After five wonderful years as the Chief Executive Officer at Annecto and 25 years in similar leadership positions at other organisations, I’ve made the decision to retire. I will step away from full-time employment and leave Annecto from Friday 25 April 2025.
I am incredibly proud to have led this organisation and been a part of its continuous growth and transformation. Over the past five years, Annecto has become a larger, more mature and stronger organisation in the aged care and disability sector.
In the last financial year (2023-2024) we achieved 15% overall growth, with significant growth in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. We now have 16 Annecto offices across Victoria, New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory and Queensland, filled with incredible staff supporting the local communities.
Since my time here, we have developed a strong organisational focus on collecting data to gain accurate and holistic insights into our services. The development of our award-winning business intelligence dashboards will continue to support us in improving practice and making informed decisions. We now have over 40 live dashboards monitoring performance and productivity across regions, projects and other areas. We were thrilled when this work was recognised with an award in excellence at the ITAC 2024 Awards.
I’ve overseen a huge amount of work that has significantly improved our engagement with staff, the people we support and the communities we work with. Strong staff engagement was measured by a 72% completion rate of last year’s staff engagement survey. We’ve also seen a positive shift in satisfaction and engagement from the people we support through our annual customer engagement survey.
Annecto is in a strong position and has a very positive future ahead. I’m proud to have been a part of this phase where we have worked towards long-term sustainability.
Our focus has always been on finding the best ways to provide individualised services by listening to the needs and goals of the people we support, their families and their community. The work we do is only made possible by our dedicated staff, strong partnerships and community support. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their work, the amazing collaboration and their trust during my tenure at Annecto.
To support the transition to a new CEO, we’ve appointed our Chief Operating Officer, Michael Beres, as the Deputy CEO and acting CEO from 25 April 2025. Annecto looks forward to sharing more details about the new CEO with you soon.
Once again, I would like to express my gratitude for the continuous support from staff, partners, the people we support and the wider community. I look forward to seeing what Annecto achieves in the future as it continues its important work.
Kind regards,
Cheryl De Zilwa – Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Annecto
