Our Team

Raymond Griffin, President

Raymond Griffin is an experienced director, non-executive director and Chair, with extensive financial planning sector expertise and board experience in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors. Ray is a past Chairman and Life Member of the Financial Planning Association of Australia and an influential commentator in the Australian financial planning profession. In 2003 he served as Chairman of the International Council of Certified Financial Planners, an organisation with 25 member countries. 

Ray has been an Adjunct Lecturer for Western Sydney University’s Master of Commerce (Financial Planning) degree, is a member of the financial planning degree curriculum development committee at the University of New England, Armidale, and a contributing author to the leading academic text for undergraduate and postgraduate financial planning students in Australia.

Experience in governance and strategic leadership, including in two international standards-setting organisations, has convinced Ray that strength and effectiveness arises when boards have directors with diverse competencies and experiences.

Ray is strongly interested in community based organisations that seek to improve people’s lives. He previously co-founded the annual Corners for Kids Motorcycle Rally, which by 2019 had raised more than $1 million, and in 2007 he instigated establishment of the Future2 Foundation, the charitable foundation of the Financial Planning Association of Australia. His interest in the Australian Opal Centre was piqued by its aims around generation of economic and social benefit. 

Ray holds an Executive Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Technology, Sydney and a Diploma of Financial Services. He is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and is currently undertaking a PhD through Griffith University, researching the efficacy of financial planning legislation reform in Australia since 1988. He lives near Tamworth in NSW.

Clytie Smith, Vice President and Public Officer

Clytie Smith has more than 20 years' experience as a production manager, technical coordinator, theatre project manager, company touring manager, site manager, lighting designer and operator in the performance industry. Recent roles include Technical Coordinator for Sculpture at Scenic World, overseeing installation of a major annual sculpture exhibition in the forest at Katoomba in NSW's Blue Mountains.

Since childhood years in Lightning Ridge, Clytie has continued to spend part of each year there visiting her parents, searching for opal and opalised fossils, cutting opal and in recent years, as a team leader on the Lightning Ridge Fossil Dig and in the creative, production and site management teams for SPARK. Her parents – Dr Elizabeth Smith, palaeontologist, writer, artist, former LROFC committee member and expert on Lightning Ridge's fossils, and Robert A. Smith, opal photographer – have made major contributions to the AOC, its collections and programs.

Clytie has donated opalised fossils to the AOC collection and is an AOC Life Member and Founder. She has supported the AOC's visiting school program as a volunteer and participated in the User Requirements Committee for the new AOC building, the LROFC Management Committee and AOC Building Subcommittee, of which she is a current member.

Clytie has a Master of Arts in Screenwriting and is currently enrolled in a Bachelor of Nursing.

Warwick Hearne, Treasurer

Warwick Hearne is an actuary by training who has spent his working years in financial services roles with a strong IT association.

Beginning, with MLC, Warwick was part of a team which designed and built MLC back office systems. This was followed by 10 years of leadership roles building an Australian software house that became a world leader; then a series of executive roles with the general insurer MMI (now Allianz).

Warwick then established his own one man consulting business with a focus on executive coaching, primarily in strategic planning and business development. Warwick has worked closely with many CEOs over 30 years, including his eldest daughter when they created a financial planning business to service smaller clients at scale; this continues today.

Warwick became interested in opal through the work of his cousin, Anthony Smallwood, founder of the International Opal Academy. He is grateful for the opportunity to apply his skills, experience and connections for the benefit of the AOC.

Paul Dale, Committee Member

Paul Dale is a geoscientist, explorer and director with skills developed in private mining and services companies, the public sector, and not-for-profit organisations. He has nearly 30 years’ executive experience across the resources sector value chain in exploration, operations, consultancy, private commercial ventures, services delivery, and government across much of Australia and Papua New Guinea.

Paul strives to create opportunities for delivering social and economic benefit that enhances people’s lives. He is passionate about creating regional development opportunities, delivering authentic environmental & social governance and empowering self-determination for First Nations people.

Paul’s senior resources sector roles include Director with the NSW Department of Planning & Environment, Country Exploration Manager PNG for Barrick Gold, Managing Director & CEO for Wirralie Mines Pty Ltd, Belyando Mines Pty Ltd and Conglomerate Project Management Pty Ltd, and Non-Executive Director with Mt Coolon Gold Mines Pty Ltd. He currently leads HarLin Consulting, a Tasmanian based geoscientific and stakeholder engagement consultancy.

