Marking a legacy - Leith Boully's contribution to Watertrust

Leith Boully, Founding Director of Watertrust Australia

A champion for community, leadership and water reform

This month, we acknowledge the retirement of one of Watertrust’s founding Directors, Leith Boully, a leader whose impact on Australia’s water policy landscape spans decades, and whose clarity, conviction and care have helped shape the very DNA of our organisation.

Leith has been part of Watertrust from our beginning. From early conversations about what better water policy might look like, she brought deep insight, a fierce commitment to community voices, and a refusal to settle for anything less than lasting, meaningful change.

Her leadership has helped anchor Watertrust’s work in rigour and care; always asking the hard questions, but never without purpose. “What are you trying to achieve? Who is this really for?” she would ask. The answers always mattered.

Across a remarkable career – from her time on the Murray-Darling Basin Community Advisory Committee and the National Water Commission, to leadership roles at Murrumbidgee Irrigation and Sun Water, and her long-standing contribution to the Australian Water Partnerships, the Peter Cullen Trust and the Australian Rural Leadership Foundation – Leith has modelled the importance of courage and connection.

Her belief in community leadership, and in building capability at every level, has left an indelible mark. So too has her optimism; her belief that this moment, this team, and this method represent our best chance yet to do something genuinely better.

To honour that legacy, Watertrust will host the Leith Boully Oration; a special event to elevate the kinds of conversations Leith has always championed. The oration will be held in March next year and will focus on one of the questions Leith believes we must keep asking: Does fairness really matter?

For Watertrust, and for so many who’ve had the privilege to work alongside Leith, the answer is clear. And yet, as always, she reminds us to ask it again, and mean it.

Thank you, Leith. For your wisdom, your leadership, and your belief in what’s possible.