Qualifications and Professional Memberships

• (FCPHR), M.ODSHRM, M.LEAD (Change Mgt), B.Comm, Grad Dip. CDP, Cert IV TAE40110

Biography

Rita joined Group Colleges Australia as the Head of People and Culture & Privacy Officer in July 2024. Rita's career is marked by senior strategic HR leadership roles across various sectors, including private, listed, government, and not-for-profit organisations, along with her private consulting firm, Particularly People.

Known for her visionary approach and setting the benchmark high for HR professionalism and integrity, Rita excels in aligning contemporary HR strategies with overarching business goals, leading highly engaged and service centric HR teams, overseeing expansions, mergers, and acquisitions, spearheading transformational cultural change, developing leadership capability and confidence, embedding robust HR governance standards and legislative requirements, and creating operational excellence and efficiency. Rita’s ability to balance the head and heart in critical decision making, along with her engaging communication style, empathetic nature and ability to forge effective, influential and long-term partnerships has seen her collaborate closely with CEOs, executive leadership teams, clients, external stakeholders and Boards in both local and global settings.

Rita is a Certified Fellow Practitioner with the Australian HR Institute (AHRI), where she has served as the Vice President of Membership and State Councillor for AHRI NSW since 2015. Additionally, she is a Chartered Fellow of the UK equivalent, CIPD, and a Graduate Member of Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD). Rita actively contributes to the development of HR standards as a committee member of MB009 - Human Resources Management for Standards Australia and TC260 - Human Resources Management for the International Standards Organisation (ISO), where she has represented the World Federation of People Management Associations (WFPMA) in ground-breaking international standards discussions.

With a personal passion for lifelong learning and developing others, Rita has been called upon to develop course curriculum content for various educational institutes and member organisations and is an academic lecturer for undergrad and postgrad units in HR, Business and Employment Law at the Australian Catholic University (ACU) since 2017.

Alongside her academic contributions, Rita writes articles and blogs on HR excellence, is a speaker at conferences and events, and mentors upcoming HR professionals. Her most important role is as a wife and mother to the two most important people in her life.