Our people

Bachelor of Arts Hons (Psych)

Carolyn Finis is the Summer Foundation’s Head of Co-design. She joined the Summer Foundation in 2007 and brings a wealth of knowledge and experience around the issue of young people in aged care. Carolyn is passionate about including the lived experience of the organisation’s stakeholders, especially people with disability, into the work of the Summer Foundation.

In her role as Head of Co-design, Carolyn is responsible for the development and leadership of the unit. Together, the team works to capture the relevant lived experience of our stakeholders, which collectively forms a library of evidence for the Summer Foundation to draw on to support and augment our advocacy work.

Along with our stakeholders’ lived experience, the team also uses data gathered by the Summer Foundation to inform responses to the systems challenges we face.

Bachelor of Physiotherapy

Monique de Costa joined the Summer Foundation in 2017 and is the Design Lead in the Project Implementation team.

In her work in the Project Implementation team Monique supports people with disability to share their experiences of the disability, health and aged care systems. This work gives people with disability an opportunity for their voice to be heard, which can influence policy making and empower others to avoid or leave aged care.

Monique has a background in physiotherapy and has worked in hospital, rehabilitation and aged care settings. Through this experience she saw how difficult it was for people with disability to tell their stories.

Gina Fall has been with the Summer Foundation since early 2012. In her role as Curator in the Lived Experience Team she supports people with disability who have a story to share and also provides administration for our projects.

The stories, which are captured in digital and written forms, are used to support submissions, influence policy-makers and to give people with disability a voice.

Bachelor of Arts
Masters of Teaching

As a curator Louise Bradley works alongside people with lived experience of disability to share their insights to inform Summer Foundation projects.

With her team, Louise is managing the Staying Connected webpage, gathering participants for a number of policy and research projects and developing a series of digital clips to promote the SDA model of housing. 

Louise began working at the Summer Foundation in 2012 and while studying, worked in the Research then Ambassador and Story-telling teams until 2016. After 4 years of teaching, living abroad and travelling, she is now back where her career began!

Certificate IV Disability Work, Graduate Certificate in Human Services

Kelly has over 15 years’ experience in the disability sector, working in housing and support services, leadership, customer engagement, case management and training. Kelly us a strong advocate for people with disability and specialises in the NDIS and SDA.

Bachelor of Biomedical Science, Masters of Public Health, Cert III – Auslan

As Resources Coordinator, Teigen Bywater writes housing applicants’ summary reports for specialist disability accommodation (SDA) providers. She also assists with the reporting aspect of an applicant’s SDA journey, including mentoring their support coordinator and allied health professionals to write reports that address the SDA legislation.

Teigen moved into the disability sector after finishing her Masters degree and worked as a support facilitator at one of Summer Housing’s pilot projects in Abbotsford.

She lived in Mongolia for a year from mid 2016 and worked as a program officer for the Mongolian National Federation of the Blind.

Before joining the Summer Foundation in 2020, Teigen was involved in the rollout of the NDIS as a Senior Local Area Coordinator in inner east Melbourne.

Bachelor of Occupational Therapy

Emma Gee’s role encompasses the sharing of valuable insights as both a provider and recipient to better educate and inform the Summer Foundation’s work. She has worked on building important capacity tools for the TAC/State Trustee’s Project.

Before joining the Summer Foundation, Emma was an occupational therapist working with neurological outpatients. Emma survived a stroke while she was in her 20s, later working at the Stroke Foundation as a project officer. She also owns her own business, is an inspirational speaker and author of ‘Emma Gee’.