Penny assists organisations and teams to apply co-design and design-led approaches to the design and implementation of strategy, programs, policies and services. She specialises in projects with social outcomes and supports capability building with teams and organisations wanting to increase their social impact through the adoption of more participatory and evaluative approaches.

Penny has supported cross sector teams and communities in Australia and New Zealand responding to complex social issues including youth employment, youth mental health and wellbeing, chronic health conditions and family violence. Penny has a PhD in participatory design and much of her work involves the integration of different disciplines such as health, design and evaluation to increase impact around social outcomes.

Penny has worked with organisations such as the Young and Well CRC in Australia, developing a framework to integrate Participatory Design and traditional evidence-based approaches for the design of mental health interventions for young people. She also worked with Lifehack in New Zealand supporting the development of a design and evaluation model for innovation in youth wellbeing. She is currently Co-design Lead at the Auckland Co-design Lab, helping to build co-design and social innovation capacity across public service and community teams.