Staff

Executive Director:
Tamara Winikoff is the Executive Director of NAVA and is well known in Australia as an arts advocate, cultural commentator and senior arts manager. She has spoken, written and published extensively about cultural and design issues. Involved in arts management for over twenty years.

Tamara has worked at the Australia Council developing the Community, Environment, Art and Design (CEAD) program, been Director of the Australian Centre for Photography founding the journal Photofile, and worked at the Power Institute of Art and Visual Culture at the University of Sydney. She also has served on many boards and committees.

Tamara has interspersed these roles with work as an academic, teaching at the University of Sydney and Macquarie University in Sydney and the Oxford Polytechnic in the UK. She has been a chief investigator in three major research projects funded by the Australian Research Council and the Australia Council analysing the industry and making recommendations for change.

She originally trained and worked as an architect, spending some time as a dig architect on archaeological excavations around the Middle East. She has sustained a lifelong love of the arts, in her earlier years working as a graphic and theatre designer, printmaker, photographer and film-maker. In 2004 she was awarded the Australia Council's Visual Arts/Craft Emeritus Medal for "outstanding achievement and contribution to the visual arts and craft in Australia".

General Manager:
Sam Wild is the General Manager at NAVA. She has previously worked at the Australian Copyright Council, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and the South Coast Writers' Centre. She is currently studying for a graduate diploma in Management (Arts) at the University of SA on-line. Sam resides in Thirroul.

Projects Manager:
With Visual Arts and Craft Strategy (VACS) funding, Merrilee Kessler is employed as NAVA’s Projects Manager. Her job is to conceive, develop, manage and sometimes carry out a range of projects.

Current projects include:
• researching the payment of artists’ fees by publicly funded galleries and developing strategies to make these payments transparent.
• management of the Indigenous Art Commercial Code of Conduct, being undertaken during 2006 with funding from the Australia Council.
• extending NAVA's presence at state and territory level through workshops, forums etc.
• as part of the development of the Visual Arts Training Centre, updating and extending NAVA's resources including the Professional Practice Manual, the Art Business Skills Workshops and further work on the professional practice curriculum for tertiary art schools.

This is Merrilee's 3rd period of work at NAVA, which began in 1988-1990, was taken up again from 1996-2002 and was recommenced in May 2004. In between, she has worked for Sydney University Department of Art History and Theory, Artbank, Electronic Media Arts, the (then) Crafts Council of NSW, contract work for the Australia Council, a brief stint with a commercial gallery and voluntary work with the Biennale of Sydney.

In a past life she was also a performer of somewhat dubious quality and prior to that studied at the College of Fine Arts, Sydney, and Canberra School of Art.

Artist Career Project Manager:
Cassandra Parkinson joined NAVA as its Artist Career Project Manager following a stint in Byron Bay as the General Manager of the Byron Community & Cultural Centre. Immediately before that, she was CEO of CREATE Australia, the national industry training body for the arts. Cassandra has an extensive background in education and training and, through her participation on several Ministerial advisory bodies, was actively involved in the development of government education policy over many years.

Information Technology (IT) and Web Manager:
Maissa Alameddine is NAVA's IT and Web Manager.

Marketing and Communications Coordinator:
Lara Summers is NAVA's Marketing and Communications Co-ordinator. Lara has a Bachelor of Design with first class honours from the College of Fine Arts(COFA) at the University of NSW, and recently completed a Master of Arts in Visual Culture from Northumbria University in the UK. Prior to commencing work at NAVA Lara worked with one of Australia's leading independent film distribution companies Hopscotch Films in a marketing and sales role. Combined with this experience Lara has worked in theatre production design, exhibition management, and has completed an internship at The Centre for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles.

Administration and Membership Officer:
Kate Butcher is a part-time Administration and Membership Officer at NAVA.

Administration and Membership Officer:
Emily McIntosh is a part-time Administration and Membership Officer at NAVA.