50 People and Culture Leaders in Australian Education

Every school, university, TAFE and education office in Australia runs on the same quiet arithmetic. The quality of what a student experiences depends on whether the adults around them are supported, clear about their work and able to stay. That makes people and culture leadership one of the most consequential jobs in the sector, and one of the least visible.

The fifty people below hold that responsibility across Australian education in 2026. They work in universities and vocational institutes, in Catholic and Anglican school systems, in state and territory education departments, and in individual schools from the Barossa Valley to Darwin.

Their titles vary. Some are chief people officers, some are deputy secretaries, some are directors sitting at a school leadership table. What they share is accountability for the conditions in which teachers, academics, trainers and professional staff do their work.

This is a directory rather than a contest. It is a place to start if you want to know who is shaping employment, wellbeing, capability and inclusion in Australian education, and what they are actually working on.

Why people and culture leadership matters in education

Education is an unusually people intensive industry. A curriculum is a promise, a strategy is an intention, and both depend entirely on whether the adults delivering them have the time, clarity and support to do so.

That makes the people function operational rather than administrative. It shows up in how a regional school fills a hard vacancy, how a university brings staff through a restructure without losing trust, how a training institute keeps its trainers current with industry, and how a system responds when someone raises a concern.

The leaders in this directory sit at that point of contact. Their work spans workforce strategy, employment relations, safety and wellbeing, inclusion, leadership development and organisational change, and it is felt by hundreds of thousands of Australian education workers every week.

1. Julie Tickle

Chief People Officer, TAFE NSW

Julie Tickle joined TAFE NSW as a teacher in 2002 and has held many leadership roles across the organisation since. She now leads the attraction, development and retention of a workforce of more than 15,000 people, which makes her one of the largest single people portfolios in Australian vocational education.

Her team designed and implemented Paid to Learn, a teacher attraction and retention program built to address the vocational education teacher shortage in New South Wales. She also co-chairs the TAFE NSW Diversity and Inclusion Council and is executive sponsor of the Aboriginal Strategic Leadership Group and the Aboriginal Employment Strategy. That combination, a former teacher now responsible for teacher supply, is worth paying attention to.

2. Shaun Ruming

Chief People Officer, NSW Department of Education

Shaun Ruming sits on the executive of the NSW Department of Education and reports directly to the Secretary, leading the People Group for a system that includes more than 94,000 teaching staff and more than 47,000 school based support staff.

His directorate covers school workforce, health, safety and staff wellbeing, talent, capability and performance, employee relations, workforce reform, and professional and ethical standards. The department describes the group's purpose as strengthening culture to support people's wellbeing, safety and belonging, and transforming the employee experience across a high performing education system. Few people functions in the country operate at that scale.

3. Bridgid Connors

Chief People Officer, Monash University

Bridgid Connors leads the people function at Monash University, and her public work tends to sit where recognition and workforce strategy meet. In November 2025 she spoke at the Vice-Chancellor's Excellence Awards ceremony, the university's flagship staff recognition event.

She is also a named speaker at the national HE People and Performance conference held in June 2026, appearing alongside vice-chancellors and sector chief people officers on the future of the higher education workforce. For anyone thinking about how a large, globally distributed university keeps its people connected to a shared purpose, her platform is a useful one to follow.

4. Natalie Harper

Director, People and Culture, Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools

Natalie Harper leads people and culture for the largest Catholic education provider in Australia, a system educating more than 118,000 students across almost 300 schools and employing more than 18,000 teachers and support staff.

In March 2026 she spoke publicly about the organisation's Vision for Leadership, explaining that it helps translate Catholic mission into daily practice. She linked that directly to workforce ambition, noting that the way leaders engage with the Vision will strengthen schools, enrich the student experience and support the system's 2030 goal of becoming the employer of choice in Victorian education. Naming an employer of choice target out loud, at that scale, is a genuine commitment.

5. Gillian Bromley

Vice-President People and Chief People Officer, Queensland University of Technology

Gillian Bromley leads the People Services Portfolio at QUT, and her remit is unusually broad. It spans equity, health, safety and environment, human resources, sport, student administration and student services, which means she is accountable for both the staff and student experience rather than one or the other.

