About Us

Chief Executive

Frances Diver

Frances is a well-known and respected healthcare leader in Victoria, having held senior leadership roles for more than 15 years. Having initially trained as a nurse and midwife, Frances has worked in a clinical setting in a number of metropolitan and regional hospitals across New Zealand and Australia.

Frances joined the Department of Health and Human Services in 2001, eventually occupying the position of Deputy Secretary, Hospital and Health Service Performance, charged with the responsibility for the overall performance of the Victorian public health services. Before joining Barwon Health in April 2019, Frances was the CEO of the Country Fire Authority (CFA).​​​​​​​

Chief Financial Officer

Cobus Lotheringen

Following an extensive career in the private sector in South Africa, Cobus took the opportunity to redirect his career path into healthcare by accepting a position at the Lakes District Health Board in Rotorua, New Zealand in 2004, achieving operating results consistently better than budget for financial years from 2005 to June 2010. Cobus then accepted a role as regional Finance Director at Country Health South Australia Local Health Network where, within the next year he managed a financial turnaround that had been operating at a historic and projected annual negative variance to budget of $19 million to a $1.2million better than budget on a total expenditure budget of $750million.

In 2013 Cobus took on the role of Chief Financial Officer of the South Adelaide Local Health Network (SALHNM), which incorporates three metro hospitals and included responsibility and management of all non-clinical support functions, ensuring that SALHNM operated as the most cost-effective local health network in South Australia, delivering in excess of $60million in improvements over three years.

Cobus started as Chief Financial Officer at Barwon Health in September 2016 and developed a more focused approach to clinical and strategic decision-making. He facilitated a capacity planning exercise and right-sized the organisation’s bed and resource requirements with improved governance, directorate performance management, enhanced contract negotiations and management, and improved procurement processes and risk management. These activities assisted in delivering a $3 million surplus result for the 2016/17 financial year, recovering from a reported deficit of $13 million in 2015/16.

Chief Operating Officer

Amanda Cameron

Amanda has held an extensive executive career in health, with a number of senior positions held in the Gippsland region. Amanda previously held the position of Chief Operating Officer / Chief Nurse at Latrobe Regional Hospital (LRH) with responsibility for the budgets for medical, acute, sub-acute and finance, comprising over $150 million of a total budget of more than $200 million. 

Previously Amanda was the Director of Nursing, Midwifery and Clinical Services at LRH, with 289 patient beds across acute, sub-acute, ambulatory and mental health.  Providing leadership for the nursing services, Amanda’s role also encompassed quality and risk in the health service and leadership to Gippsland BreastScreen and Gippsland Regional Integrated Cancer Service.  Amanda achieved successful organisational wide accreditation for four years under the National Standards and held key accountability for DHHS targets and performance monitoring.  Amanda collaborated with Monash University to accommodate the expansion of the clinical school in addition to engaging on research projects with Federation University and Monash University.

Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer

Angela Erwin

Chief Information Officer

Andrew Macfarlane​​

​​​​Andrew is an experienced IT professional and has worked in the IT industry for over 30 years. His career has spanned a number of industry sectors, including retail, financial management, airlines, corporate analytics, environment services and now healthcare. In previous organisations, he has been responsible for software development, database administration, applications management, project and portfolio management, data analytics and eventually taking accountability for the delivery of all IT services to an organisation, which included its IT infrastructure, software applications and IT security.

Andrew joined Barwon Health in July 2018 as the Director of Technology and Communications and is excited to work with the Barwon Health team and its partners.

He is passionate about innovation and using technology to contribute to positive healthcare outcomes to the community by providing data and 'fit for purpose' systems where and when they are needed in a safe way, ensuring they meet both the short-term and strategic objectives.​

Chief Medical Officer

Ajai Verma

Ajai has significant experience as a medical leader across the public and private health sector in rural, regional and metropolitan settings in addition to being a specialist front-line clinician. Ajai also has extensive experience as a non-executive Board Director of public health services and commercial entities and is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Medical Administrators (FRACMA) and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (FRACGP).

Chief People and Culture Officer

Tracy Gilligan

Tracy Gilligan stepped into the Chief of People and Culture role initially on an interim arrangement commencing 16 January 2023 before accepting the formal role in June 2023. Tracy has extensive experience in People and Culture roles and her most recent role was at the Geelong Football Club.

Executive Director, Strategy & Planning

Anna Burgess