Published: 25/10/19

Krissoulla Borg joins the LRT board as treasurer, bringing with her years of accounting, financial and project leading experience. We speak to her about her vision for LRT.

The Living Room Theatre warmly welcomes Krissoulla Borg to the board. Krissoulla has a strong background in accounting, finance and project leading. Her vision for LRT’s future is supported by a rewarding career with Suncorp, where she has worked for almost 15 years.

As LRT comes of age, it needs a strong foundation on which to lay its increasingly venerable presence in Sydney’s art and theatre scene. Krissoulla will be integral to building that foundation through a strategy of increased media presence and the seeking of a corporate sponsorship for LRT to continue its important mission of giving voice to the often unseen survivors of violence and injustice human and nonhuman.

“From a young age, I have always been surrounded by people that give back — give back to those who are vulnerable, those who are less fortunate,” says Krissoulla. “Over the past 8 years I have worked as a volunteer on many RedCross initiatives. It’s in my blood, to give my time back to those that need it most. Arthur Miller once said ‘don’t be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value’ . . . no financial reward compares to the feeling of making a difference to the life of a person less fortunate than yourself.”

Why LRT? As a NIDA graduate herself, Krissoulla knows good work when she sees it. “I have read stories about Michelle St Anne and [her] beautifully crafted poetic works,” she says. “I was curious as to how her mind works, and what sources help her spin these stories into compelling [theatre] . . . after our first meeting, I realised that you don’t come across passionate artists and storytellers like Michelle often, so when you do, you stick with them. [For Michelle] it’s not just about the performance, the storyline, it’s about the space, the light, the sound, the movement — [her theatre] caters to all senses . . . it also happened to be that my accounting and finance background were skills that the Board was after — so it was a great fit.”

Into 2020 Krissoulla will help LRT face the many challenges of upsizing an independent not-for-profit theatre company. “The greatest challenge, I think, is in communicating the value and the impact of the arts . . . artists continually need to quantify their economic worth,” she says. “Building and harnessing strong relationships across a wide network of people [and] different industries is where the power lies.”

Krissoulla Borg is a qualified accountant (CPA) and HR professional (MBA HRM, Deakin). Krissoulla began her career working in audit, in one of the big four corporate accounting firms, before joining the financial services industry, where she currently works as a Project Manager. Some of Krissoulla’s career highlights have been captured in articles for Real Business Magazine and CPA magazine In the Black. She also studied acting at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) and has for more than 8 years volunteered for the Australian RedCross. Krissoulla’s greatest role to date is being a mother to a beautiful little girl.

Mark Bosch majored in French and Gender Studies at the University of Sydney, and has been 2019 Honours Research Fellow at Sydney Environment Institute. He plays the violin and has since 2017 been a member of the Sydney University Symphony Orchestra, and also writes as Lead Critic for the online youth classical music magazine CutCommon. Mark lives on Darug land in southwest Sydney.