She came to the university from QSuper, where she was Head of HR Strategy, Employee Relations and Remuneration, and she is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Her portfolio is a good illustration of how the people function in higher education has widened beyond traditional human resources.

6. Delia McIver

Chief People Officer, Chisholm Institute

Delia McIver joined Chisholm in 2016 as Executive Director People and Culture and became Chief People Officer in February 2020. Her portfolio now covers child safety, legal services, payroll, people services, safer communities, safety governance, student safety, wellbeing and injury management, workforce development and workplace relations.

Chisholm describes her as leading initiatives that reinforce a positive organisational culture, with emphasis on employee experience, social justice, inclusion and the safety and wellbeing of everyone at the institute. Beyond the institute she is a Board Director of Better Place Australia and chairs its People and Governance Committee. Her earlier roles at Box Hill Institute and Victoria University make her one of the most experienced people leaders in Victorian vocational education.

7. Kate Rattigan

Deputy Secretary, People and Executive Services, Victorian Department of Education

Kate Rattigan holds one of the most senior people roles in Australian education as a deputy secretary in the Victorian Department of Education, a position confirmed on the department's organisational chart last updated in April 2026.

Her portfolio brings together people strategy and operations for the public service workforce, people and workplace relations for schools, employee safety, wellbeing and inclusion, and conduct, integrity and child safety. Putting workforce relations and child safety under one executive is a deliberate design choice, and it reflects how closely employment practice and student safety are now connected in school systems.

8. Barbara Miller

Executive Director, People and Culture, CQUniversity Australia

Barbara Miller won the Leadership Excellence Award at the 2025 Australian Higher Education Industrial Association Higher Education Awards, a national award that recognises senior leaders at chief people officer, vice-president or director level. AHEIA described the winner as truly transformative in their approach to human resources.

At CQUniversity she leads the People and Culture Directorate, which sits within the Vice-Chancellor and President's Division and covers workplace relations, HR business partnership and strategy, HR systems, payroll, safety and wellbeing, talent acquisition, and business continuity and crisis management. It is a wide brief for a regionally distributed university, and the award suggests her peers noticed how she carried it.

9. Natasha O'Donoghue

Director, People and Culture, Catholic Education Diocese of Wollongong

Natasha O'Donoghue oversees human resources services for a system of schools across the Wollongong diocese, managing child safety, employee relations, recruitment, performance management, payroll, workplace safety and wellbeing, and workforce development. She brings more than 24 years of leadership experience across human resources, policy development and legislative affairs.

Her governance work extends well beyond her employer. She is a member of the Governing Council for Good Samaritan Education, a Company Member at St Mary's College Wollongong, and Chair of Members at Mater Dei in Camden. That breadth gives her an unusually complete view of how Catholic education is governed and staffed.

10. Leanne Edmond

Chief People and Culture Officer, Knox Grammar School

Leanne Edmond holds a named chief people and culture role on the ten member School Executive at Knox Grammar School, the senior management structure responsible for the school's key portfolios across Knox Grammar, Knox Grammar Preparatory School and Wahroonga Preparatory School.

A dedicated chief people officer seat at an independent school is still relatively uncommon, and it signals how seriously the school treats workforce capability. Her team is also the front door for recruitment across all three schools, which puts the people function at the centre of how Knox grows its staff rather than at the edge of it.

11. Alexis Beckwith

Chief People Officer, University of Melbourne

Alexis Beckwith leads the University of Melbourne's strategic agenda for people and culture, reporting to the Chief Operating Officer, with a brief the university describes as building a diverse, inclusive and vibrant community.

She joined in November 2023 from Cushman and Wakefield, where she was Head of People, Asia-Pacific, caring for 11,000 employees across the region. Arriving from a commercial, multi-country people role into one of Australia's largest and most complex universities is a useful vantage point, and it shows in how the portfolio is framed around community rather than administration.

12. Vanessa Kissane

Chief Human Resources Officer, TAFE Queensland

Vanessa Kissane has more than twenty years of experience in senior management roles across TAFE Queensland, spanning strategic human resources, employee relations, payroll services, workforce analytics, and health, safety and wellbeing.

