Special Thanks to our Baby Safety Ambassadors

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Malou Villarreal

Founder, Baby Loves Sleep

Baby Loves Sleep is one of INPAA’s inaugural Safety Ambassadors for Australia’s first baby Safety Month. The company lead and inspired by Malou Villarreal, demonstrates an outstanding commitment to the promotion and need for product safety associated with nursery products. Baby Loves Sleep is a brilliant example of how you don’t need to be a major sized company to achieve a major outcome in safety. It is a company that has embraced the need for a culture of safety best practice at the heart of its business and has shown that understanding the need for safety and effectively communicating this to their customers generates safer outcomes. On a personal level, Malou is a member of the team helping to deliver the Baby Safety Month.

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Robert Wise

Product Integrity & Child Safety Manager – Kidsafe Victoria

Robert Wise started his career in consumer product safety at Target Australia in the late 1980’s and has had a 30+ year career spanning many areas including consumer & product safety & compliance, product design, manufacturing, and regulation.

Having worked with several well-known organisations such as Catch.com.au a leading ecommerce retailer, Target Australia, CNP Brands, Funtastic Pty Ltd, and government agencies such as the Australian Consumer & Competition Commission and Dept of Transport & Aviation, Rob continues his journey working with Kidsafe Victoria a leading not-for profit in children’s safety as well as being a principal consultant at Compliance Wise Consulting.
 

Rob has been involved in several Standards Australia technical committees and is a co-author of the INPAA Product Safety Framework, which was later published by Standards Australia as a Product Safety Framework handbook. Rob has a strong personal commitment towards consumer product safety and maintains high personal standards and expectations delivering highly regarded safety outcomes. Rob provides active leadership in the Australian Nursery industry and is currently Chair of INPAA’s Product Integrity and Consumer Safety Group, a forum that develops safety guidelines and solutions to challenges associated with product safety.

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Ben Wilson

CEO Little Linen Company

Ben Wilson is the CEO and lead product innovator at The Little Linen Company. Taking over the once local manufacturing business in 2004 he has transformed this business into 4 leading brands with global reach. His passion is providing innovative safe parenting products and information to the world. He is active in the promotion of safety and is a leader in communicating the need for ongoing advancements in injury prevention. Ben is one of the inaugural Safety Ambassadors and a member of the Organising Committee for INPAAs Baby Safety Month.

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Melanie Courtney

CEO Kidsafe Victoria

As CEO of Kidsafe Victoria, Melanie Courtney is a passionate advocate of reducing preventable childhood injuries and deaths. She and her team have established programs and campaigns over many years to raise awareness on how to improve safety - in and around homes, while on the road, around water and with product safety. She is committed to informing both industry suppliers and parents and carers of the need to promote product safety in both the design phase of products and their safe use to help keep kids safe.

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Hana Krawchuk

Founder, Love To Dream

Hana Krawchuk is one of INPAA’s Baby Safety Month’s inaugural Safety Ambassadors. She is globally recognised and as a creator and innovator of baby, infant and toddler awarded sleep products that feature safety as a core design principle. Hana has been a leading advocate within the industry internationally on the issues of safety and continues to dedicate herself to helping educate parents and improving safer sleep around the world. It is through this work, and also her commitment to organisations and charities aligned with the prevention of SIDS internationally, that Hana has made an outstanding contribution to reducing preventable injuries. Hana is an active member of the industry’s leadership team and has been a driver to make Baby Safety Month possible in Australia.

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Carrie Edwards-Britt

Managing Director

The Amazing Baby Company

Carrie is a leader in the development and promotion of safety initiatives within the Nursery industry. She is a member of INPAA”s Advisory Council and a active member of working groups that design injury prevention strategies for nursery products supplied to the Australian market. Carrie is a passionate advocate for product safety within the industry and the Company that she heads, The Amazing Baby Company” is a trend setter in innovation and ensuring that product safety is a number one priority. Carrie is one of the inaugural Safety Ambassadors and a major contributor in the delivery of Australia’s Baby Safety month.

