About Us

Exec­u­tive Officer:

Ari­ana Hen­der­son
Parks Vic­to­ria 

Ari­ana com­menced her career with Parks Vic­to­ria in Decem­ber 2004 as a Sea­son­al Ranger at Albert Park in Mel­bourne, and con­tin­ued as a Park Ranger in Vis­i­tor Ser­vices and Events man­age­ment. In 2006 Ari­ana joined the Edu­ca­tion and Inter­pre­ta­tion Team, where she launched Parks Victoria’s Junior Ranger Pro­gram and Ranger Roo kids receiv­ing Excel­lence Awards from the Inter­pre­ta­tion Aus­tralia Asso­ci­a­tion and the Aus­tralian Mar­ket­ing Institute. 

In 2010 Ari­ana moved into the Fire and Emer­gency Ser­vices Direc­torate and under­took a strate­gic review of Parks Victoria’s Emer­gency Man­age­ment Plan­ning process. In 2015 she com­menced her cur­rent role Man­ag­er Fire and Emer­gency Recov­ery and leads the statewide coor­di­na­tion of recov­ery pro­grams fol­low­ing emer­gen­cies on Parks Vic­to­ria man­aged land. 

Since 2006 Ari­ana has been a Gen­er­al Fire-fight­er attain­ing Crew Leader and Oper­a­tions Offi­cer 1 accred­i­ta­tions, cur­rent­ly work­ing towards Burn Offi­cer in Charge. She is a recip­i­ent of the Nation­al Emer­gency Medal recog­nis­ing her con­tri­bu­tion to the 2009 Black Sat­ur­day bushfires. 

In 2015 Ari­ana co-pre­sent­ed ​‘Bring your Lip­stick’ at the AFAC con­fer­ence high­light­ing gen­der equi­ty issues with­in the emer­gency ser­vices sec­tor. Since then Ari­ana has been a strong advo­cate through her involve­ment on the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­ment, Land, Water and Plan­ning (DEL­WP) ​‘Women in Fire and Emer­gen­cies Lead­er­ship Action Plan’; and as a mem­ber of Parks Victoria’s Diver­si­ty and Inclu­sion Lead­er­ship Group. She is proud of her achieve­ment pro­duc­ing the 2016 Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day ​‘Burn­ing Ambi­tion’ video high­light­ing women in fire and emergency. 

Ari­ana has com­plet­ed a Bach­e­lor of Applied Sci­ence dou­ble degree in Parks, Recre­ation and Her­itage and Eco­tourism, where she received the Dean’s Award for Excel­lence and the Inter­pre­ta­tion Aus­tralia award for Aca­d­e­m­ic Excellence. 

When not at work, Ari­ana is in pur­suit of tick­ing off her 101 dreams list. She has already accom­plished walk­ing 900km Camino de San­ti­a­go across Spain, the Quar­ry trail to Machu Pic­chu in Peru, sail­ing the Greek islands, a Shaman­ic heal­ing retreat in Mex­i­co, danc­ing Sal­sa in Cuba, vis­it­ing Moroc­co, the Gala­pa­gos Islands, and dri­ving an RV across USA and Cana­da to the Cal­gary stam­pede. Dur­ing her most recent adven­ture to Africa in 2018 she sum­mit­ted Mount Kil­i­man­jaro, saw the great migra­tion in the Serengeti and vis­it­ed the Maa­sai Mara. In her spare time, she attempts to speak very bad Span­ish, enjoys tak­ing pho­tos and writes draft nov­els which she hopes to one day share with the world through her website. 

Burn­ing Ambi­tion https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​8​H​o​C​N​W​1XZ4A