The mental health counselling service that you tell your mates about. Call or text on 0488 846 988 Mon-Fri 8 am-10 pm AEST

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Our Board

Our Board

Dan Allen

TIACS CO-FOUNDER,
DIRECTOR - CHAIRPERSON

TIACS governance leadership and expertise:

INDUSTRYINDUSTRY
MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCACYMENTAL HEALTH ADVOCACY
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Ed Ross

TIACS CO-FOUNDER,
DIRECTOR - TREASURER

TIACS governance leadership and expertise:

INDUSTRYINDUSTRY
MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCACYMENTAL HEALTH ADVOCACY
BUSINESS MANAGEMENTBUSINESS MANAGEMENT
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Heidi Trusler

BOARD MEMBER

TIACS governance leadership and expertise:

TELEHEALTHTELEHEALTH
STRATEGIC OPERATIONSSTRATEGIC OPERATIONS
BUSINESS MODELLINGBUSINESS MODELLING
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Ren Neimann

BOARD MEMBER

TIACS governance leadership and expertise:

INFRASTRUCTURE & PROCUREMENTINFRASTRUCTURE & PROCUREMENT
LEGALLEGAL
GOVERNANCEGOVERNANCE
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Radmila Desic

BOARD MEMBER

TIACS governance leadership and expertise:

INDUSTRYINDUSTRY
WOMEN & YOUNG PEOPLEWOMEN & YOUNG PEOPLE
ADVOCACYADVOCACY
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Josie Tucker

BOARD MEMBER

TIACS governance leadership and expertise:

TELEHEALTHTELEHEALTH
NFP OPERATIONSNFP OPERATIONS
LEARNING & DEVELOPMENTLEARNING & DEVELOPMENT
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John Stavrou

BOARD MEMBER

TIACS governance leadership and expertise:

FINANCEFINANCE
GOVERNANCEGOVERNANCE
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Tony Blackshaw

BOARD MEMBER

TIACS governance leadership and expertise:

INDUSTRYINDUSTRY
STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPSTRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP
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Tony Blackshaw

BOARD MEMBER

TIACS governance leadership
and expertise:

INDUSTRYINDUSTRY
STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPSTRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP
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John Stavrou

BOARD MEMBER

TIACS governance leadership
and expertise:

FINANCEFINANCE
GOVERNANCEGOVERNANCE

John is a Fellow of CPA Australia and has been a business advisor and accountant for over 30 years, servicing a large range of enterprises.  He is passionate, exuberant and the life of the party, and his creativity has provided a great benefit to all his clientele in his boutique accounting, tax and advisory firm, Kallinicos + Co.  John’s most valuable quality is his practical and effective (some would say “no noncene”) interaction with people and corporations giving genuine compassion and understanding to all around him. 

After the passing of a school colleague, John was integral in establishing a program, with the assistance of TIACS, a network which the school’s past students (both old and new) can access.  Being of Cypriot/Greek heritage he also been firmly entrenched in working with several Queensland Greek Community associations.. 

John is married with two adult children, loves gym, travel, art and most importantly food, in which he has been dubbed “The Gourmet Accountant” (a title he is very proud of!)

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Josie Tucker

BOARD MEMBER

TIACS governance leadership
and expertise:

TELEHEALTHTELEHEALTH
NFP OPERATIONSNFP OPERATIONS
LEARNING & DEVELOPMENTLEARNING & DEVELOPMENT

Josie is a social worker and clinical practice supervisor with experience in mental health, counselling and crisis, health and human rights. She has a passion for improving mental health literacy, increasing early intervention, community support and proactive and collective help seeking. 

Josie works with yourtown, in a role to support the training and development needs of clinical and client facing staff. yourtown operates a range of services in employment, parenting, school based mental health, early childhood development, lived experience and family and domestic violence. The most well-known service is Kids Helpline. Josie has trained Kids Helpline counsellors since 2019 and is particularly driven by supporting the growth of empowering, respectful, collaborate and passionate mental health professionals. 

She is particularly motivated to work with TIACS to see further services and access to telehealth and early intervention support for vulnerable and isolated populations. 

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Radmila Desic

BOARD MEMBER

TIACS governance leadership
and expertise:

INDUSTRYINDUSTRY
WOMEN & YOUNG PEOPLEWOMEN & YOUNG PEOPLE
ADVOCACYADVOCACY

Radmila is a qualified carpenter and joiner who broadened her professional career and personal growth by focusing her passion to engage and empower women in construction into her appointed job roles.  Radmila dedicated much of her personal time to volunteer for the National Association of Women in Construction and has successfully executed many official roles such as National Director and National Vice President.

Her determination has earned Radmila much recognition and respect from the building and construction industry, while her lobbying and advocacy has ensured both state and federal government support and funding for the projects she champions.  

