Kim McConville: Executive Director

Kim has a background in education specialising in Aboriginal Studies and Behaviour Disorders. For 21 years Kim has worked with Aboriginal communities in NSW, including five years in Aboriginal education research and policy development with the NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group, the NSW Board of Studies and Tranby Aboriginal College, writing the first fully accredited Aboriginal Studies course for indigenous students with Aboriginal activist and leader, Jack Beetson. From 1997 until 2004, Kim lived in Northern NSW initiating and delivering arts, community and cultural development projects independently and with the national arts company, Big hART. Kim has also worked on similar projects in the NT and WA.

In November 2004, Kim co-founded Beyond Empathy and currently holds the role of Executive Director. In 2006, Kim won the Social Ventures Australia, Entrepreneur of the Year Award for her work with Beyond Empathy. Over the past five years with her arts and community development team, Kim has grown Beyond Empathy into a nationwide organisation focused not only on the development and delivery of projects that use the arts to influence change in the lives of young people and communities experiencing recurring disadvantage, but on the development of sustainable, innovative philanthropic and corporate giving, long term collaborative strategy for social change, and evaluating and measuring project impact.

Phillip Crawford: Creative Producer, Film and Digital Media

After several years of working in the community welfare sector, Phillip Crawford moved from Sydney to Melbourne to complete a Bachelor of Film and Television at the Victorian College of the Arts. His graduating film DENIAL won best short film at five national and international film festivals. In 1998 Phillip started working with BIG hART and over the following seven years he collaborated with communities all around Australia on various performance, installation and multi-media projects included in the programs of major arts Festivals: Adelaide, Melbourne and Ten Days on the Island in Tasmania. In 1999 Phillip won an AFI Award for his work on the BIG hART film project HURT, which screened on SBS television and was transformed into an installation work for the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Phillip also won an award from the Film Critics Circle of Australia for HURT’s innovative combination of fiction and documentary, the Inaugural Justice Fellowship of the Arts from the NSW Law Foundation and Best Short Doco at Flickerfest.

Phillip produced and was the overall creative director of "knot at home project": an eight part TV series screened on SBS in 2006 and which was nominated for AFI and ATOM awards in Australia. In 2006, Phillip received an Australia Council Fellowship in Community Cultural Development, which enabled him to expand his work with a specific focus on the environment and conservation. Through this Fellowship he has coordinated the Lake Illawarra MAP (Memory And Place) Project which utilised digital story telling techniques. For Beyond Empathy, Phillip is currently working on a feature film project with young people in the Illawarra as part of the "Out of the Blue" strategy.

Susie Spencer: Chief Operating Officer

Susie Spencer has joined the BE team as Chief Operating Officer. She has ten years experience working for the NSW Department of Education and Training (DET) in vocational education and Registered Training Organisation compliance, working with staff and students in schools across the New England.

Previous to this she taught in TAFE in Moree in the Aboriginal arts course and managed a project in ten sites across the New England with TAFE campuses and schools to increase the transition from year 9 into year 10 for disengaged young people who were opting out of education.  

Susie trained in fabric design in the early 1980s and during the 80s worked as an artist screen printing fabric. She continues to print fabric when she has some spare time.  

Joshua Thomason: Executive Producer

Innovation, creativity and the entrepreneurial spirit are key to Joshua's professional profile. Since completing a degree is Visual Arts in 1997 and post graduate studies in multimedia and training, Joshua has worked all over Australia producing multimedia projects and strategies with over 20 organisations - ranging from The Department of Education, The Salvation Army, Noel Pearson's Cape York Partnerships to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

Joshua has run successful freelance operations in multimedia that led to a position as a creative account manager for Vodafone Australia's Marketing Department in 2006. After two years of immersion in mobile technology, he independently created and launched the first interactive made for mobile TV show in the world, Street TV, broadcasting on Vodafone live!, which has won 2 major industry awards and an audience of 300 000 per year.

Joshua is delighted by his current role which allows for the fusion of his passions, values, and expertise into one.

John Hamilton: Finance Manager

I have been involved with Beyond Empathy since the inception back in early 2005 and really enjoy my involvement with such a worthwhile organisation. The work is varied and interesting and I get to work with some great people. All my working life – more than 40 years! – has been in the financial/book-keeping area and I have worked in the hospital, local government, employment service and arts advisory areas  before getting involved with BE.

Outside of work, I’m a proud father of three young adults (Luke, Grant and Erin) and a husband of thirty years (to Carolyn). I’m a sports fanatic especially in cricket, rugby league, athletics, golf and tennis but don’t call me a ‘sports tragic’ – I hate the term and believe it demeans some very good sports people just because they aren’t backpage headlines! I didn’t play rugby league but reached a good country standard in the other sports but these days I just play a bit of golf, when time allows.

