34 Outstanding Emergency Services Leaders in ANZ

Last updated: June 2026

As of June 2026, the emergency services sector across Australia and New Zealand depends on the quality of its leadership more than at any previous point in the region's history. The 34 people on this list are the most important active voices shaping emergency services leadership across Australia and New Zealand right now. They include fire and rescue commissioners, emergency management coordinators, ambulance CEOs, police commissioners, and community resilience advocates -- each holding a verified current role and each actively contributing to how the sector develops.

This is not a list of people with impressive historical records. Each person on this list is actively leading now, navigating the structural, cultural, and operational challenges that define emergency services leadership in 2026: increasingly severe weather events, workforce wellbeing pressures that have become a defining policy issue, the complexity of multi-agency coordination at scale, and the challenge of building representative, inclusive organisations in a sector historically shaped by strong operational traditions.

These voices are worth following because the disciplines they practise -- decision-making under uncertainty, multi-agency coordination, volunteer management, and communication during crisis -- are the same disciplines that determine whether any leadership team performs when it matters most.

For more on crisis leadership thinking beyond the emergency services sector, see the global crisis management thought leaders directory at consultclarity.org/post/thought-leaders-crisis-management.

If your leadership team needs facilitation to strengthen communication, team dynamics, and accountability culture, Jonno White works with teams across sectors including public safety organisations. As a Certified Working Genius Facilitator and author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold), Jonno facilitates executive team offsites, leadership keynotes, and Working Genius workshops globally. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Why Emergency Services Leadership Matters

Emergency services leadership matters because the consequences of poor leadership in this sector are measured in lives, property, and community confidence. The leaders on this list make decisions affecting thousands of people in circumstances where information is incomplete, time is compressed, and the consequences of errors cannot be undone.

The years 2023 to 2026 have been among the most demanding in the sector's recent history. Cyclone Gabrielle in New Zealand in 2023, successive severe Australian bushfire and flood seasons through 2024-25, and the January 2026 Victorian bushfires all tested agency leaders in ways that expose both individual capability and systemic gaps. Leadership researchers and practitioners consistently note that how services are led in the years between major events determines their actual performance during those events.

Challenges facing the sector in 2026 include workforce wellbeing, the psychological burden on first responders who repeatedly attend traumatic incidents; the pace of structural change as governments reform and restructure agencies; volunteer management as traditional volunteer demographics shift; and inter-agency coordination in a landscape where every major emergency requires collaboration between organisations with different cultures, funding models, and chains of command.

If your organisation operates in a high-pressure environment and needs help with the team dynamics and leadership conversations that underpin sustained performance, book Jonno White to facilitate your next leadership offsite or Working Genius workshop. Email jonno@consultclarity.org or visit consultclarity.org.

How This List Was Compiled

Every person on this list was selected on three criteria. First, each holds a substantive, verified current role in emergency services leadership or an adjacent sector. Second, each is actively contributing to sector development as of June 2026. Third, collectively they represent the breadth of the sector: fire and rescue, ambulance, police, emergency management coordination, and community resilience advocacy. Sources include agency and government websites, official appointment announcements, conference speaker profiles, and professional profiles. Every role, organisation, and credential cited has been independently verified.

Category 1: Fire and Rescue Commissioners

Australia's fire and rescue landscape has seen significant leadership transitions across multiple agencies in the past two years. Several new commissioners have taken office in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, and the ACT since mid-2024. The leaders in this category face an environment defined by more frequent and more severe fire weather, structural reform reshaping how agencies are organised, and a workforce dealing with significant operational and psychological pressure.

1. Tim Wiebusch

Appointed Emergency Management Commissioner by the Victorian Government in June 2025 for a five-year term, Tim Wiebusch ESM brings more than 30 years of emergency management experience to one of the most complex coordination roles in Australian public safety. His path to the commissioner role ran through the 2019-20 Eastern Victorian bushfires, the June 2021 and October 2022 Victorian floods, two severe weather events in 2024, and the 2025 bushfire season, in each case playing a central coordination role across agencies and services.

Appointed from within, having been Acting Commissioner since February 2025 after serving as Chief Officer Operations for Victoria's State Emergency Service from 2017, Wiebusch has been explicit about the shared responsibility model that underlies modern emergency management: that communities, agencies, and governments all hold a role before, during, and after emergencies. His LinkedIn posts from the 2025-26 season reflect a leadership posture of visible engagement and reflection, including facilitating a sector-wide debrief on multicultural community experiences of the 2026 emergency season.

2. Darren Klemm

AFAC President and WA Department of Fire and Emergency Services Commissioner, Darren Klemm AFSM is currently the most influential single voice in the peer governance of Australasian fire and emergency services. His election to the AFAC presidency at its October 2023 annual general meeting placed him at the head of the national council representing more than 30 agencies and 126,000 employees and volunteers across Australia and New Zealand.

