From unemployed with a criminal record to accidental IT hero

“We're a small not-for-profit, and when I started, there was literally only three of us working here at the time,” Kollios recalled. “We had this really dodgy CRM, but then, because we got a government contract, which came with some funding, we had to make sure that our program milestones aligned and were able to be reported. I swapped us to Zoho and assisted in setting up the CRM to track those, so it was easy to deliver reports, because governments need evidence for everything.

“I got that up and running, and from there, we’ve had more contracts come through, so I’ve just sort of worked with the system and adapted it to be able to capture the data to make it easier for us to report on. Now I do the website, the socials, run the mentor program and do all the operational side of things,” she said.

“I don’t know, my brain just clicks with it.”

Maybe that story on its own would have been enough to explain why Gemma Kollios, now Success Works’ mentor program and candidate operations manager, has been named as one of three finalists for ‘Best accidental IT person’ at the looming 2026 Australian Not-for-profit Technology Awards, to be announced on May 6.

But the most remarkable part of Kollios’ emergence is unrelated to the tech.

Success Works is a charity devoted to helping women with a criminal record find work so they can begin redefining their lives and their potential, away from their legal issues. That’s how Gemma Kollios first encountered the charity, as a client in need of its help when she was down and out, and all but unemployable.

Kollios was in a dark place, a damaging relationship having left her the victim of domestic violence which snowballed into addiction, homelessness and then a police record. It took two and a half years for her to climb out of the pit, but by then, any employer who ran a police check got that look on their face and that hardness in their eyes.

“I had a good background,” she told the Community Advocate. “I went to a private school, all that sort of stuff. A normal kid growing up. Then yeah, just one bad relationship ruined me for a couple of years.”

“But now I'm back better than ever. No more running on the streets. I’m an educated woman running a business. If I can do it, the women we support can do it as well.”

Kollios estimates that Success Works places 50 or so women in employment each year, working with “open door” employers who either don’t do a background check or perform a risk assessment once they are alerted that a potential female hire has a criminal record.

Kollios provides lived experience proof that you can fight back from a police record. She has her kids living with her again, bought a house earlier this year and is optimistic about her work and life.

This is despite having been fired from the first job that Success Works placed her in. When that employer got the results of her police record check, it let her go.

But Success Works happened to be advertising an administration role, so Kollios applied. The organisation took her on and she has never looked back.

“We work in the backend with about 300 women a year, including job-ready program training, workshops, and mentoring,” she said. “We work with companies to perform risk assessments, looking at what charges the candidates have versus what role they’re going for. We support them with disclosing as well. It’s a big factor because people automatically think, ‘Oh, my God, they’re a criminal!’ And a lot of the time it’s based– as my personal story was – around a DV incident, which then I ended up falling into addiction, homelessness. It was only like two and a half years of my life going through that, and then finding the right supports to get out of it.

Kollios suffers from social anxiety and is not entirely unhappy that she won’t be able to attend the awards ceremony, because she’ll be travelling. Her boss, Yvette Evans-Streeter, who nominated her, plans to be in the room just in case she wins.

About the awards

The Australian Not-for-profit Technology Awards are the for-purpose sector’s biggest awards for excellence in technology. Apart from “best accidental IT person”, for-purpose leaders will be recognised in these categories:

• not-for-profit technology innovator of the year
• best use of AI for community impact
• technology volunteer of the year
• best use of data for community impact
• technology for community impact.

The “best accidental IT person” award recognises “a volunteer or staff member who has made an exemplary contribution to the NFP sector and has positively impacted the lives of others by taking responsibility for their organisation’s IT, despite it not originally being a formal part of their role.”

Kollios is up against Karen Cooper, from the Hedland Well Women's Centre, and Mehreen Basaria, from Redgum Justice.

The awards are part of the Infoxchange technology for social justice conference, which will be held on May 6–8 at the Telstra Customer Insight Centre in Melbourne. Tickets are still available.

The Institute of Community Directors Australia is a supporter of the conference.

More information

The 2026 Australian not-for-profit technology awards website is here.

The Infoxchange Technology for Social Justice conference 2026 website is here.

Success Works.

Redgum Justice.

Hedland Well women's centre.