Lydia Sharpin OAM

NSW Justices Association (NSWJA) is the premier association representing and advocating for Justices of the Peace (JPs) across NSW, dating back to 1912. There are approximately 72K JPs across NSW as of 2022.

I have been an active Justice of the Peace (NSW) since 2005, however with a formalised accreditation and certification process starting in NSW in 2019, I decided to join the local branch of the NSW Justices Association for my ongoing professional development and so that I could… Mehr zeigen

NSW Justices Association (NSWJA) is the premier association representing and advocating for Justices of the Peace (JPs) across NSW, dating back to 1912. There are approximately 72K JPs across NSW as of 2022.

I have been an active Justice of the Peace (NSW) since 2005, however with a formalised accreditation and certification process starting in NSW in 2019, I decided to join the local branch of the NSW Justices Association for my ongoing professional development and so that I could serve the local community in a different context to my volunteering with St John Ambulance (see above). I soon became the Desk Coordinator for the Hornsby Branch, ensuring that enough volunteers are rostered at our community desks and worked on strategic placement of our desks to better support recruitment initiatives and attended volunteer expos promoting the NSWJA. I also pioneered setting up a Facebook presence at branch level as part of a pilot program for the NSW JP Association. I later became Branch Vice President and was elected to the Board of Directors in November 2022. I will be stepping down in November 2024 after serving my full term.

See https://nswja.org.au/nswja-board/ Weniger anzeigen

St John Ambulance Australia's volunteers deliver event health and community services, raise funds, attend events and run the St John youth programs around the world. St John has approximately 15,000 volunteers nationally providing a range of important community services, who provide over 1 million hours of community service every year. Their corporate work, especially in the field of first aid training and products funds their charitable activities. In NSW there are approximately 3000… Mehr zeigen

St John Ambulance Australia's volunteers deliver event health and community services, raise funds, attend events and run the St John youth programs around the world. St John has approximately 15,000 volunteers nationally providing a range of important community services, who provide over 1 million hours of community service every year. Their corporate work, especially in the field of first aid training and products funds their charitable activities. In NSW there are approximately 3000 volunteers. In September 2020 I was elected by the volunteers to represent the Greater Metropolitan region and work together with Head Office staff to reinvigorate our community service at a strategic level.

To donate to St John Ambulance Australia (NSW), please visit https://stjohnnsw.com.au/donate/ Weniger anzeigen

The Australian Computer Society is Australia's leading professional association with over 46,000 members representing Australia’s technology community, across industry, government and education.

I am volunteering as an accredited ICT industry mentor and leader in their official mentor program. There are two intakes per year, each being a 6 month guided journey. I am responsible for two mentees per intake.

For more information on the program go to… Mehr zeigen

The Australian Computer Society is Australia's leading professional association with over 46,000 members representing Australia’s technology community, across industry, government and education.

I am volunteering as an accredited ICT industry mentor and leader in their official mentor program. There are two intakes per year, each being a 6 month guided journey. I am responsible for two mentees per intake.

For more information on the program go to https://www.acs.org.au/branches/canberra/acs-mentoring-program.html Weniger anzeigen

Strong Women is a large female-oriented Facebook group dedicated to providing an online safe space for women, a platform for positive, empowering female life stories and support for women going through difficult times. The group has over 440k members, averages 20k posts/month and 200 new member requests/week.

I joined in November 2018 and was promoted to moderator January 2020. As one of the small team of moderators, I collaborate with the team, induct new moderators, contribute to… Mehr zeigen

Strong Women is a large female-oriented Facebook group dedicated to providing an online safe space for women, a platform for positive, empowering female life stories and support for women going through difficult times. The group has over 440k members, averages 20k posts/month and 200 new member requests/week.

I joined in November 2018 and was promoted to moderator January 2020. As one of the small team of moderators, I collaborate with the team, induct new moderators, contribute to management strategy, review and approve pending posts, keyword alerts, reported rules abuses and membership requests.

See https://www.facebook.com/groups/189680258404294/ for more information Weniger anzeigen

Back to Back Theatre is an Australian contemporary theatre company based in Geelong, Victoria and touring nationally and internationally. Over the last 30 years, they have made a body of work that questions the audience's assumptions of what is possible in theatre. The ensemble currently consists of six actors, all of whom are neurodivergent and/or have a disability. They have performed to critical acclaim nationally and worldwide.