His career at DFES, which began in 1993 after three years with the South Australian Metropolitan Fire Service, has included leadership of the agency's transition to a Rural Fire Division, record investment in bushfire mitigation, and sustained public advocacy for gender equity as part of the AFAC Champions of Change Fire and Emergency Group since 2017. His leadership during the significant Kimberley and north-western WA cyclone and flooding events demonstrates operational credibility alongside the strategic positioning his AFAC role requires.

3. Gavin Freeman

Fire Rescue Commissioner for Victoria since joining Fire Rescue Victoria in 2020, Gavin Freeman AFSM leads one of Australia's largest urban fire and rescue services. His career began with the Tasmania Fire Service in 1987, where he spent 32 years including seven as Deputy Chief and Chief Officer, before moving to the Country Fire Authority as Deputy Chief Officer and Executive Director for Community Service Delivery.

His formal credentials reflect the depth of commitment that distinguishes the strongest leaders in this sector: a Masters Degree in Emergency Management completed in 2010, a Graduate Diploma in Executive Leadership, a Fellowship of the Institute of Fire Engineers, and Graduate status at the Australian Institute of Company Directors. In 2025 he was awarded a Fellowship by the Institute of Public Administration Australia Victoria for outstanding contribution to public administration and the Victorian community.

4. Jeremy Fewtrell

Commissioner of Fire and Rescue NSW since late 2024, Jeremy Fewtrell AFSM spent his entire 25-plus year career within FRNSW before his appointment, joining as a firefighter in 1997 and progressing through frontline, station officer, inspector, and management roles to Deputy Commissioner of Field Operations. He holds a Master of Business Administration alongside his operational career.

He oversaw FRNSW's emergency responses to major incidents including the Surry Hills warehouse fire and the Greta bus crash, and played a key leadership role in the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires and the 2022 floods. His appointment to lead an organisation of approximately 7,000 full-time and on-call firefighters across 335 fire stations was the culmination of a career built almost entirely in the organisation he now leads.

5. Trent Curtin

NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner since July 2025, Trent Curtin leads the largest rural fire service in the world, with 70,000 volunteer members across almost 2,000 brigades. His career began as a volunteer firefighter with the Country Fire Authority, a foundation that has shaped his stated commitment to volunteers and their role in community safety. He held senior roles including Acting Deputy Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner at Fire and Rescue NSW, and Assistant Chief Fire Officer at Fire Rescue Victoria between 2015 and 2020.

He joined the NSW RFS from SafeWork NSW, where as head of the agency he had led the work of reestablishing it as a strong and independent work health and safety regulator. His comments at appointment emphasised the personal arc from volunteer firefighter to Commissioner as a source of meaning, and he is one of very few commissioners in the sector who brings direct regulatory leadership experience from outside emergency services.

6. Steve Smith

Commissioner of the Queensland Fire Department since its establishment as a standalone organisation on 1 July 2024, Steve Smith leads an agency created after a series of independent reviews to refocus Queensland's fire services on prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery. QFD comprises Queensland Fire and Rescue and the Rural Fire Service Queensland, serving both dense metropolitan areas and vast remote and rural communities across one of Australia's largest states.

Under his leadership, QFD received record investment of over $134 million in the 2025-26 state budget, including $23 million for new and replacement Rural Fire Service trucks and more than $13.2 million for stations across Queensland. His annual report communications reflect a leadership emphasis on volunteer support, operational capability, and cultural continuity following the structural separation from the former QFES.

7. Jeff Swann

SA Metropolitan Fire Service Chief Officer since September 2024, Jeff Swann joined the MFS as a recruit firefighter in 2000 and progressed through the ranks over two-plus decades before his appointment to the agency's top operational role. He was Acting Chief Officer from December 2023, appointed permanently following the retirement of his predecessor.

His career has included deployment to the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires for which he received a National Emergency Medal, and AFAC Pacific Partnership program work as liaison to the Tonga Fire Emergency Services. He was described by the South Australian Premier at his appointment as having made outstanding contributions that demonstrate commitment to both community safety and cultural change within the service.

8. Jeremy Smith

The inaugural Fire and Emergency Services Commissioner for Tasmania, appointed in June 2024, Jeremy Smith AFSM is leading one of the most significant structural reforms in the state's emergency services history. His appointment created a single integrated leadership role spanning the Tasmania Fire Service and the State Emergency Service, a unification he is actively guiding through new legislation, a revised governance structure, and a systematic culture change programme. He joined the TFS in February 1987 and spent 37 years in firefighting and leadership roles before his appointment.

His Statement of Commitment on culture, signed publicly in May 2025 with the TFS and SES executive team, reflects a leadership approach that does not separate operational excellence from workplace safety and inclusion. His extensive experience as a State-endorsed Level III Incident Controller, inter-jurisdictional deployment leader, and executive officer for the State Fire Management Council positions him as a practitioner with both the operational credentials and the structural reform mandate to shape how Tasmanian emergency services operate for the next decade.

