COO Leith Sterling moves on but not before epic achievements

COO Leith Sterling moves on but not before epic achievements

After more than three years of incredible service, Leith Sterling is stepping down from her role as Chief Operations Officer.

Leith joined Afford as Executive Director Consumer Experience and Safeguarding. At that time, we made a very deliberate choice to put quality, safeguarding and practice at the centre of our work and Leith was instrumental in this.

In January 2025, she stepped into the Chief Operations Officer role, bringing together Consumer Experience and Safeguarding with Service Delivery and Engagement. This change gave our clients, our teams and our community a stronger, more connected experience.

RAP Working Group co-chairs Kym Mafi (R) with Afford COO Leith Sterling honouring National Reconciliation Week.

Home to the Sunshine State

Based in Queensland, her role as COO for Afford has meant a huge amount of travel. Being out and about gave her the chance to connect with many of our people and spend valuable time alongside them. Now, however, she feels it is the right moment to be closer to home.

In typical Leith style, she continued util our quality, safeguarding and practice were fully embedded and that Afford’s future was strong and stable. With the growth of our inclusive employment services, the redesign of our community programs, and our renewed focus on homes and living, she feels confident that now is the right time.

There’s no doubt that Leith has played an important part in Afford’s journey of transformation. We will miss her calm presence when things got tough, her gift for bringing people together around a shared vision, her generous spirit and of course, her uncanny and complete inability to share her screen on Teams.

Our leadership team is in a strong place for a smooth transition. Leith’s final day with Afford will be Friday 24 October and recruitment for the Chief Operations Officer role will begin shortly.

A quick look at Leith’s achievements

Leith is moving onto a mission-based service role, but not before some epic achievements.

• The design and implementation of our quality, risk and practice frameworks and system

• Redesign of our incident management system, shifting the focus from reporting to learning and improving, while keeping people safe

• A new approach to empowering clients to advocate for themselves and creating the Human Rights Advocate Group and our first Inclusion Council

• Implementation of a safeguarding framework that puts client rights at the centre of everything we do

• Co-chairing our Reconciliation Action Plan Working Group

• Helping launch our new purpose, vision and values, and our three-year strategy to guide Afford into the future

• A complete rewrite of Afford’s policies and procedures framework