Health, safety and wellbeing is a core value at TAFE Queensland, expressed through its Safety First approach, and Kissane leads prevention, promotion and work practices for it through both the Board and the Executive. Taking safety leadership to the board table, rather than treating it as an operational matter, is a meaningful distinction for an organisation that engaged a workforce of more than 4,300 full time equivalent staff.

13. Marina Elliott

Executive Director, People and Culture, South Australian Department for Education

Marina Elliott sits in the Senior Executive Group of the South Australian Department for Education, leading people and culture for the state's public education workforce.

During 2025 her portfolio refreshed the department's Workforce Strategy across four key areas to support the evolving needs of public education, and co-designed the department's first Employee Value Proposition to strengthen recruitment, enhance attraction and support workforce sustainability. In the same period the department's Aboriginal Workforce Strategy lifted Aboriginal workforce participation by 8.6 per cent on the previous year. Those are the kinds of concrete workforce moves that national teacher shortage conversations usually lack.

14. Kristen Derbyshire

Chief People Officer, University of Tasmania

Kristen Derbyshire was appointed Chief People Officer at the University of Tasmania in 2022 and sits on the University Executive Team. She has led the delivery of the institution wide staff engagement survey and the implementation of the university's response to it.

She is a proud Tasmanian and an alumna of the university she now serves, holding a degree in business administration with a human resource management major. Before returning to the sector she was Executive General Manager of People, Culture and Strategy at the Tasmanian Ports Corporation and spent a decade at Telstra delivering significant organisational redesign work. Leading people at your own alma mater brings a particular kind of accountability.

15. Eric Leahy

Director, People and Culture, Sydney Catholic Schools

Eric Leahy leads one of nine directorates supporting Sydney Catholic Schools, a system of 147 primary and secondary schools serving more than 74,000 students.

In 2025 the system launched its inaugural Staff Wellbeing Strategy, titled Healthy, Faithful, Thriving. A first ever wellbeing strategy in a system of that size is a substantial piece of work, and it marks the point where staff wellbeing moves from goodwill to structure. Anyone leading people in a large school system will recognise how much groundwork sits behind a document like that.

16. Caitlin Munday

Head of People, Research and Professional Growth, Scotch College

Dr Caitlin Munday holds a people portfolio at Scotch College that is deliberately built around teacher formation rather than administration, combining people, research and professional growth in a single role.

She founded and directs the Teaching Schools Alliance Sydney, an organisation working to equip and grow the next generation of teachers, and she has served on the International Boys School Coalition Research Committee and co-founded the Research-Invested Schools Network. In 2018 the Australian Council for Educational Leaders awarded her a New Voice in Educational Leadership Research Scholarship. Her work is a reminder that in schools, professional growth and workforce strategy are the same conversation.

17. Gemma Martin

Chief People Officer, UNSW Sydney

Gemma Martin is a member of the UNSW University Leadership Team and has provided strategic people and culture leadership across the private and public sectors for almost twenty years.

She has worked in the United States, Latin America, Canada and Australia, and held senior positions at BlueScope, Treasury Wine Estates and Downer Group before joining Sydney Water as Chief People Officer in February 2022. The university notes that she is passionate about creating an engaged and psychologically safe workplace. Bringing utility sector and heavy industry experience of psychological safety into a research university is an interesting transfer of practice.

18. Jim Burden

Executive Director, People, Performance and Culture, TasTAFE

Jim Burden provides strategic leadership and direction for the design, development and delivery of human resource functions at TasTAFE, an organisation of 966 staff.

His most distinctive piece of work is the Blue Bus training program, designed to strengthen culture and build a more connected and empowered workforce. More than half of TasTAFE staff have now attended a session and are part of an ongoing community of practice, which is a genuinely high participation rate for a voluntary culture program. The organisation also runs a Culture Improvement Action Plan alongside it.

19. Karen Roberts

Executive Director, People Services, Western Australian Department of Education

Karen Roberts was appointed Executive Director Workforce, now People Services, at the WA Department of Education in June 2024, bringing extensive public sector experience in leading human resource management functions.

Her background is unusually varied for education. Before joining the department she held leadership roles at the University of Western Australia, the WA Police Force and the Department of Fire and Emergency Services. She holds a Master of Human Resources and a Master of Public Policy and Management, a Graduate Diploma in Occupational Health and Safety, and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Three high risk frontline workforces is good preparation for a fourth.