9. Greg Leach

CEO of the Country Fire Authority since November 2024, Greg Leach AFSM has one of the broadest multi-agency portfolios of any leader in Australian emergency services, having held CEO or Commissioner roles at Ambulance Victoria, Fire Rescue Victoria, Queensland Fire and Emergency Services, Victoria State Emergency Service, and now the CFA. At QFES from December 2019, he led the agency through two severe bushfire seasons, a pandemic, and major flooding events.

His decision to return to Victoria, and specifically to the CFA where he began his firefighting career as a junior volunteer at age 13, reflects a deliberate personal arc back to the volunteer model that has shaped his understanding of emergency services. He is a current Board member of AFAC, and his comments across his career have consistently connected the personal meaning of emergency services work to the quality of organisational leadership needed to sustain it.

10. Jason Heffernan

Chief Officer of the Country Fire Authority since November 2020, Jason Heffernan leads the operational arm of one of the world's largest volunteer fire services, bringing 15 years of NSW Rural Fire Service experience including as Assistant Commissioner and Director Area Operations. His appointment was explicitly supported by then-NSW RFS Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons, and he has been a volunteer firefighter for more than two decades.

His contribution to the sector's thinking centres on the distinctive leadership demands of a predominantly volunteer organisation. He spoke publicly in October 2025 on fire preparedness, bushfire season dynamics, and the challenges of demographic change in volunteer firefighting populations, communicating directly with public audiences in a way that extends beyond professional sector forums.

Category 2: Emergency and Disaster Management

The people in this category lead the agencies and organisations whose purpose is coordination and assurance across the whole emergency management system. They include national emergency management agencies, state emergency management commissioners, reconstruction and recovery bodies, and independent oversight roles.

11. Andrew Crisp

Former Emergency Management Commissioner for Victoria (2018-2023) and current Chair of the Ambulance Victoria Board, Andrew Crisp AM APM spent 45 years in policing and emergency management before his formal retirement from operational leadership. During his five years as EMC, he led responses to the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires, the COVID-19 pandemic, the June 2021 storm event, and the October 2022 Victorian floods.

His transition from operational leadership to board governance at Ambulance Victoria reflects a pattern that the strongest leaders in this sector increasingly demonstrate: the capacity to move between commissioner roles, governance roles, and mentoring in ways that keep accumulated experience available to the sector. His sustained LinkedIn engagement after formally leaving operational leadership reflects an ongoing commitment to shaping how the sector thinks about leadership, culture, and community safety.

12. Kate Fitzgerald

CEO of the NSW Reconstruction Authority since February 2026, Kate Fitzgerald leads the agency responsible for disaster recovery and preparedness across New South Wales. She brought to the role extensive senior executive experience in emergency management including a previous role as CEO of Emergency Management Victoria. She began her emergency services career as an NSW SES volunteer almost 25 years before her appointment to the top role.

Her contribution to the sector's leadership conversation is the recovery end of the emergency management cycle -- the sustained, community-centred work over years that determines whether communities genuinely rebuild stronger after disasters. Her presence in this role while the NSW Northern Rivers and Central West communities are still navigating long recovery journeys makes her one of the most practically important appointments in the sector in 2026.

13. Emily Phillips

Inspector-General for Emergency Management in Victoria since June 2024, Dr Emily Phillips holds a statutory position of independence from the agencies she reviews, with the mandate to provide assurance to the Victorian Government and the community on the effectiveness of emergency management arrangements. Her background spans agriculture, water, natural resource management, and senior public sector leadership including Deputy Secretary and CEO roles.

Her Assurance and Continuous Improvement Priorities 2025-2029 framework establishes a four-priority agenda for system-wide review over the next five years. She hosted a sector-led research session at the Emergency Management Conference 2025, signalling an intention to strengthen the evidence base for emergency management effectiveness. The IGEM role asks a question that individual agencies rarely ask themselves: is this actually working, and can we demonstrate it?

14. David Gawn

Chief Executive of the National Emergency Management Agency of New Zealand since September 2021, David Gawn MBE led the organisation through its transition of hosting from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to the Department of Internal Affairs in September 2025. His background is unusual for this role: he served as Chief of New Zealand Army (2013-2015), Commander Joint Forces New Zealand (2011-2013), and held senior leadership roles internationally including Head of Mission at the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation (2015-2017).

His post-Cyclone Gabrielle public engagement, including a six-part video series on crisis leadership produced for business leaders alongside NZ Red Cross Secretary General Sarah Stuart-Black, reflects a willingness to translate sector expertise into guidance for the broader leadership community. His 2025 formal partnership with the Insurance Council of New Zealand on disaster resilience shows a CEO actively building the systemic connections that emergency management depends on.