I have conducted a system review (Sales Cloud/Service… Mehr zeigen

Back to Back Theatre is an Australian contemporary theatre company based in Geelong, Victoria and touring nationally and internationally. Over the last 30 years, they have made a body of work that questions the audience's assumptions of what is possible in theatre. The ensemble currently consists of six actors, all of whom are neurodivergent and/or have a disability. They have performed to critical acclaim nationally and worldwide.

I have conducted a system review (Sales Cloud/Service Cloud/NPSP/Payments2Us/Campaign Monitor/TryBooking/Daylite), improved user adoption, upgraded from Classic to Lightning, set up sandboxes, backups, uninstalled apps, changed user profiles/permissions/organisation-wide security defaults, converted custom objects back to campaign hierarchy, liaised with app vendors and Salesforce on their behalf and completed a significant structural upgrade of NPSP from version 1.0 to the current version NPSP. My role replaced their paid Salesforce Admin Assist support plan. I worked with them 1 day/week.

To donate to Back to Back Theatre, please visit https://backtobacktheatre.com/support/donate/ Weniger anzeigen

Assisting members of the public with statutory declarations and certified copies.

GoodSAM connects trained health volunteers to patients in the critical first minutes of a cardiac arrest until paramedics arrive and also lists any publicly accessible defibrillators that have been registered with GoodSAM. GoodSAM has been the cardiac arrest alerting system across Victoria since 2017 and is now integrated with the NSW Ambulance's Triple Zero (000) dispatch system.

Last year, a global network of 1.5 million GoodSAM volunteers helped save the life of a cardiac arrest… Mehr zeigen

GoodSAM connects trained health volunteers to patients in the critical first minutes of a cardiac arrest until paramedics arrive and also lists any publicly accessible defibrillators that have been registered with GoodSAM. GoodSAM has been the cardiac arrest alerting system across Victoria since 2017 and is now integrated with the NSW Ambulance's Triple Zero (000) dispatch system.

Last year, a global network of 1.5 million GoodSAM volunteers helped save the life of a cardiac arrest patient on average every three minutes.

For more information on this vitally important initiative, please visit https://www.ambulance.nsw.gov.au/goodsam/volunteering-with-goodsam Weniger anzeigen

The University of Technology Sydney began offering the Bachelor of Information Technology (BIT) scholarship course in 1988, combining industry experience with a targeted education and for many of the students a role in the IT landscape with one of the program sponsors. The private Facebook group is a way for current students and alumni to keep in touch as well as share tech industry knowledge.

St John Ambulance Australia's volunteers deliver event health and community services, raise funds, attend events and run the St John youth programs around the world. St John has approximately 15,000 volunteers nationally providing a range of important community services, who provide over 1 million hours of community service every year. Their corporate work, especially in the field of first aid training and products funds their charitable activities.

I am their only certified Salesforce… Mehr zeigen

St John Ambulance Australia's volunteers deliver event health and community services, raise funds, attend events and run the St John youth programs around the world. St John has approximately 15,000 volunteers nationally providing a range of important community services, who provide over 1 million hours of community service every year. Their corporate work, especially in the field of first aid training and products funds their charitable activities.

I am their only certified Salesforce Administrator for St John NSW (Salesforce Classic moving to Salesforce Lightning, Salesforce Sales/Service Cloud, MailChimp, JobReady, SAP, MS SQL Server, Codeless, Wordpress, WooCommerce, Integromat) in the IT department, doing system management and providing guidance on Salesforce projects and work alongside their implementation partner. I developed their integration between their lottery system website and Salesforce.

I made a decision to take a break from management for three years at the time of the last restructure so that I could focus on changing my paid work from employee to consultancy again as well as broaden my exposure within St John to support the entire organisation, including the corporate staff, who are just as dedicated to service to humanity. I still provide unofficial mentoring and guidance for many members I was responsible for under the previous management structure. In May 2019 I was awarded the Officer in the Order of St John medal by Her Excellency The Honourable Margaret Beazley, Governor of NSW for outstanding community service.

To donate to St John Ambulance Australia (NSW), please go to https://stjohnnsw.com.au/donate/ Weniger anzeigen

From regular member to contributor to being the only regular panellist who was not a Salesforce employee, it's been an honour to be part of this amazing group of nonprofit experts, answering questions from Salesforce nonprofit customers from the perspective of a consultant and end user. The Salesforce ANZ Nonprofit Customers group Ask an Expert sessions were Wednesdays 1-2pm AEST via Zoom until the program was ended by Salesforce.