20. Aggie Kost

Executive Director, People and Culture, Box Hill Institute

Aggie Kost leads the Valuing Our People strategic theme at Box Hill Institute, with responsibility for building an engaged, capable and safe workforce. Her portfolio covers safety, inclusion and wellbeing, HR operations, organisational development and change, and internal communications.

She is also a registered psychologist and an accredited executive coach, which is a rare combination at executive director level, and she came to vocational education after senior roles at Thales Australia, Coles Myer, Ericsson and the Commonwealth Bank. Putting internal communications inside the people portfolio is a deliberate choice and one worth watching.

21. Kate Witenden

Chief People Officer, Australian National University

Kate Witenden commenced as Chief People Officer at ANU in October 2022 and brings more than 25 years of professional experience across the full human resources life cycle.

She sits on the Renew ANU Program Board, the governance body providing high level oversight of change proposal and implementation plan development on behalf of the Vice-Chancellor, alongside a College Dean, a College General Manager, the Vice-President Advancement and the Chief Financial Officer. She is also a member of the Indigenous Strategy Working Group and the University Executive Committee. Leading people through a whole of university renewal is among the hardest assignments in the sector right now.

22. Megan Galbally

Director of People and Culture, Wesley College Melbourne

Megan Galbally joined Wesley College in January 2025 as a member of the College Executive, responsible for the development, coordination and administration of people and culture strategies, programs, activities and policies.

She brings more than twenty years of experience in human resources and organisational leadership, having previously worked at Healthcare Australia, BlueCross Aged Care and Austin Health. Moving from health and aged care into a large independent school brings a particular sensitivity to rostering, wellbeing and frontline workforce pressure, all of which schools now face too.

23. Kath Messer

Chief Human Resources Officer and Assistant Director-General, Human Resources Strategy, Queensland Department of Education

Kath Messer holds the enterprise human resources strategy portfolio for the Queensland Department of Education, sitting within Corporate Services on a departmental structure effective from June 2026.

Queensland is one of the few systems that deliberately separates strategic and school facing human resources, running Human Resources School Operations as a distinct arm under school and regional operations. That means Messer's remit is the whole of department workforce strategy rather than day to day school casework, which is a useful structural idea for any large system trying to protect strategy from operational load.

24. Melisa Kaharevic

Chief People Officer, Curtin University

Melisa Kaharevic was appointed Curtin University's Chief People Officer in 2024, bringing broad experience across human resources, organisational transformation, change management, industrial relations and people strategy. She is a member of the Senior Executive Team and a former practising lawyer, which the university notes brings a unique set of skills to the role.

She personally fronts and signs the Curtin Pay Review, the university's proactive wage remediation program, publishing progress updates to staff. In December 2025 she reported that the next stage of the casual academic review had identified 2,068 employees affected by unintentional payment errors. Owning that publicly, in your own name, is not the easy option.

25. Paul Andrew

Director, People and Culture, Catholic Education Western Australia

Paul Andrew is a member of the Catholic Education Western Australia Executive Team, leading people and culture for a system that supported 12,962 teaching and non-teaching jobs as at December 2025 across 162 Catholic schools and colleges serving more than 83,000 students.

CEWA describes itself as providing employment for more than 13,000 staff, making it a significant contributor to the Western Australian economy. Running a people function across a state that size, from metropolitan Perth to remote Kimberley communities, involves geography and cultural context that most Australian employers never have to think about.

26. Heidi Rowe

Director of People, Culture and Safety, St Peter's College

Heidi Rowe joined St Peter's College as Director of People, Culture and Safety, bringing over a decade of executive leadership experience in developing and implementing strategies to improve organisational culture and performance.

She holds a Bachelor of Business with a major in human resources and is well regarded for her expertise in employee relations, industrial law and strategic workforce planning. Her work has covered change management, diversity, equity and inclusion, alongside risk mitigation and compliance. Fusing people, culture and safety into one title reflects where school leadership has landed since child safe standards became a whole of organisation responsibility.