15. Wayne Phillips

Commissioner of the ACT Emergency Services Agency since February 2024, Wayne Phillips leads one of Australia's most structurally complex emergency services organisations, spanning ambulance, fire and rescue, rural fire, and state emergency services under a single commissioner. He brought 34 years of fire and emergency services experience from Fire and Rescue NSW to the role, joining the ESA as Assistant Commissioner in 2022.

His specific contribution is on workplace culture and psychological safety in emergency services organisations. The Mental Health Steering Committee and Peer Support Committee he established at the ESA reflect a systematic, programme-based approach to workforce wellbeing. His membership of the AFAC Champions of Change Fire and Emergency Group extends that commitment beyond the ACT. The personal significance he attached publicly to his appointment, exactly 34 years after his first day as a recruit firefighter, reflects the kind of authentic storytelling that builds genuine organisational culture.

16. Andrew Warton

Commissioner of the Northern Territory Fire and Emergency Services, Andrew Warton leads a recently consolidated agency that brought together the NT Fire and Rescue Service, NT Emergency Service, and Bushfires NT. His leadership of the organisation is notable for its operational demands and for an unusual professional interlude: he took a sabbatical in 2025 to serve as Station Leader at Australia's Casey Research Station in Antarctica, with Deputy Commissioner Collene Bremner acting in his role during that period.

His public reflection on the connection between leading an Antarctic station and leading an emergency services agency captured something genuine about emergency leadership at its best: teamwork, resilience, recognition of community, and commitment to a purpose larger than oneself. That capacity for reflective articulation of what makes leadership in high-stakes environments different is itself a form of thought leadership.

17. Kerry Gregory

Chief Executive of Fire and Emergency New Zealand since 2022, Kerry Gregory was reappointed in July 2025 for a further two years until June 2027. He has led FENZ through some of the most extreme weather events Aotearoa New Zealand has experienced in recent decades, while maintaining progress on the organisation's culture and inclusion agenda following the significant findings of the Coral Shaw workplace culture inquiry.

FENZ was established in July 2017 through the merger of predecessor organisations including the New Zealand Fire Service, the National Rural Fire Authority, and 38 rural fire districts, a merger whose cultural complexity rivals the operational complexity of the emergencies the organisation responds to. His reappointment by the FENZ Board reflected confidence in his ability to hold that complexity with steady leadership while maintaining the organisation's strategic trajectory.

Category 3: Ambulance and Emergency Medical Services

Leadership in ambulance and prehospital care requires simultaneously managing clinical excellence, operational efficiency, workforce wellbeing in one of the most psychologically demanding environments in health care, and the funding structures that determine what prehospital care is actually possible. The leaders in this category are shaping what ambulance services can deliver now and in the years ahead.

18. Jordan Emery

CEO of Ambulance Victoria since June 30, 2025, Jordan Emery leads a service of more than 8,000 staff responding to over a million incidents per year, with a $1.5 billion operating budget and a research programme that is genuinely world-leading in out-of-hospital care. He joined from Ambulance Tasmania, where he drove significant cultural transformation, and previously held senior operational roles with NSW Ambulance. He is also Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Tasmania and Board Director of the Council of Ambulance Authorities.

His selection by the Ambulance Victoria Board, which explicitly sought a leader who had driven sustained cultural transformation at a smaller service, signals an intention to continue culture work alongside operational performance. His first months in the role included inheriting the significant demand pressures of over 1,000 lights-and-sirens cases per day and beginning the work of understanding a much larger organisation than Ambulance Tasmania.

19. Dominic Morgan

Commissioner and Chief Executive of NSW Ambulance since 2016, Dr Dominic Morgan ASM has led Australia's busiest ambulance service through its most operationally demanding period including COVID-19, sustained demand growth, and significant workforce pressures following the pandemic. His career spans more than 30 years including CEO of Ambulance Tasmania (2009-2015) and senior clinical and operational roles at NSW Ambulance. He holds a PhD completed in 2018 through the University of NSW focused on factors influencing early access to defibrillation following out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

As past Chair of the Australasian Council of Ambulance Authorities, he has shaped governance frameworks for ambulance services across Australia and New Zealand. His academic affiliation as Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Technology Sydney keeps him connected to the evidence base in a way that informs both his operational decisions and his contributions to the sector's broader thinking.

20. Peter Bradley

Chief Executive of Hato Hone St John since 2012, Peter Bradley CBE leads New Zealand's largest ambulance organisation, with over 11,000 paid and volunteer members providing prehospital care to approximately 90 percent of New Zealand's population. His career spans more than 35 years beginning as a paramedic in Auckland and progressing through senior operational management roles. He holds a Master of Business Administration from Otago.

His May 2026 public statement that health will be one of the defining issues in the lead-up to Budget 2026 and that the sector needs more than a short-term fix to its broken funding model reflects sustained advocacy for ambulance services that goes beyond operational commentary. He has spoken extensively on leading through major incidents including the Christchurch Mosque attack and the Whakaari White Island eruption, accounts that offer practical insight into what ambulance leadership under extreme pressure requires.

