Holly Ransom is a dynamic twenty-one year old Not-For-Profit sector leader and social entrepreneur who firmly believes that anything is possible if you combine passion and enthusiasm with hard work and innovative thinking.

In 2008, at just 18 years of age, Holly was selected to attend the 2020 Summit in Canberra to contribute her ideas to the shaping of Australia’s future in the ‘Future of Australian Governance’ subgroup. Two of her main ideas regarding voting enrolment were adopted into a government Green Paper on Electoral Reform and her strong argument for a permanent government consultation body with youth was part of the successful push that resulted in the establishment of the Australia Youth Forum.
 

Organisational Involvement

In addition to her Law and Economics studies at the University of Western Australia, Holly’s community leadership spans a raft of Not-For-Profit organisations highlighting her determination to have a lasting positive impact on her community- at a local, national and international level. Currently, Holly is the Director of ‘Level Up Leadership’; a Director of ‘Women Who Lead’, a not-for-profit initiative Holly founded in 2009; and the President-Elect at the Rotary Club of Crawley, meaning that in July 2012 she will become the youngest ever Rotary President. Past roles include acting as the 2010-11 Chair of Young UN Women Perth, a committee member of the WA Red Cross Youth Advisory Council and the UWA Ambassador for Teach For Australia.

Holly is also the Co-Founder and Inaugural Vice-President of the UWA Enterprise and Consulting Society and is the first young person to be appointed to the Western Australian Government’s Women’s Advisory Council. In 2010, she interned with the Inspire Foundation where she wrote the organisation’s WA Youth Engagement Strategy which will govern the organisation’s operation for their first three years in Western Australia.

Accomplishments

 
Holly’s commitment to service and to the development of young people’s leadership skills has been publicly acknowledged with Holly receiving the City of Nedlands Premier’s Australia Day Active Citizenship Award in 2009 and being made a finalist for the 2010 and 2011 Young Western Australia Citizen of the Year Award. In July 2010, Holly won the ‘Educate!’ category at the WA Youth Awards for her work to empower and educate others and was made a finalist for the WA Youth of the Year Award. Holly was also awarded both the Area 3 and District 23 Zonta International Jane M Klausman Women in Business Scholarship and was made a finalist for the International Award. In August, she was selected to attend the LEAP Leadership program in Los Angeles and the Humanitarian Affairs University Leaders Symposium in Melaka. Holly returned to Los Angeles in October to represent Australia in an international social enterprise competition and has recently returned from the Peace Conference of Youth in Osaka, where she was one of nine elected individuals who drafted a Peace Charter that was presented to the Dalai Lama.

In February 2011, Holly journeyed to Kenya where she lived and worked for two weeks in the Korogocho slums working to establish SIFE UWA’s ‘Uhuru’ microfinancing project, which has since been made an international semi-finalist in the International Dell Social Innovation Challenge. In March, Holly was invited by Her Excellency Ms Quentin Bryce AC to speak at the Governor General’s official International Women’s Day celebration at Government House in Canberra. In April, she journeyed to Switzerland to partake in a World Trade Organisation Youth Summit where she presented a series of trade policy recommendations to the World Trade Organisation. In May, Holly was appointed as a Non-Executive Director to the Board of Global Voices and YMCA Perth.