Penny Gordon has over a 42 year career as a psychologist during which time she has worked extensively across clinical and organisational fields of psychology. This has included for the last 28 years working as Director of Penny Gordon & Associates focusing on supporting and developing teams via processes such as team coaching, review and planning, debriefing, and delivering specific training and facilitation services. Penny is a highly regarded trainer and facilitator, and as well as regularly presenting professional development programs has also taught across a range of graduate and postgraduate university courses.
Penny has many years’ experience consulting to statutory organisations, government, non-government, and community organisations. In her consultancy roles she has also consulted across different child protection jurisdictions throughout Australia. Penny has also consulted extensively across a range of sectors including legal and justice services, mental health, oncology and palliative care, domestic and family violence, homelessness and housing.
Clinically, Penny has specialised in supporting adults who have experienced significant trauma as either an adult or a child. This area of work includes working with members of the community to resolve their experiences of primary trauma and also assisting a broad range of professionals across first responder groups who are vulnerable to secondary traumatic stress due to their continuous exposure to other people’s trauma. Additionally, Penny has championed these organisations to be trauma informed in the delivery and design of their services.
Penny also provides a broad range of training programs to assist professionals to continue to develop their capacities. Penny possesses a deep respect for workers on the front line who provide services to vulnerable members of our communities. As a result, Penny has provided supervision and coaching support to many hundreds of frontline workers, front line team leaders and senior leaders over her career. This has included providing training in the areas of supervision and coaching so that both supervisors and supervisees can maximise the benefit of an important workplace source of support and development. Currently, Penny provides regular coaching to professionals working across areas including legal and justice services, homeless and housing services, mental health programs, first nation family and community support programs, child protection and domestic and family violence services and paediatric oncology and palliative care.
In 2021 Penny received an Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for her services to the community, in particular, supporting community services working in both areas of primary and secondary trauma.