About Petraichor Partners
We are experienced health and community development executives with longstanding professional networks. Collectively we have delivered a transformative style of management across State and Commonwealth Health and community development programs. We have many years of experience as Board Directors, Chairperson roles and as CEO’s and have been involved in Corporate growth strategies, State-wide and National Primary health Care reform, and consistently delivered Quality assured and independently accredited services across multiple organisations and settings.
Petraichor is the ‘smell of rain’ and comes from the Greek phrase that symbolises rain falling to earth as a gift from the Gods.
‘Petra’ is our metaphor for organisations and communities, they provide the foundations or ‘rock’ on which you build and grow. Without strong foundations you can’t weather change nor plan for the future. ‘Ichor’ is our metaphor for resourcing; investing in time to look at things differently, using collaboration more strategically, and creating the right conditions for innovation to secure development and growth, just like the country responds after a good fall of rain.
Whether working directly with communities or organisations, Petraichor Partners can customise its professional team and stage its products with a contemporary evidence-based and co-design approach tailored to your unique service requirements.
Petraichor Partners has strong credentials in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and community development. Indigenous values and wisdom shape and inform the way in which we work and we translate that knowledge and experience when responding to real-time and mainstream challenges.
About the Directors
Bob and Stuart are good mates and have been working in health and Aboriginal community development for a combined period of almost seventy years. Across their professional careers both have held leadership roles in the Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) senior Executives in State and Commonwealth Health setting’s and are active Board Directors. They have been working together in western NSW since 2009 across mainstream and Aboriginal community-controlled settings, including key appointments associated with significant health and social reforms and innovation in rural and remote and First Nations health.
Both have participated in international forums including the International Federation for Integrated Care, United Nations Forum on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous People (EMRIP) and are strong advocates for rural and remote health innovation, particularly supporting Aboriginal self-determination and supporting the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Sector.
They share a keen interest in advancing reconciliation through achieving greater health equity and empowering communities through strength based and evidence informed collaboration. The Petraichor Partnership is an opportunity to work alongside likeminded people and draw on their collective experience to find solutions and adopt strategy and together also learn something new in the process.
Stuart Gordon
Stuart is a founding Director at Petraichor Partners and former CEO of the Western Queensland Primary Health Network, Far West Medicare Local and NSW Outback Division of General Practice. He has contributed to service redesign and innovation supporting primary care system reform for more than a decade including contemporary general practice design in rural and remote Australia. He has been instrumental in the establishment of not-for-profit health organisations and has lead commissioning innovation, capability, and maturity.
He has led large scale organisational transformation in NSW and Qld and an architect of place based and strength-based approaches, brokering grass roots and state-wide solutions and has longstanding professional networks in rural communities and with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and community organisations.
He has interests in international health including work overseas with Aga Khan Health Services Tanzania. Other appointments include rural and remote hospital management and Aboriginal community development. He is an experienced Director and currently Chair of the NSW Outback Division of General Practice.
Born and bred in outback NSW he now lives in Queensland, is an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at James Cook University, a Certified Health Executive and Fellow of the Australasian College of Health Service Management, a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and a Member of the Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine.
Bob Davis
Bob Davis is the former Chief Executive Officer of Maari Ma Health and a Director of Petraichor Partners. He is a proud Biripi/Dungutti man from the North Coast of NSW and has been working in Aboriginal community development and Community Controlled health for more than 40 years as a senior Executive State Government and Commonwealth primary care programs and reform.
Throughout his professional career Bob has excelled at developing close working relationships with a range of individuals and organisations within the health and social care sector. He continually advocates for the recognition of the rights of Aboriginal Australians and takes every opportunity to promote respect and understanding of these rights in the broader Australian community, including the rights to maintain and strengthen Aboriginal peoples’ identity and culture and the right to self-determination.
Bob was the former Director of the NSW Aboriginal Coordinated Care Trial, a $33 million health reform initiative over a three-year period, which resulted in a major change in the delivery of chronic disease programs in Aboriginal health services on the Mid North Coast.
For over 30 years Bob has worked collaboratively with the University of Newcastle on research projects aimed at understanding and improving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health outcomes
He is an Adjunct Professor of Practice in the School of Medicine & Public Health at the University of Newcastle and a Certified Health Executive and Fellow of the Australasian College of Health Service Management and a Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
The Petraichor Partners Logo is an illustration of the meandering Darling River. With its tributaries, it has been Australia’s longest river system for more than 250 million years. For thousands of years the Barkindji people have known this river as their ‘Baaka’ and the river system is home to more than 40 Aboriginal Nations who hold it as sacred. This river system provides water to more than 3 million Australians and its cultural, social, environmental, spiritual and economic significance is vast. The health of the river system directly corresponds with the health and wellbeing of people who live and rely on these waters.
We have selected this logo as it symbolises the strength of place, and the importance of focusing on sustainability and collective approaches when finding solutions that are relevant to communities but replicable across landscapes.