Leesa Chesser

Leesa is an Adelaide based, professional Non-Executive Director, mentor and consultant after a successful career as a Minister for Disabilities, Mental Health and Substance Abuse leading the $723M NDIS strategic decision making, service reform and transformation in South Australia with expertise in Chairing infrastructure projects to a value of $450M and in highly regulated environments where ‘social license’ to operate is at risk from culture, clinical or systems failure.

Leesa is a board member at the Adelaide Festival, West Beach Parks and a large mental health and wellbeing not for profit.

Trained in health economics, health information management and business at the Queensland University of Technology, Leesa mentors start up and scale up founders at Stone & Chalk-Australia’s largest emerging tech community, and has mentored women leaders in Vietnam, Indonesia and Laos as a consultant to the Flinders University Gender Consortium. Leesa is an alum of the flagship diversity cohort, the Chair’s Mentoring programme for the Australian Institute of Company Directors,

Impact focused, and United Nations Sustainable Development Goal aligned, Leesa enjoys contributing to smart commercial decision-making focused on member value, sound governance, and positive policy outcomes for the profession and health consumers. She is a Fellow with Salzburg Global in the areas of health, the care economy, and gender equity, particularly for older women.