Association CEO Index 2024 - Flipbook - Page 29
Association CEO Index 2024
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Business feature
Sam Hunter
CEO
Occupational Therapy Australia
If culture eats strategy for breakfast, Samantha Hunter
will have both sorted by lunch.
The CEO of Occupational Therapy Australia – who
prefers to be called Sam – has doubled the
organisation’s staff and its revenue since she took on the
top job in 2018.
How? By simply applying her strengths: leadership,
creativity, versatility and strategy.
Strengths that have developed in spades thanks to her
hyper-diverse background, no-nonsense boundaries and
an insatiable curiosity about the world and the people
in it.
This self-confessed “accidental CEO” grew up in country
Victoria before moving to Melbourne in her early teens.
She dropped out of high school in Year 11, became a
legal secretary and went overseas for four years before
coming back to Australia.
She completed high school as a mature-aged student
through RMIT, gained a bachelor’s degree from La Trobe
University and launched into a solid decade of
community relations, marketing and communications
consulting in the commercial and for-purpose sectors.
One of Sam’s clients was so impressed with her skills
and insights that she was asked to step into the role of
chief executive. Between 2012 and 2017, she was CEO
of Crime Stoppers Victoria, while also serving on the
national board and also on the Board of the Country Fire
Authority.
Director stints at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale
(2018 – 2019) and Werribee Football Club (2017 – 2020)
also feature in this period, including a position as Chair
of the Community Engagement and Women in Football
Committees.
Whether accidental or not, it seems that executive
leadership roles have sought Sam out and led her here,
to guide the national association representing more than
11,000 ‘OTs’.
“The thing that interests me the most about being a CEO
is not the power, which everyone thinks we hold, but the
ability to strategise to make immediate change and
impact,” Sam says.
“I like being able to see an opportunity or the potential
for change and act on it. Creativity and strategy are
not unlinked.
“Being creative and being able to see things from a
variety of perspectives allows you to look at a strategy
and imagine the different ways it could be elevated and
executed, and then explore how you can shape that into
a story to influence or create change.
“I do think we need more creatives and natural
communicators in CEO positions, particularly in the forpurpose area. We're telling stories to make impact and
change; and all of the for- purpose sector has beautiful
stories to tell.”
The Occupational Therapy Australia role represents
Sam’s first step into association leadership and her first
step into allied health. She found a kinship with both the
diversity of the profession and its emphasis on
relationships.
“What I have discovered (at OTA) has way exceeded any
expectations I may have had,” she says.
“When I started, the number of other allied health leaders
who reached out to have conversations and the
community and support of other CEOs have far
outstripped any kind of collegiality I have experienced in
any other sector.
“There's a lot of collaboration, a lot of support, a lot of
people connecting and swapping resources.