21. Robert Purcell

CEO of the Victoria State Emergency Service since March 2025, Robert Purcell brings more than 35 years of emergency management experience including key leadership positions at Metropolitan Fire Brigade (now Fire Rescue Victoria), Airservices Australia, and the Royal Children's Hospital. He is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, a member of the Institute of Fire Engineers, and a Fellow of Leadership Victoria.

The VICSES has experienced significant growth in geographic reach and operational demand as the frequency and severity of Victorian flood and storm events has increased. His first year in the role included launching a comprehensive information systems roadmap in June 2025 and continuing the Safety Drives Our Decisions programme that supports volunteer mental health and safety culture across the service's 5,500-plus volunteers.

Category 4: Police Leadership and Community Safety

Police commissioners in Australia and New Zealand carry emergency management responsibilities that extend well beyond crime response. They serve as State Emergency Operations Controllers, lead coordination during major disasters, and are responsible for workforces operating at the frontline of community trauma. The past two years have seen significant leadership transitions across multiple state and national police services.

22. Krissy Barrett

Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police since October 4, 2025 and the first woman to lead Australia's federal police force, Krissy Barrett APM has 25 years of AFP experience including leading the Counter Terrorism and Special Investigations Command (the first woman to do so), Southern Command, and the National Security portfolio as Deputy Commissioner. She described the AFP's mission at her March 2026 FW Leadership Summit address as that of a national security agency, a clarification of identity and purpose she made a central pillar of her early leadership.

Her public communication during the December 2025 Bondi Beach attack investigation was notable for its directness and explicit ethical framing. She described the attack clearly and without hedging as a terrorist attack against Jewish Australians and committed publicly to specific investigative priorities. That combination of operational transparency and ethical clarity defines the leadership standard she has set for herself in the role.

23. Mike Bush

Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police since June 27, 2025, Mike Bush CNZM is the only person on this list to have led major emergency services agencies in both Australia and New Zealand. He served as Commissioner of New Zealand Police from 2014 to 2020, during which time he led the response to the 2019 Christchurch Mosque attack and the Whakaari White Island eruption, then spent four years in international consulting and governance before his appointment to lead Victoria's police force.

The Christchurch attack placed him at the centre of one of the most traumatic emergency events in New Zealand's modern history, and his leadership in its immediate aftermath became a reference point for values-led crisis leadership in policing organisations globally. His appointment to Victoria Police came with an explicit reform mandate, and his combination of ANZ credibility and direct crisis experience positions him well for that task.

24. Richard Chambers

Commissioner of Police for New Zealand since November 2024, Richard Chambers succeeded Andrew Coster with an explicit focus on rebuilding trust through accountability and operational performance. His first year included a sweeping leadership restructure, confirmation of two new statutory deputy commissioners and three new assistant commissioners in December 2025, and a stated goal of moving public trust and confidence from 69 percent to 80 percent.

His public statement in November 2025 on the IPCA findings regarding former senior police conduct was unusually direct: he described the conduct as inexcusable and accepted personal responsibility for implementing the IPCA's recommendations. That willingness to acknowledge institutional failure without deflecting accountability is a leadership quality that emergency services organisations rarely demonstrate publicly, and its effect on organisational credibility is cumulative.

25. Mal Lanyon

Commissioner of the NSW Police Force since October 1, 2025, Mal Lanyon APM leads Australia's largest police service with more than 20,000 officers and staff. His 35-plus year career at NSW Police includes significant leadership in organised crime, domestic and family violence prevention, and disaster recovery coordination including leading the Northern Rivers flood recovery in 2022.

His operational background in disaster recovery coordination, combined with his policing career, gives him dual expertise that is genuinely relevant to the emergency management dimensions of the Commissioner role. He was named by outgoing QPS Commissioner Gollschewski as a leader with operational experience and a strong understanding of the frontline, a peer assessment that carries weight in how the sector evaluates leadership transitions.

26. Donna Adams

Commissioner of Tasmania Police since October 2022, Donna Adams APM is the first female Commissioner in the 125-year history of the service. She joined Tasmania Police at age 19 and spent 35-plus years progressing through investigations, training, and senior leadership before her appointment. Her career innovations include leading Tasmania Police to become the first police organisation in Australia to roll out mobile devices to frontline officers.

Her public communications on leadership, including a February 2025 interview with Policing Insight, reflect a practitioner's honesty about what sustained leadership at the top of a government organisation requires: building trust through transparency, managing the tension between institutional accountability and individual integrity, and sustaining organisational culture through periods of public challenge.

27. Grant Stevens

SA Police Commissioner since 2015 and reappointed until July 2028, Grant Stevens APM is the longest-serving current police commissioner in Australia. His tenure has included sustained investment in domestic violence response, gender equality, and digital transformation, and his visibility as South Australia's State Coordinator during the COVID-19 pandemic earned him widespread public recognition. In late 2025 he was appointed to the Adelaide Crows Board of Directors.

