Vesna has spent more than two decades working at the intersection of major infrastructure, community engagement and social licence. The work has taken her across some of Australia's most complex and contested projects, and shaped a practice grounded in doing the hard yards in environments where the stakes are high and trust is earned slowly.

Her career began in corporate communications before she shifted into infrastructure, a move that gave her a commercial instinct to sit alongside the engagement craft. She has worked with several of Australia's largest contractors and project owners, including John Holland, Bouygues Construction, Melbourne Water, McConnell Dowell, Thiess and VicRoads. Early on she spent two years in Mumbai with Reliance Infrastructure, a stretch that sharpened her instincts for high-pressure delivery and stakeholder complexity at scale.

At John Holland, where she spent close to a decade, Vesna led the national Communications, Community and Stakeholder Engagement function with a team of more than 80 across pre-contract, development and delivery. She directed communications on some of the country's most significant infrastructure investments, including the $15.4 billion River Torrens to Darlington project in South Australia and the $6.8 billion West Gate Tunnel in Victoria. Both demanded sustained, high-stakes engagement with government, media, affected communities and industry partners over long and contested timelines.

The Ministry of Engagement works across the full breadth of infrastructure: road, rail and social infrastructure, the transition to renewable energy, electricity transmission, data infrastructure, technology, finance and government programs. These sectors share a common challenge. Large-scale projects move through communities being asked to absorb significant change at pace, with real questions about who benefits and who bears the cost.

Getting the social outcomes right in that context isn't a secondary concern. It's the work that determines whether projects secure approval, hold their licence to operate and leave something genuinely positive behind. That takes more than process. It takes a practice built on understanding what communities need from major infrastructure, what governments are trying to achieve, and how to build trust that holds up over a multi-year build. It means working upstream to shape project design rather than only managing communications, and staying focused on outcomes that outlast construction. That is the orientation The Ministry of Engagement brings to every engagement.