As a Director in the public service, Paul was a key Government representative engaged with the mining community in Lightning Ridge, and supporting the Lighting Ridge community in forums including the Western Lands Council. Paul also supported the community directly as a co-organiser of the 9th National Opal Symposium in 2018. Paul was struck by the uniqueness and regional development potential of the AOC’s building project and future plans during this time.

In the not-for-profit sector, Paul has served in several school Associations and directed a Before & After School Care business. He is currently Grants Officer for the Woodbridge School Association and Secretary of the Tasmanian Branch of the Australian Institute of Mining & Metallurgy (AusIMM). Paul is developing not-for-profit concepts for financially self-sustaining school garden & outdoor STEM lab programs and contributes to professional mentoring programs.

Paul is a Fellow of the AusIMM and the Society of Economic Geologists, and Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Frances Peters-Little, Committee Member

Frances Peters-Little is a Yuwaalaraay/Gamilaraay woman and lives in Lightning Ridge. She holds a BA in Communications from the University of Technology, Sydney (1991) and a MPhil in History from the Australian National University (2002). She is a filmmaker, historian, author and musician. 

Frances previously worked at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as a producer/director for seven years, where she produced five 1 hour documentaries, and for five years as a Research Fellow at the Australian National University. Her most-recognised films are 'Vote Yes for Aborigines' (2007) and 'Tent Embassy' (1992). Her publications include 'Passionate Histories: Myth, Memory & Indigenous Australia', co-edited with A. Curthoys and J. Docker (ANU Press, 2010) and most recently, entries for the Australian Dictionary of Biography (2021).

Frances is currently in the process of publishing her father’s biography, 'Jimmy Little: A Yorta Yorta Man'.

Darren Naumann AM, Committee Member

Brigadier Darren Naumann (retd) is Infrastructure Advisor to the AOC and serves on the AOC Building Subcommittee. Darren brings a wealth of infrastructure delivery experience from his management of Australia’s multi-billion dollar Defence national capital facilities program, and 36 years in leadership, management, engineering and project, program, and portfolio management.

During his career with the Australian Army, Darren held leadership, military engineering and infrastructure management appointments including six years with the US Army Corps of Engineers and UK Ministry of Defence. He oversaw infrastructure projects from Malaysia to the Cook Islands, including in Aboriginal communities across Australia, under both traditional and public-private partnership modes of delivery.

He has developed and implemented business improvement initiatives for management of the Defence estate in the UK and Australia, and seen operational service as the Force Engineer for the International Force in East Timor (INTERFET). Darren served as Director General Capital Facilities and Infrastructure, managing capital infrastructure works on Defence establishments throughout Australia – a $7 billion portfolio of over 200 projects with annual capital expenditure of over $1.2 billion.

In early 2015, Darren retired from the Australian Regular Army. The Premier of NSW appointed Darren as Regional Recovery Coordinator after the 2015 Hunter Valley and Central Coast super storm. Darren then established Anevay Solutions, a company providing strategic infrastructure, governance, incident management, procurement, and Defence advisory services.

Darren holds an Honours degree in Civil Engineering and a Master of Business Administration. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers, Australia; Member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and an accredited Certified Practicing Portfolio Executive of the Australian Institute of Project Management. Darren was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for exceptional service to Defence.

Sherri Donaldson, Technical Coordinator (Honorary)

Sherri Donaldson has an extensive career in training, technical writing and IT consultancy. She has delivered to clients throughout the UK, Europe and Africa, working in high risk onshore and offshore environments managing, designing and delivering IT training projects, technical and procedural writing, and information and knowledge management. She is skilled at working with large datasets, and is process focussed with a meticulous eye for detail.

In 2020, Sherri completed a 4 year BSc (Honours) in Geology as a mature student, including over 100 days of geological fieldwork. She has worked for several years at the National Museums of Scotland as a palaeobiology curatorial volunteer, focusing on the historic Hugh Miller Collection; is a member of palaeontology-focused professional groups, and attends international palaeontological conferences.

Scotland-based but Australian-born, Sherri first visited Lightning Ridge in 2016 for the Lightning Ridge Fossil Dig and was astounded by the variety and beauty of the region’s fossil heritage. In 2018, halfway through her BSc studies, she returned to assist with an AOC fossil collection audit, leaving Lightning Ridge as an AOC Life Member and vowing to help wherever possible. In 2020, she contributed to the User Requirements Group for the new AOC building and began reviewing collections management software for the AOC. In 2021, she has spent 4 months in Lightning Ridge working as an AOC volunteer and consultant while embarking on Masters Studies at the University of Edinburgh, doing research on fossil molluscs in the AOC collection.

Sherri also works with the University of Aberdeen as a student support assistant, and in the university’s geological teaching collections.