A strong knowledge of all industry training packages, apprenticeship and traineeship structures and government incentives give Radmila the skills to encourage diversity in the workplace.

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Ren Neimann

BOARD MEMBER

TIACS governance leadership
and expertise:

INFRASTRUCTURE & PROCUREMENTINFRASTRUCTURE & PROCUREMENT
LEGALLEGAL
GOVERNANCEGOVERNANCE

Ren specialises in infrastructure, procurement and major projects across all sectors, including telecommunications, water, waste, education, energy (including renewables), resources, defence, manufacturing, health and transport. He’s acted for all levels of government, owners, contractors and financiers in projects throughout Australia, New Zealand and the broader Asian region, including PNG, China, Indonesia, Hong King, Philippines and Mongolia.

He works with a dedicated team of infrastructure and procurement lawyers who are committed to their clients and supporting them in delivering their organisational and strategic outcomes. 

He is one of Norton Rose Fulbright's lead partners in the government sector, particularly in Queensland where he advises numerous departments, agencies and statutory bodies (including GOCs and SOCs).

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Heidi Trusler

BOARD MEMBER

TIACS governance leadership
and expertise:

TELEHEALTHTELEHEALTH
STRATEGIC OPERATIONSSTRATEGIC OPERATIONS
BUSINESS MODELLINGBUSINESS MODELLING

Heidi, as a graduate country girl, could see a huge gap in the market, and lack of high-quality health services in the Australian bush. After completing 1000+ hours of online speech pathology (in 2016 -2017) she decided to take her side-gig full time and grow the Spot team to what is now 20+ Speech Pathologists. 

They deliver online services across the globe, not only supporting rural and remote Australians, but metropolitan and international clients as well.


Not only is she passionate about bringing a choice and quality health services to those who need it, she is passionate about creating jobs that Speech Pathologists *actually* want. Most of us are women, and most of us want families.

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Dan Allen

TIACS CO-FOUNDER,
DIRECTOR - CHAIRPERSON

TIACS governance leadership
and expertise:

INDUSTRYINDUSTRY
MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCACYMENTAL HEALTH ADVOCACY

Former carpenter by trade spending 11 years in the residential construction industry across NSW and QLD. After a losing a close mate to suicide in 2015, Dan along with Ed Ross decided that something has to be done at a grass roots level to change the tone of the conversation. 

Together they created TradeMutt – a social enterprise workwear brand creating funky, eye-catching garments designed to start conversations about mental health among tradies at a peer to peer level while helping to drive the much needed social and cultural shift in attitude towards mental health.

 Continuing their work, Dan with Ed also created their own non-profit mental health support service TIACS (This Is A Conversation Starter). 

 As TradeMutt co-founder and Chairperson of TIACS Board Dan continues his passion about using business to create solutions for social issues but when he is not doing this, he is creating problems for the people he plays against in social sport.

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Ed Ross

TIACS CO-FOUNDER,
DIRECTOR - TREASURER

TIACS governance leadership
and expertise:

INDUSTRYINDUSTRY
MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCACYMENTAL HEALTH ADVOCACY
BUSINESS MANAGEMENTBUSINESS MANAGEMENT

Ed is a qualified carpenter, holds a diploma of Business (Agriculture), the co-founder of TradeMutt Pty Ltd and is a founding director of TIACS and current Treasurer.  Born and bred in Longreach Queensland and growing up on sheep and cattle stations, Ed has always been a hands-on type operator.

Spending majority of his schooling life in boarding schools in both Toowoomba and Brisbane and finishing there with an Agricultural science award and vice house captain.  Spending 2 years in both stock and weaner camps and learning valuable skills like mustering cattle at a large scale as well as how to shoe horses and drive heavy vehicle machinery, he decided to further his education at Marcus Oldham college in Geelong.

He graduated after one year with a Diploma of Agribusiness at a Distinction level.  Returned then to Lake Nash in a leadership capacity, as Leading hand in the stock camp before finishing up in September of 2014 to move back to Brisbane to begin a mature age carpentry apprenticeship.  Ed is now married and lives with his wife and sausage dog in Toowoomba. 

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Stay Connected with TIACS

Sign-up and join our community to be the first to know about our latest events, initiatives, resources and inspiring stories.

Interested in becoming a Legend?

We couldn’t do it without your help. Simply fill out the form to your right and we’ll be in touch via email to have a chat. Thanks for the support legend!

Interested in joining the Alliance?

We couldn’t do it without your help. Simply fill out the form to your right and we’ll be in touch via email to have a chat. Thanks for the support legend!

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Get in touch with us on 0488 846 988

Mon – Fri 8am -10pm AEST

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