Bonita Maywald is the Disaster Management and Humanitarian Program Manager for the Centre on secondment from the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID).
Boni has worked for AusAID since 1996 and brings extensive experience in aid program design, delivery and evaluation. Her most recent work roles at AusAID focused on Pacific and South East Asia Regional programs, and membership of AusAID’s Rapid Response Team (with full RedR training in emergency response communications and team leadership). Boni has also completed several secondments and short term missions for AusAID working in various Asian and Pacific countries. These include: as a Civilian Peace Monitor for the Peace Monitoring Group in Bougainville (in 2000, when she lived and worked at Buin Team Site with a dozen military representatives from six different national forces); on aid program monitoring site visits in Cambodia, Thailand and Indonesia; and most recently in 2011 as Australian Government Representative and Evaluation Manager of a large (5 year $25 million) PNG-Australia sexual health improvement program.
In a private capacity, working with non-government organisations, Boni has also lived and worked for a combined total of ten years in various Pacific Island countries. This includes more than four years in Tonga (climaxing in 1982 with Cyclone Isaac ravaging the island group), and four years in Norfolk Island, a self-governing external territory of Australia (where she assisted with establishing small island governance structures and disaster response preparedness measures).
Boni has a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Pacific History and a Master of Arts in International Relations from ANU that included research on Conflict Resolution practices. She has used Tongan and Tok Pisin language skills to assist on the ground with post-conflict and post-disaster response and recovery operations. Boni is a closet poet (and has written and published poems at the rate of at least one per year of her life) and her daily recreations include refining the four meditative arts: Walk, Knit, Swim, Read.
