About Us

Anne Pick­les PSM, BA, Grad Dip Lib Sci

Fire and Res­cue NSW

Anne Pick­les is Man­ag­er Capa­bil­i­ty Pro­gram and Pol­i­cy in the Oper­a­tional Capa­bil­i­ty
Direc­torate of Fire and Res­cue NSW (FRN­SW). Anne devel­oped FRNSW’s emer­gency
man­age­ment pol­i­cy and plan­ning frame­work and leads the devel­op­ment of its emer­gency
man­age­ment plans.
Anne has worked for FRN­SW for more than 30 years, in which time she has been involved
with near­ly every aspect of the ser­vice. Start­ing as the Librar­i­an, she was a founder mem­ber
of the Aus­tralasian Librar­i­ans in Emer­gency Ser­vices (ALIES) net­work. Anne then moved
into admin­is­tra­tion, gain­ing expe­ri­ence in knowl­edge man­age­ment, pol­i­cy and pro­ce­dure
devel­op­ment, gov­er­nance and risk, strat­e­gy and plan­ning, and the work­ings of gov­ern­ment.
In 2005 Anne was award­ed the Pub­lic Ser­vice Medal for out­stand­ing lead­er­ship in the
devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of infor­ma­tion man­age­ment prac­tices and coor­di­nat­ing the
devel­op­ment of pro­ce­dures tar­get­ing the infor­ma­tion needs of fire­fight­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly in
rela­tion to work health and safe­ty. Anne has also been award­ed the FRN­SW Long Ser­vice
and Good Con­duct Medal and two Clasps.
Anne was involved in the start-up of FRNSW’s Lessons Learned Cen­tre and works with
fire­fight­ers to gath­er and analyse oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence and turn it into explic­it knowl­edge
to dri­ve con­tin­u­ous improve­ment in safe­ty and ser­vice deliv­ery. Anne cham­pi­ons diver­si­ty
and inclu­sion in the devel­op­ment of FRN­SW strat­e­gy and pol­i­cy and is a mem­ber of the
FRN­SW Women’s Inclu­sive Net­work.
Anne became involved in WAFA when she attend­ed and was inspired by the 2018 WAFA
Con­fer­ence in Welling­ton, New Zealand. Anne was elect­ed to the WAFA Board in 2018 and
became Pres­i­dent at the 2021 Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing. Anne is also a mem­ber of the
Aus­tralasian Women in Emer­gen­cies Net­work.
Anne has a Grad­u­ate Diplo­ma in Library Sci­ence and a Bach­e­lor of Arts degree from
Syd­ney Uni­ver­si­ty. She reads wide­ly and is an active cit­i­zen sci­en­tist con­duct­ing wildlife
mon­i­tor­ing in her Local Gov­ern­ment Area.
As a vol­un­teer, Anne con­tributed 20 years ser­vice to 2MBS-FM, a com­mu­ni­ty radio sta­tion
broad­cast­ing clas­si­cal music. Cur­rent­ly, Anne does bush regen­er­a­tion with her local coun­cil
and the Friends of Lord Howe Island. She enjoys eco-tour­ing in Aus­tralia and New Zealand
and has a par­tic­u­lar fond­ness for islands.