Frances Barns

Frances works at the intersection of Indigenous-led development, climate resilience, and governance across Australia and the Indo-Pacific. She wears many hats: as well as work in participative foresight processes, she helped to found Binjabo Global Consulting, an Indigenous-led firm specialising in multi-stakeholder strategy, monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL), and community-centred design. With a background spanning AusAID/DFAT, international development programs across Indonesia and the Pacific, and complex policy reform initiatives, she brings both rigorous analytical capability and extensive on-ground partnership experience. She is currently leading the KINRA project — a net-zero Indigenous housing precinct in the Kimberley, Western Australia — a long-term vision and theory of change initiative developed with Traditional Owner co-founders and academic partners. Frances’s work spans governance, social impact, resilience, and climate change across the public and community sectors. Frances lives in Western Australia.