His University of Adelaide leadership podcast interview offered a rare candid account of what sustaining leadership over a decade at the top of a large government agency actually requires: managing the impact on personal life, finding continuous sources of meaning in the work, and building institutional capacity that outlasts individual tenures. That reflective public engagement with leadership costs and rewards is genuinely useful to the broader leadership community.

28. Col Blanch

WA Police Commissioner since July 2022, Col Blanch has led a technology-driven transformation of WA policing, converting Information Technology into Operational Technology -- using real-time intelligence capability to improve officer safety and crime response. His career spans Victoria Police, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, and the WA Police Force, and he has served as Chair of the WA State Emergency Coordination Group.

He was named in Business News WA's Power 500 public sector leaders in three consecutive years, 2023, 2024, and 2025, reflecting his standing in the broader Western Australian leadership community beyond policing. His work on state emergency coordination gives him a systemic perspective on how police services integrate with fire, ambulance, and emergency management in major incidents.

29. Brett Pointing

Queensland Police Commissioner since February 21, 2026, Brett Pointing APM was appointed following the retirement of Commissioner Steve Gollschewski. He brings more than 40 years of QPS experience including as Deputy Commissioner, District Officer on the Gold Coast, disaster recovery coordinator for Bundaberg and the North Burnett following the 2013 floods, and a prior role as Deputy Commissioner at the Australian Federal Police. He was central to the QPS 100 Day Review that generated the reform recommendations currently shaping the organisation's direction.

His multi-jurisdictional career, spanning both state policing and federal law enforcement, brings a breadth of perspective that is relatively unusual in state-level police leadership. His disaster recovery coordination experience in Queensland gives him direct operational knowledge of the emergency management dimensions of the Commissioner role.

Category 5: Resilience, Advocacy and Research Leadership

These voices are reshaping how emergency services thinks about its purpose, its blind spots, and its relationship with the communities it serves. Their work does not generate the media visibility of operational responses to major events, but it shapes the frameworks, cultures, and policies that will determine how well those responses go in the years ahead.

30. Greg Mullins

Climate Councillor with the Climate Council, former Commissioner of Fire and Rescue NSW (2003-2017), founder of Emergency Leaders for Climate Action, and current Chair of the NSW Ambulance Advisory Board, Greg Mullins AO AFSM connects more than 50 years of firefighting experience to the advocacy and policy dimensions of emergency services leadership with a public reach that no currently serving commissioner can match. He founded Emergency Leaders for Climate Action in April 2019 with 23 former emergency service leaders.

His book on the Black Summer experience, published through Penguin Books Australia, combines frontline firefighting accounts with climate science in a form accessible to readers well outside the emergency services sector. His ongoing LinkedIn activity in 2025 and 2026 -- sharing Climate Council research, ELCA reports, and commentary on worsening fire weather -- maintains his presence in the sector's conversation as a practitioner-advocate whose credibility comes from operational experience rather than academic study.

31. Bridget Tehan

Senior Advisor, Humanitarian Diplomacy at Australian Red Cross and co-founder and President of the Australasian Women in Emergencies (AWE) Network, Bridget Tehan has worked for more than 15 years at the intersection of emergency management and community and social services. She previously advocated for vulnerable and disadvantaged people in emergency management through her roles at the Victorian Council of Social Service and now brings that perspective to humanitarian diplomacy at Australian Red Cross.

Her founding of AWE in April 2018, which has grown to thousands of members across Australasia, created the infrastructure for recognising and advancing the contributions of women to emergency management and disaster resilience that the sector had lacked. She was a keynote speaker at the Australian Disaster Resilience Conference 2025, and her LinkedIn activity in 2026 reflects ongoing engagement with multicultural emergency management, climate resilience, and community-led recovery.

32. Dr Margaret Moreton

CEO of Gender and Disaster Australia since February 2025, Dr Margaret Moreton brought to the role a track record as Executive Director of the Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience (AIDR) and Community Resilience Mission Lead for the Minderoo Foundation Fire and Flood Resilience Initiative. Her original research at the Australian National University examined community lived experience of disaster resilience following fire, flood, and cyclone, driven by her personal experience of the 2003 Canberra fires and the 2009 Black Saturday fires.

Her current work at GADAus addresses a persistent systemic failure: the way that gendered stereotypes and structural barriers cause preventable harm before, during, and after disasters. She brings 40 years of experience spanning federal government, community development, and disaster resilience. Her transition from AIDR to GADAus reflects a deliberate choice to go deeper on inclusion in the disaster space rather than broader across the sector.

33. Sarah Stuart-Black

Secretary General of the New Zealand Red Cross since December 2020, Sarah Stuart-Black QSO brings a career that spans nursing, disaster management research, 17 years at New Zealand's Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management, six years as Director of Civil Defence and Emergency Management (2014-2020), nine years on the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination Team, and deployment experience in Ethiopia, Niue, and the Solomon Islands. She has co-edited three books on disaster management and published in international academic journals.