I was a mentor within the Salesforce ecosystem as part of their official international Trailblazer Mentor program, being matched to mentees for my skills and experience in Salesforce, IT, recruitment, volunteering and Life Coaching. It was an honour and a privilege to be allowed to meet and work with so many people and help them into the Salesforce ecosystem. The program was discontinued by Salesforce in August 2023.

St John Ambulance provide the national public ground ambulance service in Papua New Guinea, a country with a population of approximately 8 million people. Since 1957, St John have served the Papua New Guineans in two areas: public health (ambulance services and free first aid education in schools and villages), commercial medical training and supplies for business, industry and mining. In particular, they are working to reduce maternal mortality rates.

My role has been to set up a… Mehr zeigen

St John Ambulance provide the national public ground ambulance service in Papua New Guinea, a country with a population of approximately 8 million people. Since 1957, St John have served the Papua New Guineans in two areas: public health (ambulance services and free first aid education in schools and villages), commercial medical training and supplies for business, industry and mining. In particular, they are working to reduce maternal mortality rates.

My role has been to set up a brand new Salesforce org - the first ever Salesforce instance in Papua New Guinea (Sales Cloud/Service Cloud/NPSP/custom-built HR management/FormTitan/Asset Management Salesforce App using Flows not code) in an Australian Federal-government funded project. I travelled to Papua New Guinea in January 2020 to test and deliver the new system and train the trainers and administrators. The new Asset Management System replaced AssetPanda, giving their teams greater visibility and control over their assets, location and usage. This has been revised and re-released after taking user feedback into account and adding features such as multi-item automatic check-in.

To donate to St John Ambulance Papua New Guinea, please visit https://www.stjohn.org.pg/donate/donations/ Weniger anzeigen

When the Assistant Commissioner for Metropolitan Operations became ill and had to take time out to recover, I was asked to step up into an Assistant Commissioner role and became part of the EHS Executive Team. He had been coaching me for leadership. He later received an OAM and the NSW Centre for Volunteering’s Volunteer Manager of the Year award. I was one of the members of the EHS Executive, the equivalent of a Board of Directors at volunteer management level.

My previous role… Mehr zeigen

When the Assistant Commissioner for Metropolitan Operations became ill and had to take time out to recover, I was asked to step up into an Assistant Commissioner role and became part of the EHS Executive Team. He had been coaching me for leadership. He later received an OAM and the NSW Centre for Volunteering’s Volunteer Manager of the Year award. I was one of the members of the EHS Executive, the equivalent of a Board of Directors at volunteer management level.

My previous role was as the Deputy Assistant Commissioner for Metropolitan Operations, responsible for 6 area manager zones, approximately 29 divisions and 1500 Event Health Services volunteers (approximately half of the 3000 St John volunteers in NSW).

This involved attending events and meetings, plus phone and email support. My role was to recruit, mentor, train, support, advocate and provide oversight to the divisional management teams and the Area Managers. I developed and ran induction and quarterly profession development sessions for our Area Managers. I was also short staffed so I had to double as two area managers plus my Assistant Commissioner role. I also handled the some of the most difficult and sensitive investigations in the state with a 100% success rate because I was the most visible senior female volunteer manager whom members trusted. I also worked collaboratively with paid staff at head office, especially in finance and IT, to ensure consistent processes that would work for all divisions.

I was awarded the Silver Commendation within St John in October 2017 (the highest award that is given out at St John state level) in recognition for my results at a senior management level and the respect I have earned among staff and volunteers. Weniger anzeigen

St John had a management restructure in March 2015. I viewed that as my time to return to active duty and use my training, management and life coaching (applied psychology) to assist divisional management teams in helping their members be the best they can be. I was responsible for 7 divisions with approximately 350 volunteers from Willoughby up to and including the Central Coast. I became well known for my coaching, mentoring, guidance, advocacy and support of our divisional management… Mehr zeigen

St John had a management restructure in March 2015. I viewed that as my time to return to active duty and use my training, management and life coaching (applied psychology) to assist divisional management teams in helping their members be the best they can be. I was responsible for 7 divisions with approximately 350 volunteers from Willoughby up to and including the Central Coast. I became well known for my coaching, mentoring, guidance, advocacy and support of our divisional management teams. It was not an easy role, as I had all responsibility but often little actual authority to make the tough decisions that needed to be made. Hence I became a master negotiator and influencer. I had to make many difficult decisions and do them in way that achieved the best outcome for the organisation as well as preserved the dignity of the members involved. I had to close or merge divisions, stand down members including superintendents, oversee interviews, performance manage difficult staff, negotiate and mediate in disputes to achieve resolutions. Weniger anzeigen

Due to family commitments, work, study and moving interstate then back, I scaled back my volunteering. Even so, I was treasurer and later Divisional Superintendent of Operations Support Division.

