Denise is a full time Officer of the Pulp & Paper Workers District of the Timber, Furnishing & Textiles Union – formerly the CFMEU Manufacturing Division - and has been the elected President since 2018. With extensive experience in the forestry industry, her technical discipline is in workplace health & safety and hazard management. Her breadth of experience incorporates policy and system development; investigation & analysis and culture change as well as industrial relations and negotiating skills. She has been a key stakeholder in speciality industry safety projects with the Victorian Country Fire Authority, Victorian State Coroner and WorkSafe Victoria.

In more recent years her focus has been in representing workers in the pulp & paper sector. Denise leads the enterprise bargaining negotiations across the Australian pulp & paper sector. Her experience in the sector means she also has a strong understanding about the needs of the industry and the required infrastructure for skills and training for workers.

Denise also represents workers from the timber, fibre and pulp and paper sectors as a member of the Victorian Skills Authority Resources Industry Advisory Group, and since 2023 has been a member of the Forest and Wood Products Council – Strategic Forest and Renewable Materials Partnership (Federal Government). She currently chairs the $10M Forestry Workforce Training Program Steering Committee.

Denise is a Director of First Super – the $5 billion industry superannuation fund for the timber; pulp & paper; furniture & joinery industries and in December 2025 she was appointed as Acting Co-Chair of the Fund. She is also a Director and Chair of ForestWorks – the industry owned, not-for-profit organisation offering services to support the skills development of the forest, wood, paper, timber and furnishing industries.