Bernadette Or
Principal
B3 Consulting

With a diverse background in commerce and accounting, Bernadette has held senior financial executive positions at both commercial and not-for-profit organisations and helped them realise their strategic goals. Such positions include the National Finance Manager at the Starlight Children’s Foundation, the Corporate Services Manager at the Entreprise and Career Education Foundation, the National Finance Manager at the Australian Human Resources Institute and the Company Accountant at Standards Australia.

Bernadette left full time employment and founded B3 Consulting with an aim to assist organisations to improve their efficiency, effectiveness and to deliver better results. She has consulted to a wide range of clients including the Dusseldorp Skills Forum, Meat and Livestock Australia, Centennial Parklands, NSW Dept of Education, Streetwize Communications, SHELLs, Retail Solutions and Links Youth and Disability Services.

Her current assignments include financial reporting, remodelling, organisational performance measurements, and corporate governance.

Dale has been working in education as a teacher for the past 25 years, 20 years with young people who are marginalized from mainstream education.
Presently he is the Principal of the Edmund Rice Education Flexible Learning Centre  (FLC) Network. The network consists of five sites, Logan City, Brisbane City, Deception Bay, Sunshine Coast and Townsville and an educational outreach based in Ipswich.
The Centres offer educational pathways based on social justice principles, to young people 13- 18 years of age who have fallen through the mainstream education net. They are all registered non-state schools.
Dale has  a fundamental belief in the dignity of each individual and trust in relationships based on respect. His Masters work has been focusing on values and ethics and the relationship to education and marginalization.

Dale feels privileged to have been associated with the hundreds of young people and staff that he has worked with over the years with his involvement with the FLC network.

ERIC SIDOTI has extensive experience in public policy development, advocacy and communications. After more than decade working in the human rights movement, he established Strategic Options, a small consultancy, in 1992. Since then he has developed long-term relationships with a small number of clients principally the Dusseldorp Skills Forum where he has been a part of the DSF team for a number of years.

He was closely associated with the establishment of the Australian Student Traineeship Foundation and retained a working relationship with that organization and its successor, ECEF, for some years. He has in addition been engaged in a range of projects for organisations as diverse as Job Futures, Greening Australia, the Human Rights Council of Australia, and Amnesty International. More recently he has been working with the Australian Red Cross in addition to DSF.

Gabriella Holmes is the supervising psychologist at Triple Care Farm, on the southern highlands in NSW. With over 7 years experience working with young people with complex needs including dual diagnosis (substance misuse and mental illness), family break down, abuse and trauma. Gabriella has a passion for connecting with young people and assisting them to turn their lives around.

Gabriella is a registered psychologist completing her studies at the University of Wollongong with a Bachelor of Arts (Psychology), a Graduate Diploma in Applied Psychology and has recently completed a Master in Adolescent Mental Health through the NSW Institute of Psychiatry.

Norman Holmes
Links to Learning Coordinator
Mission Australia: Triple Care Farm

Norman Holmes is the Links To Learning Coordinator at Triple Care Farm in Southern NSW. He comes to this position with experience in a range of educational settings including early childhood education and disability services. Norman brings a passion for learning and creativity to his position and hopes to reignite this passion in the young people he works with.

Norman studied at the University of Wollongong completing a Bachelor of Teaching (Early Childhood Education), and going on to studies towards a Graduate Diploma of Heath Science (Developmental Disability).

Jason Tatipata is part of the Indigenous Enterprise and Youth Employment Team that has responsibility for managing the IYEC programme in DEWR (Department of Employment and Workplace Relations) national office. Jason is a proud Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander man, whose mother’s family is from Wuthathi people n Cape York and father’s family is from Badu Island in the Torres Straits. Jason commenced work in Indigenous Affairs in 1992, and over the last five years has specifically worked on yout- focused programs.

Director of the Centre for Learning, Change and Development and Senior Lecturer in Educational Psychology, School of Education at Murdoch University in Western Australia. Judy is a leader in research and development of mentoring in Australia.

She is an enthusiastic advocate of mentoring as a strategy for personal and career development, as well as team building. Her work encompasses development of theory on mentoring, training of mentors and program coordinators, and evaluation of mentoring programs and has been the Project Director of several large national research projects concerning mentoring.

Judy was a member of the steering committee to establish a national mentoring association in Australia and is currently the convenor of the group. She provides advice to a wide range of organizations about mentoring.

Judy Yaron has over 20 years experience as a teacher, teacher trainer and pedagogical consultant. She is an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) textbook writer and specialises in material development. Judy is currently undertaking her PhD in ‘Shared Leadership in an Online Teachers Community’ at The School of Education at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Judy is currently YALP’s (Yachad Accelerated Learning Project )
National Coordinator and has worked in Australia developing and implementing accelerated learning programs in literacy in Shepparton, Victoria and Aurukun, Queensland.

Merle Miller has been teaching for over 10 years and is acknowledged as a specialist in Koorie Education.

Since completing her Degree in Education at Deakin University, Merle has worked extensively at Gowrie St Primary School in Shepparton. She has taught students in every grade level, and worked specifically with ‘Manega’, an all Aboriginal classroom. For the last 7 years, her responsibilities at Manega have been teaching a senior class, consisting of Grades 3, 4, 5 and 6.

Hailing from the Shepparton region, Merle brings ample local community knowledge into her classroom.

