Louise is one of Australia’s most skilled media professionals with 20 years’ experience at organisations including Fairfax Media, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Seven West Media and NSW Health.
Louise began her career at Seven West Media, before joining Fairfax Media where, over 12 years, she reported on health, courts and politics as the State Political Reporter, as well as covering general news.
In her role as Court Reporter, Louise was responsible for managing a bureau of several other court reporters, based out of the NSW Supreme Court. She covered all levels and jurisdictions from the High Court to local courts across civil and criminal jurisdictions. She developed a particular interest in family provision litigation, class actions and defamation. In 2015 Louise won the NSW Kennedy Award for Outstanding Court Reporting for her work on a series of exclusive stories relating to a Sydney judge, which led to that judge being subject to a hearing of the NSW Judicial Commission which found his actions amounted to “inappropriate judicial conduct".
Louise has been a member of the NSW Chief Justice's media working group and presented seminars to incoming Federal Court associates on media-court relations. She has been a contributor to online legal websites Justinian and the Gazette of Law and Journalism. She was a member of the NSW Chief Justice’s media advisory group that negotiated and implemented the transformation of 21st century media coverage including the introduction of filming inside courts.
In 2015, Louise was selected for the Women In Media mentoring program, a national mentoring and networking initiative for women in all facets of the media. She was partnered with Walkley Award-winning journalist and broadcaster Celina Edmonds for a year of one-on-one personal and professional development.
While covering health and education, Louise won numerous awards including the Yooralla Media Award for best news report in 2010, the Royal Australian and the New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists’ Media Award in 2008 and the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia Media Award in 2007.
As State Political Reporter, she was elected deputy president of the NSW Press Gallery.
In 2019, Louise presented a session on “Managing the Media” to the National Judicial College of Australia alongside NSW Chief Justice Tom Bathurst and former WA Chief Justice Wayne Martin.
Just prior to joining John Connolly & Partners, Louise was Strategic Communications Manager for Sydney Local Health District where she was responsible for creating and implementing a district-wide communication strategy for more than 640,000 residents and five hospitals. This included Royal Prince Alfred Hospital where Louise’s role involved engaging with internal and external stakeholders to effectively communicate timely and accurate information to staff, patients and the broader community.
Louise has a Bachelor of Arts in Communication (Journalism) from the University of Technology, Sydney.