Her time as Director CDEM included leading New Zealand's response to the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake, the 2017 Port Hills fires, the 2019 Christchurch Mosque attack, the Whakaari White Island eruption, and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Her participation in NEMA's post-Cyclone Gabrielle leadership video series alongside NEMA CEO David Gawn reflects her ongoing active contribution to the sector's thinking long after her formal transition to humanitarian leadership.

34. Melissa Pexton

Deputy Commissioner Strategy and Emergency Management at DFES WA since May 2022 and Acting Commissioner for DFES during 2025, Melissa Pexton is the first woman to hold this role at the department. She brought 20-plus years of emergency management experience to the position, having previously served as State Recovery Controller for Tropical Cyclone Seroja from April 2021 to June 2023, a role that required leading a whole-of-government recovery operation affecting 16 local governments across WA's Mid-West, Gascoyne, and Wheatbelt regions.

She was a panellist at the AFAC 2025 Conference's keynote session on local-to-global connections in emergency management alongside international emergency management leaders. Her work on the strategic and recovery dimensions of emergency management, combined with her leadership in the DFES executive team alongside Commissioner Klemm, makes her one of the most influential voices in how Western Australian emergency services are planned and developed.

Notable Voices Worth Watching

Several important voices in the sector were considered for this list and came close to inclusion. The most significant household names from this sector's past who shaped the institutions current leaders are now guiding include retired Queensland Fire and Emergency Services Commissioner Katarina Carroll, the first female commissioner of both QFES and QPS, and former Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton. These leaders have significant legacies that remain relevant context for understanding the organisations current leaders are now guiding. They do not appear on this list because the list is specifically about active current contributors.

Common Mistakes in Emergency Services Leadership

The most common leadership failure in emergency services organisations is the mistake of confusing hierarchy with leadership. Command structures exist in emergency services for very good operational reasons -- when you are coordinating a multi-agency response to a major disaster, the clarity of who has authority over what is not bureaucracy; it is life safety. But the confusion arises when that operational hierarchy becomes the default mode for the whole organisation, including in the years between major events when what the organisation actually needs is adaptive, consultative, psychological safety-building leadership.

Several leaders on this list have explicitly named this as a challenge. Wayne Phillips at the ACT ESA established a Mental Health Steering Committee and Peer Support programme precisely because he understood that the culture producing excellent operational performance is built in the non-operational periods. Jeremy Smith's Statement of Commitment at Tasmania Fire and Emergency Services is a public acknowledgement that operational excellence and workplace safety are not separable goals.

A second common mistake is underinvesting in the recovery and rebuilding end of the emergency management cycle. Response gets the resources, the attention, and the post-event analysis. Recovery -- the months and years of sustained community support that determine whether communities genuinely rebuild stronger -- is chronically under-resourced and under-led. Kate Fitzgerald's appointment to the NSW Reconstruction Authority in 2026 reflects a recognition that this needs deliberate leadership investment, not just programme management.

A third mistake is treating the wellbeing of emergency services personnel as secondary to operational performance. Psychological injury in first responders is among the most significant workforce challenges in the sector. Leaders who treat wellbeing as a cultural add-on will face preventable workforce losses, reduced capability, and sustained reputational damage.

For teams looking to build the psychological safety and team dynamics that underpin wellbeing and performance, hire Jonno White to facilitate your team's Working Genius workshop or leadership offsite. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Implementation Guide: Learning from These Leaders

Following these leaders matters more if you approach it as active learning rather than passive consumption. Here is a practical approach to extracting value from the sector's thought leadership.

First, identify which of the five categories on this list is most relevant to your own leadership context. If you lead in a high-pressure operational environment, the operational leaders in categories one through four offer the most directly transferable insights. If your work touches community resilience or inclusion in a high-stakes context, the category five voices are particularly relevant. If your interest is governance and oversight, Emily Phillips at the Victorian IGEM and David Gawn at NEMA NZ are the most useful starting points.

Second, engage with primary sources rather than summaries. Several leaders on this list communicate directly through LinkedIn, public addresses, annual reports, and media interviews. David Gawn's video series on crisis leadership is publicly available. Greg Mullins has a published book and an active public advocacy record. Donna Adams has spoken publicly about what sustained leadership at the top of a government agency requires. These leaders speak in their own voice about their own experience.

Third, for government-adjacent organisations and public sector leadership teams, the structural questions these leaders are navigating -- how to lead through reform, how to build inclusive cultures in organisations with strong operational traditions, how to coordinate across agencies with different structures and incentives -- are directly relevant to how you lead your own organisation.