“Teaching is very important to me. I love being with the students and seeing them learn”

Kathleen Vella, a professional social worker, is now the Executive Officer of the National Youth Mentoring Partnership creating the Youth Mentoring Network. Prior to working at the Network she managed over 800 community welfare volunteers at the University of Sydney Union, ran holiday camps for at-risk youth and group homes for adults with intellectual disabilities. When Kathleen isn’t reading the latest mentoring research she enjoys catching up with friends and working her way through The Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Food Guide.

Kevin Garrick is highly respected in public education and has been on the board of MYC since 2001. He is currently Principal of Sarah Redfern High School and has been a Principal of three High Schools in Macarthur over the past 14 years.

He is a member of the University of Western Sydney Council, Rotary member, Principal’s representative on SW Sydney Sports Council, and member superintendent of the South West Sydney Principals Advisory Group. Kevin has been a District Superintendent and Chief Executive Officer for the Department of Education. He has chaired the Campbelltown Education and Industry Advisory Council (CEIAC), and has been the chair for course provisions for Vocational Education, a past member of the Macarthur Workplace Learning Program and Member of the Campbelltown VET in Schools Committee.

Linda Farrington’s qualifications and experience reflect her interest and passion for the education of learners who face some kind of disadvantage or might have been disaffected because of their previous experiences. Holding a Graduate Diploma in Special Education and a Diploma in Career Guidance her career focus has been the successful transition from school to work for this target group. However her claim to fame comes as ‘Naughty Nanny’ to her granddaughter and her friends.

A passionate believer in the power of Community Education and, like most educators involved in Learning Choices programs, has lead a varied teaching career from developing work experience programs for physically disabled students to using community mentors in gifted & talented programs. As Co-ordinator of Studentworks Lin has been an active member of the Local Community Partnership, a local Enterprise Education Partnership and a national pilot in partnership with the Tasmanian aboriginal community.

Marcia studied to be a teacher as a mature-age student, already the mother of three children. It had always been her dream to enter the teaching profession and she has never regretted it. Her teaching career began in 1979 at a small primary school on the outskirts of Sydney. From there, she took on the challenge of working as a teacher in a school located within a Juvenile Justice Centre. She is now the principal at the school in the only NSW female Juvenile Justice Centre. She is faced with the daily challenges of providing a stable, predictable environment that facilitates learning for some very disadvantaged students.

Muriel Eddleston has had twenty years experience in Education. She has worked in schools, in regions, districts and across the State of Queensland providing a range of services including counselling, professional development and training as well as presenting relevant  workshops for teachers, students, parents and community members.  She is currently working at IETA (Indigenous Education Training Alliance) in Cairns as the Project Officer for Crossing Cultures for Education Queensland.

Peter O'Beirne is the Queensland Action Area Coordinator for the national Dare to Lead project which has currently engaged about 3500 schools across the country, workng to improve Indigenous students' outcomes. He is in this role while on leave from his usual position as Principal of North Rockhampton State High School, a school of 1000+ students.

Peter is also active in the Queensland Secondary Principals' Association and is the Convener for the Queensland Branch of APAPDC (Australian Principals Associations' Professional Development Council).

Dr Rob Simons, National Manager Strategic Research and Social Policy at The Smith Family, has responsibility for The Smith Family’s internal research capacity and contribution to the development of public policy.

His brief involves forging strategic research alliances and partnerships that contribute to the evidence base and schedule of reports and publications that provide a platform for The Smith Family’s societal change agenda focusing on education/lifelong learning as a preventive strategy against intergenerational disadvantage.

Over the years he has worked closely with the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) focusing on The Smith Family’s work in relation to the school to work transition. In addition, he has also work with Edith Cowan University in the evaluation of The Smith Family’s major demonstration project, the Swan Nyungar Sports Education Program (SNSEP) focusing on improved retention and achievement rates and successful school to work transitions for indigenous students in WA.

Prior to his work in the community sector Rob had responsibilities in the tertiary sector at universities in the United States and The Flinders University of South Australia. During that time he was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University where he carried out an interdisciplinary analysis of economic theories to assess their impact on both social and economic policy. He has also worked in public health. His undergraduate studies were in education and psychology. He holds graduate degrees in theology and philosophy and has a Doctorate in Philosophy from The Catholic University of America in Washington DC.

Stephen McVey is the manager of the Flexelearning Virtual Campus in Mandurah Western Australia and a Director of Skills Strategies International, a Registered Training Organization specializing in e-Business and Management training.
Stephen has been involved in teaching and training for over 16 years with 8 years experience in developing and managing online, e-learning programs. He has extensive experience in professional development training.
In 2004 Stephen gained a scholarship from the Australian Flexible Learning Framework to explore flexible delivery platforms for Vocational Education and Training utilising e-learning initiatives.
Stephen was also a group manager in the ‘textme’ mobile learning learnscope project in 2004.
In 2005 Stephen developed and facilitated for the Australian Flexible Learning Framework, an e-networks of Australia online community for teachers in Western Australia.

Viv White was the CEO of the Victorian Schools Innovation Commission (2002-2005) and was the national co-ordinator of the Australian National Schools Network for ten years. She remains on the Board of the ANSN and with others  is generating new work She is now the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Big Picture Australia, a not- for-profit with the twin goals of building a Big Picture School in Australia and sharing the ideas with existing schools. She is currently working at Victoria University developing a new set of national initiatives on school reform, redesign and community development. She has worked with Australian schools for 30 years as a policy activist, teacher, university researcher and facilitator of change and improvement.