I also publish a small monthly, local magazine which is now in its eighteenth year of publication with 3,850 copies going out every month. I have been doing freelance journalism – stories and pictures – for The Northern Daily Leader, Tamworth’s regional daily newspaper, for more than twenty years and am an enthusiast photographer with a special interest in capturing sports [of course] and candid portraits. Landscape photography is an area that I want to get more involved with from here on.

Jo Davidson: Project Coordinator and Lead Artist – Ngarrwa

Jo Davidson trained at the South Australian School of Art and has been a practicing and exhibiting visual artist for over 30 years, represented in state and private collections and carrying out residencies around Australia and overseas. Her work includes painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, installation, soundscape, public art and community cultural development. Among her artistic achievements, she has painted a number of murals in the Hastings region; created giant sculptural lanterns with Slippry Sirkus for Bellingen Global Carnival and shadow puppets and silkscreen workshops at indigenous youth circus camps; made soundscapes and giant puppets for Bad Dags Theatre outdoor festival performances; and worked with Port Macquarie Aquasculpture Festival since 2000, both as a lead workshop artist, participating sculptor, project management and steering. 

Jo has also taught art part time at TAFE for 14 years.

Her work with Beyond Empathy began in 2003 on Mubali, a young mothers’ program in Moree, and now in Bowraville, Nambucca, and Derby, WA, She also works on BE Leadership camps and sculptural installations, and is currently lead artist on the Ngarrwa project in Bowraville

Gemma Parsons: Project Coordinator – Illawarra

Gemma has been involved in youth and community work in the Illawarra for 8 years. She began as a youth advocate for Child and Adolescent Mental Health and since has worked for Wollongong and Shellharbour Council’s Youth Services and Cultural Development as a youth worker and community artist. Gemma also has training and experience in child and family care, working for Barnardos for threee years in some of the most disadvantaged communities in the Illawarra.

Gemma first joined BE in 2006, working alongside Phillip Crawford in BE’s Warrawong and Berkeley projects. In 2007 Gemma was promoted to project coordinator and has gained great knowledge and experience from her work with BE since.

Gemma’s arts experience includes theatre (acting, stage management, costume, make-up and sound), dance (ballet, tap, jazz, breakdancing) and Visual Arts (aerosol/mural art, graphic design). Gemma has also worked in media as an announcer and assistant promotions manager for commercial radio station Wave FM in Wollongong.

Yanni Scott Davis: Music Program

Yanni has worked with BE as a musician and music producer since BE’s inception. He is a well known hip hop music producer, based in Newcastle, and performs with his band, Soul Purpose. Yanni has a long history of using his youth work skills to achieve positive results with some of the most disengaged and disadvantaged young people in many different communities. Over the 5 years he has worked with BE, he has mentored numerous young people and helped them to tell their stories via music. He has produced over 300 music tracks in community through BE projects.

Kellie Martusciello: Participant Support Coordinator

Kellie Martusciello has worked in community development and the arts for over 15 years. Kellie has supported the delivery of workshops and performances across communities in NSW, QLD and N.T., including at the National Children's Festival, Canberra; the National Circus Festival, Tasmania; Bellingen Global Carnival, NSW; National Youth Week, Royal Easter Show, Sydney; and 'PostCodes from the Edge' a BE multi-media performance outcome. Kellie is currently working on projects in communities in the Illawarra, NW & NE NSW and Tennant Creek, N.T.

Nicola Speden: Executive and Project Support

Nicola has been involved with theatre and the performing arts for over 25 years. She has a BA and Grad. Cert. in Theatre Studies and has also studied Eurythmy, a creative art of movement. Her involvement in theatre productions has included acting, directing, and stage managing. Nicola also worked in an administrative capacity for three years in the School of Arts at the University of New England, 2005-2007.

Nicola works in a variety of administrative and managerial roles with BE, as well as coordinating projects in Armidale, NSW, as part of the Out of the Blue strategy.

Miranda van Son: Design

Miranda van Son has an advanced diploma of graphic design at Victoria University and runs a small Graphic Design business in Melbourne. She has worked with Beyond Empathy for the past three years.

It all began on the beach when Kim spoke about BE needing new branding, "we need a logo that will reflect the nature of what BE be does". Taking this statement and also having grown up in a small community she then began the BE process.

Since then she has developed BE's website, Annual Reports, invitations and many other communication materials.

For more information, visit website

Pia McBean: Assistant to Executive Director

Pia joined BE towards the end of 2008, looking after the travel arrangements for all of BE as well as general administrative duties. This role has now evolved to include a PA role for Kim McConville, Executive Director. Originally from Vienna, Austria, where she worked in admin, Pia then travelled extensively starting in London, where she worked as a personal assistant.