We acknowledge the Traditional Owners/Custodians of the lands and waters on which we work and live on across Australia. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging. We are committed to collaboration that furthers self-determination and creates a better future for all. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this website contains images and names of deceased persons.

The Australian Centre for Social Innovation
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Kerry Jones

Co-CEO

Kerry Jones
she/her
LinkedIn

Working on Kaurna Land, Living on Peramangk Country

Kerry Jones is the Co-CEO of The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI), where she acts as a “strategic weaver” of the people, ideas, and partnerships needed to reshape social systems. With over 30 years of experience across the disability and social innovation sectors, Kerry has been a key strategic contributor to major initiatives including Our Town, Fire to Flourish, National Futures Initiative and TACSI’s work in Ageing Well. Her leadership is defined by a commitment to empowerment and allyship, focusing on creating the conditions for collective wisdom to surface and ensuring First Nations ways of knowing are at the heart of systemic change.

A champion for impactful collaboration, Kerry believes our greatest social breakthroughs happen when we have the patience to listen and the courage to experiment.

When she’s not weaving new possibilities at work, Kerry is an avid reader and adventurer who can often be found exploring regional Australia with her family, rummaging through second-hand bookstores, or trying out new recipes with family and friends.

Follow Kerry on LinkedIn

  • Fellow, Governor’s Leadership Program
  • Bachelor Applied Science (Disability Studies)
  • Diploma of Business

Project highlights

See all our Work

Futures paper: Practices for realising just futures

Futures paper: Practices for realising just futures

As part of our commitment to building a National Futures Initiative, we’ve written a paper that reviews current futures practices, and sets forward a hypothesis for what we need to do to get to a more just future.

The work we need to do to get to a ‘just’ future

The work we need to do to get to a ‘just’ future

In 2024, we initiated conversations with people who spend a lot of time thinking about the future to help us answer a big question: What role should TACSI play in the second quarter of the 21st century? Here’s what we learnt…

National Futures Initiative

National Futures Initiative

Introducing a new national initiative to create the opportunity for individuals, communities, and organisations to imagine a more socially just future.

Social R&D for Australia

Social R&D for Australia

Since 2019, a growing group of partners – including TACSI – have been exploring the potential of Social R&D systems as an alternate way to make progress on tough social challenges.

Case study: Designing a philosophy of care for mental health in SA

Case study: Designing a philosophy of care for mental health in SA

What does mental health care informed by lived experience look like? In 2020, we partnered with the SA Lived Experience Leadership and Advocacy Network (LELAN) to find out. Together, we co-created a Philosophy of Care to inform the new Urgent Mental Health Care Centre (UMHCC) in Adelaide.

Fire to Flourish

Fire to Flourish

In the wake of increasing bushfires, floods and other disaster events, it’s critical for communities to pave new ways to lead, imagine, connect and invest in their communities’ future. Fire to Flourish is a five-year, $75m partnership that aims to empower communities in bushfire-affected communities to develop novel approaches to strengthening community resilience.

End of Life Impact Network

End of Life Impact Network

What if all Australians and their loved ones had better end of life experiences: dying peacefully, connected, life in order, in a place of their choosing and free of pain? Our Impact Network seeks to achieve just that.

South Sudanese Australian Minds

South Sudanese Australian Minds

TACSI worked with South Sudanese Australian communities, providers and government to develop and trial ideas to improve mental health and wellbeing in response to devastating losses of young people in the communities to suicide.

Our Town

Our Town

Our Town, a long-term regional mental health initiative funded by the Fay Fuller Foundation and in partnership with TACSI and Clear Horizon, aims to build the capabilities of regional towns in South Australia to develop community responses to mental health.

Supporting South Australians to age well

Supporting South Australians to age well

In 2019, TACSI wrote a report for the Office for Ageing Well on the theme ‘Listening to how we can support South Australians to age well’. In 2020, we engaged with a diverse range of government, non-government and community stakeholders to build on this work, the result of which was the South Australia’s Plan for Ageing Well 2020-2025.

Changing the way we think about ageing

Changing the way we think about ageing

With the highest proportion of older people on mainland Australia, South Australia is uniquely positioned to lead how we redesign ageing for better lives. In partnership with the Office for Ageing Well, we listened to thousands of older people and consolidated what we heard into three strategic priorities necessary to reinvent how we age.

Case study: The Aboriginal Youth Justice Strategy

Case study: The Aboriginal Youth Justice Strategy

For over 17 years, the Koori Caucus and Koori Justice Unit in Victoria have embraced community-driven innovation to work toward a justice system that is free from inequality. Their latest model for justice reform, released in 2018, is another vital step in addressing the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the justice system and furthering self-determination.

Case study: How we’re building Regional Innovation Capability (RIN)

Case study: How we’re building Regional Innovation Capability (RIN)

We’ve long known that in order to grow more innovative approaches to addressing complex social issues, we need to build the capability of people to think and act differently about how we work, fund and collaborate for change. Over the last couple of years, we’ve had the opportunity to dive into what this means through a long-term project called RIN (Regional Innovators Network), which is based in regional NSW.

Health needs and priorities in South Australia

Health needs and priorities in South Australia

In a first of its kind, the Fay Fuller Foundation commissioned a piece of research that looks into the health needs and priorities in South Australia. Delivered by the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute and TACSI, this research is designed to take a holistic snapshot of the health system in South Australia.

Our ideas for realising the ambition of the NDIS

Our ideas for realising the ambition of the NDIS

As implementation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme and its cost-effectiveness comes under increased scrutiny, we put forward our ideas in 2017 about how we could realise the NDIS ambition and control costs in the long run.

Meet more of the team who make our work possible.

Meet the team