27. Martin Sainsbury

Chief People and Culture Officer, University of Newcastle

Martin Sainsbury leads people and culture for a workforce of more than 5,000 at the University of Newcastle, and he writes publicly about what the university's staff data actually shows.

In February 2026 he published a piece on wellbeing data in which he set out his own standard for the role. Our responsibility, he wrote, is to listen to our people and respond to the evidence before us, which the university has done for two decades through its Your Voice survey. He joined the university from NSW Health Pathology, where he was Executive Director of People and Culture, and he has served on a TAFE NSW regional advisory committee and as an Australian HR Institute mentor.

28. Sarah Chandra

Executive Branch Manager, People and Culture, Canberra Institute of Technology

Sarah Chandra sits on the executive of the Canberra Institute of Technology alongside the chief financial officer, chief information officer and chief industry and innovation officer, leading a People and Culture Branch of around 24 full time equivalent staff for a workforce of 719 full time equivalent employees.

She owns the CIT People Plan 2025 to 2028, a strategic framework designed to position the workforce to advance institutional objectives alongside the institute's Reconciliation Action Plan and Gender Equality Action Plan. During 2025 CIT staff completed 3,889 learning courses delivered through her branch, which is a substantial capability investment for an organisation of that size.

29. Rebecca Pinto

Deputy Secretary, People and Culture, Tasmanian Department for Education, Children and Young People

Rebecca Pinto leads People and Culture as one of only six service areas in the Tasmanian Department for Education, Children and Young People, a structural decision that places workforce alongside service delivery rather than beneath it.

Her division covers organisational safety and wellbeing, people capability and development, recruitment, payroll and people systems, workforce strategy and people partnering, and workplace relations. She describes the purpose plainly. The division supports children and young people by ensuring talented, dedicated people work together, are recognised and rewarded, and help create a safe, supportive environment. In a post inquiry Tasmanian context, that framing carries weight.

30. Gaynor Witts

Vice-President, People and Culture, RMIT University

Gaynor Witts leads people and culture at RMIT University and appears on the university's register of group senior officers effective from June 2026.

She co-chairs the RMIT Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access Committee alongside the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research and Innovation and Vice-President, jointly overseeing progress against the university's IDEA Framework, which is reported annually to the Vice-Chancellor's Executive and Council. Shared ownership of inclusion between the people portfolio and a research portfolio is a smart governance design, because it stops inclusion being read as a human resources project.

31. Kiel Anthony

Director of Human Resources, AngliSchools

Kiel Anthony leads human resources for AngliSchools, formerly the Anglican Schools Commission, across approximately 19,000 students at 16 schools, twelve in Western Australia, three in Victoria and one in New South Wales.

The system employs almost 3,000 teaching and support staff, making it one of the larger non-government schooling systems in Australia, and it operates four separate enterprise agreements across three states. Managing four industrial instruments in three jurisdictions is a genuinely technical job, and it is the sort of work that keeps a multi state school system legally and financially stable.

32. Ben Bishop

Director of People and Culture, Haileybury Rendall School

Ben Bishop joined Haileybury Rendall School in Darwin in 2023, leading the recruitment and retention of staff and supporting them to take up leadership opportunities and career pathways. He is also responsible for staff wellbeing initiatives across the school, on the basis that wellbeing, engagement and performance are connected.

He came to the role after seventeen years in classrooms, teaching VCE for twelve years at Kilvington Grammar School and five years at Norwood Secondary College in Melbourne, and he holds a Bachelor of Education and a Bachelor of Applied Sports Science. A people director who has taught senior secondary for that long understands the job he is now recruiting for.

33. Maria Crisante

Executive Director, People and Culture, Charles Sturt University

Maria Crisante is a member of the Chief Operating Officer's Leadership Team at Charles Sturt University and sponsors the People Strategy initiatives that sit within the university's 2030 strategy. She is based in Dubbo, which is worth noting in a sector where senior roles cluster in capital cities.

She co-chairs the university's People Committee alongside the Executive Director of Safety, Security and Wellbeing, providing strategic oversight of programs aimed at improving staff health, safety and wellbeing. Charles Sturt supports 36,675 students with 2,221 full time equivalent permanent staff and reports 3.9 per cent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workforce participation.

