• Newly created role
• Circa $140,000 – $150,000 + Superannuation
• Sydney CBD & Inner Suburbs (Field-based)

About the Organisation

Our client is exclusively partnering with Johnson Recruitment in their search for the newly created Head of Community Development role with a focus on Active Wellbeing. Our client is Australia's fastest-growing community management and active leisure organisation, currently piloting a pioneering 'Active Wellbeing' framework that leads the industry.

Partnering exclusively with a premier local government authority on a major contract secured until 2030, they steward a flagship portfolio of six world-class community, aquatic, and fitness hubs. This progressive organisation is moving far beyond traditional facilities management to embed an outcomes-focused, preventative health model transforming physical spaces into inclusive community hubs that champion social connection, health equity, and grassroots impact.

About the Role

This is a newly created, strategic, and field-based leadership role designed purely to drive community outreach and social impact outcomes. Strategic restructuring has separated this position from commercial programming (such as fitness memberships and learn-to-swim operations), allowing the incoming leader to focus entirely on community equity and external engagement.

Leading and building a small team you will be operating at the intersection of strategy, macro-level change management, and grassroots engagement. You will ensure that the voices and lived experiences of diverse populations directly shape localised service delivery.

Key Responsibilities

• Drive Strategic Active Wellbeing: Lead the development, implementation, and continuous evolution of place-based, community-centred initiatives across a portfolio of premier city sites.
• Embed Community Voice & Co-Design: Champion robust consultation and co-design frameworks, ensuring lived experience actively guides programming for priority populations, with a critical focus on diverse and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
• Cultivate Cross-Sector Partnerships: Build, influence, and leverage high-level relationships across the broader health and community ecosystems, including public health networks, primary health organisations, and community-controlled entities.
• Change Management & Cultural Leadership: Partner with operational leadership to shift organisational culture toward an outcomes-focused model, guiding internal and external stakeholders through collaboration and influence rather than direct authority.
• Measure Social Impact: Oversee sophisticated evaluation and reporting frameworks that look beyond simple participation numbers to capture genuine social, health, and equity outcomes.
• Team Building & Capability Development: Mentor, coach, and scale the community outreach team, fostering an inclusive, psychologically safe, and trauma-informed work environment.

About You

This role demands an experienced leader with the emotional intelligence to balance complex community outcomes with commercial realities. This is not a "step-up" position; it requires an established professional who knows which operational and strategic levers to pull to achieve cultural change.

• Proven Senior Leadership: Extensive experience within community development, public health, social impact, active communities, or related sectors.
• Systems-Level Thinker: Demonstrated success translating high-level policy and strategy into practical, localised delivery models, with a proven ability to build service frameworks from the ground up.
• Master Collaborator & Change Agent: Exceptional relationship management skills with a track record of driving cultural change and bringing people along on a journey toward a new way of operating.
• Passion for Equity & Adaptability: Deep experience breaking down participation barriers and tailoring engagement to diverse groups facing systemic hurdles.
• Qualifications & Compliance: Ideally you will have tertiary qualifications in Public Health, Community Development, Social Sciences, or a related field are preferred (though equivalent senior experience will be highly valued). A current Working with Children Check (WWCC), National Police Check, and First Aid/CPR certifications are mandatory prior to commencement.

If this opportunity aligns with your career aspirations, passion and experience, please make an application immediately by clicking the 'Apply Now' button below. To confidentially discuss this opportunity further, please call Lisa Pratt on 0493 632 441, or Marika Loutsis on 0493 168 528 from Johnson Recruitment.

Johnson Recruitment actively embraces diversity in the workforce through inclusive community representation of gender, culture, thought, and work arrangements.