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Dr Dedee Woodside currently serves on the Boards of the Sydney Metropolitan Catchment Management Authority, the Invasive Animal Cooperative Research Centre and Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF). She has served on the boards of other organisations in the past including other NGOs and natural resource companies including Murrumbidgee Irrigation.
She has been the Director and Principal of a small consulting firm called Corporate & Community Sustainability International for the past 10 years. In this role, she works primarily the rural and natural resource sectors and works widely in developing countries in a range of advisory roles. She is also a co-director (with her family) of a private rural and conservation property in the Barrington Tops area of NSW.
Dedee is highly experienced in senior leadership positions including serving in senior roles in government, management of zoos, management of international training institutes for the environment and wildlife management, working with AID agencies, international governing boards of conservation organisations, water resource companies, rural commodities and private business.
She has had a great deal of experience in the areas of animal ethics and in animal welfare especially while serving as a General Manager and Director, Taronga and Western Plains Zoos for 15 years.
She also the Director of the Australian Conservation Training Institute that worked with AusAID to provide capacity building for wildlife and environmental professionals in over 35 developing countries. She continues to be engaged in the welfare and conservation of primates (particularly Chimpanzees and Mountain Gorillas) and retains an association with the Sanctuary she helped to found in Uganda and the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA).
Originally from Canada, Dedee came to Australia to study her PhD in Zoology and Ecology at the Australian National University. She has undergraduate degrees from Canadian Universities and also has graduate certificates in change management and facilitation.
Her professional passions include supporting collective action in communities, enabling change for sustainability and improving biodiversity conservations as the critical life support system on earth. In this regard, she is best known for her work in local community engagement, facilitating large scale change rural sector and building capacity of communities to manage and benefit from, their own environmental issues.
