Penny Harrison

Director, Volunteering

With over 22 years’ experience in executive and leadership roles in the humanitarian sector Penny is known for being curious, gathering insights from futures trends and applying those in ways that delivers strategic innovation.

Drawing from her breadth of experience in Australia and internationally, along with good doses of passion and optimism, Penny strives to build collaborations across sectors including academic, business and not for profit with individuals and communities knowing that this is what it takes to effect system and social change. Penny is currently leading a social impact team delivering initiatves that remove barriers to volunteering and taking action for good, harnessing the transformational power of frontier technologies, and building collaborations and connections across communities to support them act on and solve social issues they care about.

Penny re-joined Australian Red Cross in 2015 initially as Director, Victoria after over 8 years at Oxfam Australia where she was responsible for programs across Africa, the Pacific, South and East Asia, humanitarian responses and global transformation inititives. Prior to that Penny held several leadership postions in Australian Red Cross’ International Deprtment and before then spent many years working with Medecins sans Frontiers, including Country Directorships in Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Penny has Master of Arts and Bachelor of Arts (Hons) both from Monash University and is an alumni of Leadership Victoria’s Williamson Community Leaderhip Program.