26 February 2026
The Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA) welcomes a positive change in its leadership with the RCOA Board’s appointment of Adama Kamara and Paul Power as Co-CEOs.
Adama was appointed Deputy CEO in January 2021, bringing 15 years of experience in capacity building and leadership roles with non-profit, health and local government organisations in Western Sydney. Her extensive voluntary involvement in community activities includes co-chairing the first youth-led organisation in Sydney’s Sierra Leonean community and initiating and leading the multi-award-winning Refugee Camp in My Neighbourhood project since 2014.
Born in Sierra Leone, Adama and her family were in Australia for her father’s university study when civil war broke out in their home country. Unable to return, the family sought asylum and became involved in sponsoring and supporting refugees displaced by Sierra Leone’s civil war to settle in Australia.
In her five years with RCOA, Adama has applied her professional experience and personal knowledge to various aspects of the organisation’s work, including its advocacy on issues affecting recently arrived refugees and people seeking asylum. Adama’s international engagement has included co-chairing the Refugee Leadership Alliance, the first pooled funding mechanism in the Asia Pacific region for refugee-led organisations.
When Paul joined RCOA as CEO in May 2006, he steered the organisation’s development as a leader in involving people with lived refugee experience in its advocacy and community engagement work. Since 2007, RCOA has actively supported refugee representatives to participate in key international meetings on refugee policy and has taken every opportunity to support the development of local, national and international refugee-led advocacy networks.
Over time, RCOA has recruited people who can bring both professional expertise and lived refugee experience to decision-making roles. Today, half of its Board – including its president Jasmina Bajraktarevic-Hayward – and half of its staff management team are people who have both lived experience and high-level professional skills.
Adama’s and Paul’s appointments as Co-CEOs is the next stage of RCOA’s development as an organisation that believes that advocating for fair treatment of people seeking protection from persecution is a responsibility shared by people with lived refugee experience and Australians of all backgrounds who believe in human rights.
