Councillor Sarah Gilligan

Sarah and her family moved to Venus Bay to embrace a simpler life connected to nature and found so much more than just a beautiful place to live, they found a community to belong to in a wild place worth protecting.

Sarah's professional life began as a project manager working nationally and internationally in live performance, film and TV and major public events. In the early 2000s, she co-founded a clicks-and-mortar start-up that taught her valuable lessons in IP law, business modelling, entrepreneurship, and the importance of leadership and organisational culture. From there, she did a post-grad in Business Management specialising in Strategic Marketing and Risk Management.

Following this quirky career path, Sarah ended up as a Development Manager for the Australian Centre for Dialogue, part of the ANU Law School. There she worked with international superstars of the professional coaching world and was inspired to train as an International Coach Federation (ICF) coach herself.

Over the past decade, Sarah has operated her own business as a creative industries coach, helping women in leadership get on top of their game so they can be game changers.

Sarah became a Councillor to give voice to the Coastal Promontory region of South Gippsland and has never looked back. She is inspired by South Gippsland's 28 communities, passionate about the region and wants to ensure investment goes where it is needed most, advocating for all levels of government to work together.

She is an enthusiastic member of the South Gippsland Shire Audit and Risk Committee, the MAV Emergency Management Committee and the Venus Bay and Tarwin Lower Energy Resilience Project. Her passion is in helping end of line / remote communities build resilience in the face of increasing storm surge, flood and fire risks along with energy, access and water insecurity.

When making decisions, Sarah always asks herself "for what purpose?" her focus is on the future generations of South Gippsland and she believes we are well placed as a region to be leaders not laggards.