair
David Minns
The Executive Chairman of Chartered Accounting and Advisory firm Jaquillard Minns, and founder and director of a number of other businesses in the finance and investment sector, David brings invaluable business and governance experience and insights to his role as Chair of the Fay Fuller Foundation Board. David loves to assist others in formalising their charitable giving and founded JM Philanthropy to provide a bespoke service that helps people to identify and achieve their goals for giving. Aside from the Fay Fuller Foundation, David also gives his time to the Wyatt Trust, Pembroke School and a number of Private Philanthropic entities.
Director
Nick Ross
Nick’s career has focused on investment and wealth management and running parallel has been a strong interest in philanthropy. He is a founding partner and managing director of Adelaide based Knightsbridge Wealth Management, which he helped establish in 2012.On the philanthropic side, he also chairs the James and Diana Ramsay Foundation and serves as director of the Klein Family Foundation and Pembroke School Foundation. He believes that philanthropy should take a long-term view and focus on projects that government is unwilling or unable to fund, or can only partially fund. Nick also wants to see more activism in philanthropy and for foundations to step up and take ownership of projects, in order to make a difference.
Director
Carolyn Curtis
Carolyn has dedicated her career to people and unlocking their potential. The CEO of The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI), Carolyn is a passionate social innovator who thrives on the challenge of finding new and better ways to solve complex problems. She loves changing hearts and minds and helping people discover what’s possible through testing their assumptions and creating bold experiments.She hopes the future will see philanthropic organisations join forces with other sectors and people with lived experience to match the scale of our big social challenges. She believes that this will require everyone to reflect on their own power and privilege, be open to learning and failing, and playing the long game.Carolyn is also a Non-Executive Director for world-leading social innovation network, The Social Innovation Exchange and serves on the board of The Difference Incubator.
Director
Tanya McGregor
Tanya is a proud Yaruwu (Broome) woman who has lived and worked most of her life on the lands of the Larrakia people in the Northern Territory and now on Kaurna land in South Australia. She has extensive experience on Committees, boards and Ministerial Council’s. She is currently the Co-Chair of the Aboriginal Cricket Advisory Committee for SACA and the SA representative on the Cricket Australia Indigenous Advisory Committee. She also previously served on the Rostrevor College Board and NT Softball Board where she was awarded life membership. Tanya’s working knowledge includes an extensive background in Human Resource Management and Aboriginal Health Policy. She is currently the Chief Aboriginal Health Officer in the Department for Health and Wellbeing (SA), leading the reform of Aboriginal Health strategy including state funding and investment. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Tanya was also the Executive lead responsible for COVID-19 response and preparedness for Aboriginal Communities in South Australia by maintaining a two-way interaction with Communities and frontline services. Further to this, Tanya is leading the development of innovative, collaborative practices across the sector to improve health outcomes for Aboriginal South Australians by focusing on Health system improvement. Tanya believes that; To improve Aboriginal Health, requires equal parts of Cultural and Social determinant inputs.
Get in touch
While we don't award grants outside of our open grant rounds we are always interested in hearing from people and organisations working in the mental health and wellbeing space.