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Alex Hamilton

Co-Founder, River's Gift

Alex is co-founder of SIDS charity River's Gift, established following the tragic death of her 4 month old son, River in 2011. She is also proud to work with Kidsafe Victoria as their Engagement and Relationship manager, working with bereaved families supporting them to establish legacy programs in honour of their children. Originally from the UK, Alex has travelled nationally and internationally, speaking to audiences to passionately share her own story of courage, resilience and hope. Alex is Mum to two “rainbow” babies – Shiloh and Bodhi and feels so privileged to work with families to impact change within the community.

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First Steps Safety Steps Baby Proofing

First Steps Safe Steps Baby Proofing is a company whose mission is to create safer homes for babies and infants to grow and explore. As a service, they continually demonstrate their commitment to baby safety by providing families with home safety assessments, correct and safe installation of essential baby safety products and education about home safety. Since opening, First Steps Safe Steps has worked with thousands of families to support their baby safety needs. As a Safety Ambassador they are passionate in their  collaboration with INPAA to help reduce the rate of preventable infant-related accidents and amplify the conversation about baby safety.

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Ron Somers

Founder, Hazardwhys

Ron has made a career investigating hazards and promoting community safety in Scandinavia and Australia.  From 1986, he formally monitored the occurrence of trauma in South Australia, as the initiator and manager of the state’s hospital-based injury surveillance system.

 

After graduating from the University of California with an MPH degree in maternal and child health, and a doctorate in epidemiology, Ron joined an injury-prevention team in Denmark, where he worked for three-and-a-half years, including a collaboration with the World Health Organisation.  Ron subsequently migrated to Australia to take up a research position in injury prevention at the University of Adelaide, where he maintained a formal academic appointment until recently. Earlier in his career he was a Peace Corps teacher trainer for two years in the Republic of the Philippines.  He works closely with various peak industry, consumer and safety bodies, including Standards Australia and Standards New Zealand.

 

Ron has been responsible for a number of significant regulatory changes affecting consumer-product safety, road safety and other issues.  He has appeared as an expert witness in coronial, civil and criminal cases, domestically and overseas.  For the last nine of his 30 years with the South Australian state government, Ron was Director, Epidemiology.  His world-leading innovation in infant sleep safety was recognised in 2013 with a prestigious prize awarded by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, which recently adopted Ron’s innovation as a new product-safety regulation.

 

In 2022, Ron invented and validated a much simplified method for assessing the rebreathing risk of infant sleep products.  He is currently working closely with the Infant and Nursery Products Alliance of Australia and with Standards Australia to introduce a new CO2 safety standard and to update the existing firmness standard. 

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Cara Sayer

SnoozeShade

Cara is INPAA’s safety ambassador representing INPAA in the United kingdom. She is an active promoter of safety and is an expert in products associated with UV protection for infants and has been instrumental in helping INPAA establish safety guidelines for this category of infant products. Cara is passionate about product safety.  Before launching her products she consulted with the UK’s leading thermo-physicist and wanted to ensure that safety was at the heart of her brand.  She took the unusual step of designing her products to meet the safety standards of a newborn toy to minimise risk. 

 

Cara is an entrepreneur and the inventor of SnoozeShade, the world’s bestselling range of baby sun and sleep shades. In 2009, Cara found herself in need of a solution to help her baby daughter sleep in the pushchair. She couldn’t find anything already on the market, so she decided to create that solution herself!

 

Despite having no previous experience in retail or manufacturing, Cara has since turned SnoozeShade into a global brand that has helped hundreds of thousands of parents, won more than 80 awards and is recommended by the world’s leading baby sleep experts.

 

Cara tries to educate her customers on the importance of checking for safety certification when looking at baby products.  This is especially critical as less regulated sales platforms/retailers emerge where not even basic level testing will be done.  Cara launched the #lookatthelabelbaby campaign in 2024 to highlight how easy it is to spot an untested product by just looking at the washing label (or lack thereof).