I was a literacy volunteer with Year 2 students, using materials from the MultiLit Program developed by Macquarie University.

I volunteered at Leichhardt Public School, giving one-on-one tutoring in literacy to Year 1 to Year 3 students who were falling behind after doing a St John Program To Aid Literacy course. One of the most rewarding experiences I had while volunteering was with a behaviourally-challenging student whose results and behaviour significantly improved with one on one attention and an individualised learning plan.

After 3 Region was disbanded I went to South Sydney Cadet Division as their training officer and later their Divisional Superintendent. I was never a St John cadet, so it was a wonderful learning experience. Even now I meet many of them in my life, and one of them became the Deputy Commissioner of Youth as of October 2018. I was awarded member of the Order of St John by the Her Excellency Professor Marie Bashir AC AVO, Governor of New South Wales, representing the Queen, for my service to… Mehr zeigen

After 3 Region was disbanded I went to South Sydney Cadet Division as their training officer and later their Divisional Superintendent. I was never a St John cadet, so it was a wonderful learning experience. Even now I meet many of them in my life, and one of them became the Deputy Commissioner of Youth as of October 2018. I was awarded member of the Order of St John by the Her Excellency Professor Marie Bashir AC AVO, Governor of New South Wales, representing the Queen, for my service to the community through St John in 2007. Weniger anzeigen

Number 3 Region was the name for the Sydney Southern Metropolitan area. When I joined I knew there was going to be a restructure in June the following year. While I was an accredited clinical trainer at the time, delivering first aid training as paid staff at the time, my passion was to improve management practice at divisional level that would have maximum benefit for our volunteers. I developed and ran ongoing professional development training sessions for divisional superintendents and… Mehr zeigen

Number 3 Region was the name for the Sydney Southern Metropolitan area. When I joined I knew there was going to be a restructure in June the following year. While I was an accredited clinical trainer at the time, delivering first aid training as paid staff at the time, my passion was to improve management practice at divisional level that would have maximum benefit for our volunteers. I developed and ran ongoing professional development training sessions for divisional superintendents and their key management staff, delivering sessions that drew insights and encouraged collaboration between divisional managers for the benefit of their volunteers. Weniger anzeigen

I joined Glebe Division, the oldest continually running division in Australia, on the 25th of January 1995. I was promoted to divisional secretary within three months. I developed software that was then used in some of the other divisions that tracked events, member rostering, statistics reporting and invoices for the provision of event health services by our members. This was the forerunner of the web-based version used today.

From February 2001 I became their Operations Officer… Mehr zeigen

I joined Glebe Division, the oldest continually running division in Australia, on the 25th of January 1995. I was promoted to divisional secretary within three months. I developed software that was then used in some of the other divisions that tracked events, member rostering, statistics reporting and invoices for the provision of event health services by our members. This was the forerunner of the web-based version used today.

From February 2001 I became their Operations Officer for Glebe Division for many years which involved client liaison, deploying health care staff, equipment and logistical support, post event support to over 700 events/year. I am very grateful to have done this role, despite it being a high-turnover and burnout type of role. It not only allowed me to use my IT skills to help me cope with the workload, it also allowed me to practice the ability to sell and communicate.

In July 2003 I stepped down from the role, having found a suitable successor to take over and continue to build our name in the community as the first choice in first aid provision in the local area. I then focussed on Recruitment and Retention. I developed an induction program for new members that was later used as the basis for the statewide induction program for members. Some of the questions and answers were still in use over a decade later on. It was also when I discovered my passion for diversity, equality and protecting members from burnout and unacceptable behaviours by some other members. Weniger anzeigen

I attended their volunteer induction training and then became a volunteer guide for Vision Australia (then known as the Royal Blind Society). I volunteered for a group called the Barrier Breakers Group, a regular social outing group for senior members under the guidance of Sister Margaret Sperring. I also prepared their monthly newsletter and recorded it as an audio recording to be sent out to their members.