Member Spotlight: CALM

NCOSS spoke to Rebecca Kelly, CEO of Community Activities in Lake Macquarie (CALM).

Tell me a little bit about your organisation.

Our organisation is about to have its 40th birthday next year. They started out as what was called the Westlakes Activity Van and have grown over time into what it is now. We have a combination of child, youth, and family services. And we’ve also reactivated a neighbourhood centre this year as well.

We did some work with community around asset-based mapping, and they really wanted some more spaces, so we’re currently working with them to reactivate that community centre. And we’ve got student wellbeing officers in 15 schools across our footprint as well.

You’re a recipient of the NCOSS Harrison Church scholarship for the Chief Executive Women Leadership course. What are your first impressions of the course, and what did you find the most useful?

I think it’s been a great opportunity to be reflective about my own leadership journey and my leadership style, and also to have some conversations and do that work with people that we wouldn’t ordinarily do it with as well, because it is quite a diverse group of women. Other than the five NCOSS recipients, it is largely women working in executive roles in banks and those sorts of places, which means it’s quite different leadership conversations, and so you’re learning in a really different way to what you would do during some other leadership courses.

Having those different perspectives and having people look at things with different lens is a really important part of that learning journey as well.

I’ve done the first block and then I’ve got my second block coming up in July, so I’m halfway through the course. Many of us have connected through LinkedIn, and so I’m having some conversations with those that are geographically close to me to go about catching up before we go back for the next block. So, I think that there will be some of that lasting network that comes out of it as well.

This is an opportunity for you to strengthen your leadership skills. How do you think your experience is going to help your organisation, or have a broader impact in your world?

I think without doing the course, there’s very little opportunity for people to do that personal investment in themselves. To reflect on your strengths and values, and that is what the CEW course really focuses on. They do use the CliftonStrengths from Gallup as a cornerstone of some of the work that we do, and so that enables me to really look at what are my strengths and how do I want to put them into practice with my team and my organisation, and what does that look like.

This course is specifically designed for women to build women’s leadership abilities. Have you found in your career that there’s still a lot of structural barriers for women to become leaders?

I think that women’s and men’s journeys of leadership can be really different. If I think about my own personal leadership journey, I’ve had four babies over that time as well. So, I think that there are lots of things that do come into play that means that women’s experience of leadership is still very different as well, and it doesn’t just have to be about motherhood, but there’s lots of reasons why your journey might be different.

The Harrison Church scholarship is continuing and there will be another round opening up at the end of 2026 for women to apply. What’s your message for women who might be thinking about applying for this scholarship?

I think that it’s really awesome that NCOSS is doing it. I think that there isn’t that kind of level of investment in leaders across the not-for-profit sector, so I think that it is a valuable investment, and I think that I would encourage women that are in leadership roles to apply, because it’s such an investment in yourself that you won’t get somewhere else.

I know that I’ve had a lot of gratitude for my experience, both from NCOSS to be able to financially do it, but also from my organisation, who have been able to make space for me to be able to do it as well, because that’s the other side of it, is that you do need to have an organisation that supports you to do it, so that you can really go and invest and lean into the program as well.

• NCOSS’s Harrison-Church Women’s Leadership Scholarship is a collaboration between the NSW Council of Social Service (NCOSS) and Chief Executive Women (CEW).
• To be eligible to apply for the scholarship, your organisation must be a small to medium sized member of NCOSS.
• Applications for the next scholarship round will open in the last quarter of 2026. Stay in touch with NCOSS by subscribing to our enewsletter, or check back here for updates.