Fiona Poletti

Fiona Poletti is married to journalist Stephen Lunn and has three young boys Tom, Jack and Oliver. After leaving Loreto in 1982, Fiona went on to complete a degree in Economics and Politics at Monash University and later a Post Graduate Diploma in Communications. She worked as a senior policy adviser to the former Federal Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts , Richard Alston, advising him on all matters related to broadcasting and print media and the arts for eight years.

Her husband was then posted to Japan in 2000 as the foreign correspondent for the Australian newspaper. Over this four year period in Japan Fiona worked at the Australian Embassy in the Public Affairs division and was fortunate to project manager over two consecutive years’ Australian designers exhibiting in Tokyo. She also played a role in promoting Ancient Future – an Australian festival in Japan – which raised awareness of Australian culture to enable better relations between the two countries.

On the families return to Australia Fiona worked as a Government Relations adviser to the Sydney based Australia Council for the Arts for two years. In 2007 the family decided it was time to come back to Melbourne as the children were school age. Fiona again worked in Government Relations but for the Australian Business Arts Foundation for almost a year before deciding to take on the 6 month task of project managing Earth Hour for Melbourne. This was a campaign that Fiona felt passionate about as it is an area that will heavily impact on her children in the future and the wider community. She was thrilled that so many individuals, businesses, local councils and schools got behind the campaign.

The importance of making people aware of the dangers of climate change and the need to take action inspired Fiona to seek opportunities in this field. Over the past 4 months Fiona has been employed as the Program Manager for a new sustainability program, Carbon Down, a joint initiative between VECCI and Sustainability Victoria. The objectives of the program is to reach SMEs though project partners (corporate Victoria & industry) to make them aware of the carbon challenge as well as providing solutions and guidance as to how they can tackle it.

The program will measure, monitor and track changes concerning SME behaviour change and carbon abatement . It’s a very challenging and exciting program that is taking climate change head on in the hope that it can reduce Victoria’s green house emissions.