Steph was appointed as Executive Officer for Pill Testing Australia in 2023.

Steph is a member of the Pill Testing Australia consortium that worked on the 2018 and 2019 ACT trials and is a Peer Educator working at CanTEST. She has qualifications in health law, humanities, alcohol and other drugs and addictive behaviours.

Steph is an Australian legal practitioner, having volunteered for several years in community law. She has experience as a Director on a number of Boards including Harm Reduction Australia. She led Harm Reduction Victoria’s DanceWize program for 9 years and has extensive experience delivering harm reduction services in festival and nightlife settings.

Steph has worked and volunteered with harm reduction, compassionate care, and drug checking services overseas, including DanceSafe USA; Kosmicare Association, Portugal; and ANKORS, Canada.

Erica is a dedicated advocate for harm reduction with extensive experience in drug education and community outreach. She holds a degree in Criminology and Criminal Justice, and completed an honours thesis focused on the consumption patterns of novel and emerging psychoactive substances.

Erica has worked for the NSW Users and Aids Association, National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, Kirketon Road Centre, the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre, and various Needle and Syringe Programs. She has extensive experience delivering harm reduction initiatives at music festival and nightlife settings which gained during her 6-year tenure at DanceWize NSW where she contributed to significant organisational growth.

Erica is deeply committed to empowering communities and championing human rights, social justice, and self-determined health. Since 2017, she has been an active member of Reclaim the Streets, playing a key role in organizing large-scale grass roots “protest-ivals”—street-based festivals that combine activism with music. These events have addressed critical issues such as marriage equality, trans nightlife safety, and drug user rights and drug law reform.

Gino Vumbaca is the President of Harm Reduction Australia and was involved in the establishment of Pill Testing Australia, he is also Principal of 3V Consulting Services.

Mr Vumbaca has extensive experience in the HIV/ AIDS and drug and alcohol fields both in Australia and internationally. He is a Churchill Fellow, has completed a Social Work degree and a Master of Business Administration at the University of Sydney and is a qualified Company Director.

Mr Vumbaca is the former Executive Director of the Australian National Council on Drugs – a position he held for over 15 years – and which provided advice directly to the offices of the previous 4 Australian Prime Ministers (The Hon John Howard, The Hon Kevin Rudd, The Hon Julia Gillard and The Hon Tony Abbott) as well as numerous Ministers and senior officials. Previously Mr Vumbaca worked as the Manager of HIV/AIDS and related services with the NSW Department of Corrective Services, in a variety of drug and alcohol centres as a counsellor and was responsible for coordinating the establishment of the NSW network of needle and syringe exchange programs for the NSW Health Department.

Mr Vumbaca also continues to provide advice on prisons, HIV and drug issues for international organisations such as the United Nations & World Health Organisation.

He is also Treasurer of Just Reinvest NSW and President of the largest non-government drug and alcohol organisation in Macau SAR – ARTM.

Professor Mal McLeod is a teacher and researcher within the Research School of Chemistry at the Australian National University. He obtained his PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Cambridge in 1998 and since then has worked continuously at Universities around Australia.

Mal’s research interests include the development of new chemical and analytical methods to detect drugs in sport and this research is supported by funding agencies including the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

He led the chemistry undertaking the first festival pill testing trials held in the ACT in 2018 and 2019 and served as the chemistry lead for the CanTEST Health and Drug Checking Service pilot. In 2022 Mal completed his Churchill Fellowship project to visit leading international drug checking services to rapidly improve the analytical chemistry capabilities in Australia.

David Caldicott is an Irish Emergency Consultant, working in the Bush Capital of Australia. He holds conjoint academic positions with the University of Canberra, and the Australian National University.

He’s been involved in the campaign to introduce pill testing in Australia since the early ‘00s, initially in South Australia, and more recently, and successfully, in The Australian Capital Territory, initially at festivals with Pill Testing Australia, and then at a fixed site service, with CanTEST. He is the clinical lead and co-designer of both.

He was involved in the creation of WEDINOS in Wales, and the ACTINOSProject in the ACT. He has an interest mass gathering, festival and disaster medicine, and the toxicology of illicit drugs. He is a passionate advocate for evidence-based drugs policy, particularly from the service provider’s perspective. His work in this space has brought him around the world, and allowed him the opportunity to take the aspects of overseas elements best suited to the Australian medicolegal environment, to create a drug checking service built for Australia. He is also the co-author of one of world’s only ethical frameworks for the delivery of drug checking, the Trans Tasman Charter.

He balances his voluntary work on pill testing with a full time clinical position, and the co-wrangling of many small and future activists- with the infinite patience and tolerance of the only adult in his family, his wife.

Annie Madden is the Executive Director of Harm Reduction Australia, which is a part time role she holds alongside a part time role as a Project Lead with the International Network of People Who Use Drugs (INPUD). Annie has provided technical expertise to UNODC, WHO, UNAIDS and has been a member of Australian Government delegations to the UN General Assembly.

Until April 2016, Annie was CEO of the Australian Injecting & Illicit Drug Users League (AIVL) CEO of the NSW Users & AIDS Association (NUAA) from 1994 to 2000. She recently completed a PhD at the University of New South Wales in Sydney into ‘Drug User Representation in High Level Policy Contexts’. In 2019, Annie was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for her decades of work promoting the health and human rights of people who use drugs globally.