For organisations looking to build the leadership communication and team dynamics skills that underpin performance through change, bring Jonno White in to facilitate a leadership offsite or keynote on communication and conflict resolution. His approach combines Working Genius facilitation with practical leadership frameworks. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

For further reading on building high-performing teams, see my post at consultclarity.org/post/how-to-build-a-high-performing-team. For the global government leadership context, see the thought leaders in government leadership directory at 

consultclarity.org/post/thought-leaders-government-leadership-public-sector-innovation-globally.

International travel to bring in a facilitator or keynote speaker is often more affordable than organisations expect. Many organisations find that flying Jonno White in for a leadership day costs considerably less than engaging a local provider with comparable credentials. Email jonno@consultclarity.org or visit consultclarity.org.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between emergency management and emergency services leadership?

Emergency services leadership refers to the operational leadership of specific agencies: fire services, ambulance, police, and SES organisations. Emergency management leadership refers to the coordination and governance functions that sit above individual agencies, ensuring the whole system works together effectively before, during, and after major events. The distinction matters because the skills required are different: operational leadership draws heavily on command-and-control capability, while emergency management leadership requires facilitation, negotiation, and systems thinking.

How is emergency services leadership in ANZ different from other countries?

Several features distinguish the ANZ context. The geographic scale of Australia's states and territories creates emergency services challenges that very few other countries face. The volunteer model, underpinning bushfire response in particular, means effective leadership of rural fire services requires building and sustaining commitment in a workforce that chooses to be there, not one that is paid to be. The climate-driven escalation of fire weather and flooding events is creating operational demands that exceed historical precedent. And the governance complexity of a federated system, where state governments fund most emergency services but federal agencies play coordination and funding roles, does not exist in more centralised systems.

Who are the most influential figures currently shaping emergency services leadership in ANZ?

AFAC President Darren Klemm, by virtue of his peer governance role across 30-plus agencies, has the broadest structural influence over the sector's direction. David Gawn at NEMA NZ and Tim Wiebusch at Emergency Management Victoria are the most influential voices in their respective national and state emergency management systems. Greg Mullins, no longer in an operational role, has the broadest public influence through his climate advocacy work and media presence. Emily Phillips at the Victorian IGEM has growing influence on how the sector evaluates and improves its own performance.

How can I engage with emergency services leadership thinking if I work in a different sector?

The principles these leaders apply -- adaptive decision-making under uncertainty, building psychological safety in high-stakes teams, managing the transition between crisis mode and sustained organisational development -- transfer directly to any high-pressure leadership context. The most direct engagement is through LinkedIn, where several leaders on this list are active contributors. Annual conferences including AFAC26 and the Emergency Management Conference 2026 are open to broader registrations.

For organisations looking to apply crisis leadership and team performance principles within their own teams, engage Jonno White to run a workshop or keynote drawing on his experience working with government-adjacent organisations, corporates, and schools. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Final Thoughts

The 34 leaders on this list are not leading in comfortable conditions. They are leading in organisations under pressure from the escalating demands of a changing climate, from workforce challenges that have become defining issues for their sectors, from governance reforms reshaping the institutions they lead, and from public expectations that have never been higher. The quality of leadership across the sector, collectively and individually, will directly determine how prepared Australia and New Zealand are for the major emergencies the next decade will certainly bring.

What is notable across this list is how often the strongest voices are also the most reflective. Jeremy Smith publishing a public Statement of Commitment on culture. Donna Adams speaking candidly about managing organisational trust. David Gawn producing publicly available video guidance on crisis leadership for business leaders. Krissy Barrett clarifying the AFP's identity and purpose in a public address three months into her tenure. These leaders have decided that transparency and reflection are leadership tools, not vulnerabilities.

For organisations across sectors looking to build the kind of leadership culture that performs when pressure arrives, the principles these leaders embody -- accountability without self-protection, communication that builds rather than manages, decision-making that engages rather than controls -- are directly applicable.

To discuss how Jonno White can bring those principles into your leadership team through a Working Genius workshop, executive offsite, or keynote, email jonno@consultclarity.org. His experience working with schools, corporates, and nonprofits globally makes him one of the most practical voices on team leadership available. International travel is far more affordable than expected. Whether virtual or face to face, reach out to jonno@consultclarity.org.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, author of Step Up or Step Out, and leadership consultant who has worked with schools, corporates, and nonprofits around the world. His book Step Up or Step Out has sold over 10,000 copies globally, and his podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 230+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Jonno founded The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders and achieved a 93.75% satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Jonno works globally and regularly travels for speaking and facilitation engagements. Organisations consistently find that international travel is far more affordable than expected.

To book Jonno for your next keynote, workshop, or facilitation session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Next Read

Emergency services leaders face some of the most intense crisis leadership pressures in any sector. For the global thinkers who have built the intellectual frameworks that underpin crisis leadership and crisis management across industries, the directory of 50 thought leaders on crisis management profiles the researchers, practitioners, and communications experts whose work is directly relevant to how any leadership team prepares for its most difficult moments.

Keep reading: consultclarity.org/post/thought-leaders-crisis-management