Executive Management
Our executive management team are committed to driving and achieving outcomes that enhance the lives of older Australians, people with a disability, families and carers.

Sonya Smart - Chief Executive Officer
Prior to joining VMCH in February 2017, Sonya was Chief Executive of Catholic Homes Incorporated in WA, a position she held for over six years. She has also held leadership roles in residential and community care at Southern Cross Care WA.
A graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (2016), Sonya holds a Master of Business Administration from Curtin University of Technology (2010) and a post graduate qualification in Clinical Psychology from Edith Cowan University (2002). Sonya’s entrepreneurship and business acumen was recognized in 2008 when she received a ‘40under40’ award: an honour which recognizes excellence and innovation amongst WA’s young leaders.
With a passion for residential aged care, disability and community services, Sonya has been a long-time advocate for delivering exceptional care to marginalised people in the community.

Bridget O'Shannassy - Chief Mission Officer
Bridget is assigned with the important task of developing VMCH’s strategic plan to lead and shape its Catholic mission.
More than 30 years of experience in leadership roles within Catholic education, not-for-profit NGO’s and health care organisations has given Bridget a depth of understanding of Catholic culture and faith, and the ability to lead large teams.
Bridget possesses a great awareness of the need for supportive and empathetic relationships, and is able to articulate VMCH’s mission in a way that is enriching and energising through formation opportunities. A significant achievement of Bridget’s includes leading VMCH’s response to Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) in Victoria and being the Aged Care Representative on Catholic Health Australia’s VAD taskforce.

Chris Hilton - Chief Financial Officer
Chris has extensive leadership experience across a range of sectors including property and health, spending a large part of his career as General Manager of Finance at both Lendlease and Allity Aged Care. He is also highly-skilled in all facets of aged funding and reporting, integration and sales; retirement governance requirements; leadership during growth and productivity improvement.

David Williamson - Chief Operating Officer
David is a highly-experienced Senior Leader with 25 years of experience across the health, disability services and personal injury insurance sectors. David holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Occupational Therapy and a Master’s in Business (Personal Injury). David is committed to safeguarding the rights of people with a disability by promoting and facilitating choice and control and has particular expertise in developing service models which promote capacity building and the delivery of person-centred care.

Natalina Velardi - Chief Legal & Risk Officer / Company Secretary
Natalina is a governance and legal professional with over 20 years’ experience. She is passionate about encouraging good governance practices to support ethical approaches to business issues. She has held a number of senior executive roles in the not-for-profit sector and for the past five years has been in the aged care and disability sector as the Company Secretary and General Counsel/General Manager Governance of Villa Maria Catholic Homes Ltd. She is a graduate member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and a Fellow of the Governance Institute of Australia. She is also a practicing legal practitioner and a member of the Association of Corporate Counsel.

Rashmi Somu - Chief Human Resources Officer
Rashmi is a Human Resources executive with over 25 years’ experience across Health, Aged and Community Services, not-for-profit, Information Technology, Financial Services, Business Consulting and Government.
Rashmi prides himself in building and implementing innovative people strategies that directly contributes the business achieving its goals. He has been recognised for developing and nurturing talent, building high performance teams and passion for employee experience.

Maria Paz - Chief Information Officer
Maria has 20+ years’ experience leading transformational business and technology change across the financial services, not for profit, government and higher education sectors. She has a successful history in building and managing cross-functional teams to improve capabilities related to program and shared services delivery, governance, operations, performance, program/portfolio management, risk, audit, and assurance.
Maria is passionate about using emerging technologies and data to identify new business transformation initiatives and aligning business strategy with technology strategy. She particularly enjoys managing change and innovation that positively affects and contributes to improving social and community outcomes.

Jason Uzice - Chief Property Officer
Jason has 20 years’ experience leading high profile projects with exposure across asset classes, including residential, commercial, retail, government, hotels, greenfield developments and refurbishments.
With recent tenure in optimising operational delivery of major projects, he combines a sophisticated understanding of levers across the full development and project life cycle with a clear focus on people, process and governance to ensure that projects are risk-appropriately managed, properly funded, delivered on time and within budget.