Jon is the Managing Partner of 99 Consulting and its current sole full-time partner. He has been a fixture in the Queensland human services sector for over three decades, with most of that spent working in housing and homelessness. His early career was spent in hands-on roles in child protection and homelessness service provision. While working in homelessness he found himself wanting to know why his clients had to be homeless, and this led to a long career in advocacy, policy and strategy development. As a consultant he brings this experience to bear in projects which focus on developing the evidence base for good quality services, helping organisations to hear the voice of their clients and others in their environment, and helping peak organisations advocate for good policy. He is also a highly skilled facilitator and has run a huge number of strategic planning processes and collective decision making workshops. Jon is a Certified Senior Housing Professional, with the Australasian Housing Institute and the current chair of the AHI’s Queensland branch.
Jon started 99 Consulting in 2006 in partnership with his good friends Helen Wallace and Judith Hunter. The three of them worked as a team until 2015, delivering a wide range of quality projects for local governments and not-for-profit organisations. Unfortunately, the combination of State Government budget cuts and the end of the mining boom meant that there were too many consultants in Queensland competing for not enough work and it became much harder for the three of them to make a living. Eventually Helen and Judith got great jobs, with Caxton Legal Service and YFS Logan respectively. They are still officially partners in the business and still good friends but Jon has been running the business on his own for the past five years.