34. Cathy Frazer

Executive Director, People and Student Success, Melbourne Polytechnic

Cathy Frazer holds the executive accountability for people and culture at Melbourne Polytechnic within a portfolio that also covers the student experience beyond the classroom, international development, organisational development and community engagement.

The institute describes her as a strong advocate for the inclusion of all students, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, culturally and linguistically diverse students, LGBTIQA plus students and students with disabilities. Holding staff experience and student experience in one executive portfolio is uncommon, and it creates a direct line between how the workforce is supported and how learners are served.

35. Carolyn Terry

Director of People and Culture, Methodist Ladies' College

Carolyn Terry joined Methodist Ladies' College in September 2024 with more than 25 years of experience in people and culture across complex, geographically dispersed organisations.

Her career spans retail, healthcare, finance, government and not for profit work, where she has led initiatives to build engagement and organisational success. She holds a Master of Commerce and a Graduate Diploma in Management, and the college describes her commitment as creating environments where high performance is unlocked through genuine engagement and purposeful leadership. That is a clear statement of method rather than a slogan.

36. Phil Vaughan

Chief Human Resources Officer, University of Queensland

Phil Vaughan leads the Human Resources Division within the Chief Operating Officer portfolio at the University of Queensland, and he holds the university's remuneration instrument delegation as policy owner and approval authority for its salary loadings and performance payments procedure.

Speaking about the university's enterprise agreement, he pointed to provisions including additional cultural leave for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff and language allowances for staff required to speak Indigenous languages as part of their role. Getting First Nations specific provisions into an enterprise agreement is slow, technical work, and it lasts far longer than a statement of intent.

37. Val Tomlin

Director, Capability, People and Culture, South Regional TAFE

Val Tomlin brings extensive senior experience across the Western Australian public sector, with expertise in people and culture, workplace relations, organisational change, workforce strategy and work health and safety. She has led major workforce reforms and cultural change initiatives at the Department of Communities and has worked closely with TAFE colleges and the training sector.

In 2026 the people and culture team at South Regional TAFE became part of a new Capability, People and Culture Directorate, bringing people services, work health and safety, facilities, and information and communication technology into closer collaboration. She holds qualifications in education and law and is known for collaborative, values driven leadership.

38. Abby Drew

Director of People and Culture, Westminster School

Abby Drew is a member of the School Leadership and Management Group at Westminster School in Adelaide, the group holding delegated management authority from the Principal.

She is actively building out the school's people and culture capability. A current vacancy for a People and Culture Business Partner reporting to her describes a role spanning employee and industrial relations, recruitment, leadership coaching, professional learning, organisational change and people and culture projects. Investing in a partnering model at school scale is a deliberate move away from transactional human resources, and it says something about where the school is heading.

39. Beth Bundy

Chief People Officer, Swinburne University of Technology

Beth Bundy leads the people function at Swinburne University of Technology, and she has done it in public when it mattered most. She wrote to all employees with a comprehensive update on four matters relating to employee entitlements, including an in depth review of leave balances for all current employees that involved reviewing 1.5 million records.

In March 2026 she spoke at the university's International Women's Day event, reflecting on the role that institutions and leaders play in creating safe, equitable workplaces. Handling a remediation program and a values conversation with the same directness is a good sign of a people leader who is willing to be visible.

40. Alexandra O'Brien

Deputy Director, Employee Relations, Independent Schools Queensland

Alexandra O'Brien brings more than twenty years of senior leadership experience across people and culture, employee relations and organisational transformation in complex and unionised environments, having worked across health, corrections, premier and cabinet, policing and high performance sport.

In June 2026 she authored an Independent Schools Queensland feature examining interest based bargaining as a contemporary and practical approach to enterprise bargaining. She has also spent over a decade as a sessional academic in human resources and employment relations. Practitioners who both do the bargaining and teach the theory are useful people to read.

41. Kim Franks

Vice-President, People and Culture, Southern Cross University

Kim Franks is a member of the Southern Cross University executive, leading human resources, workplace relations, safety and organisational development for a workforce of 1,167 staff.

Her signature initiative is Momentum, the university's contemporary performance and feedback framework. The university reports that its introduction embedded regular, high quality performance conversations and reinforced a culture of continuous development. Replacing an annual review ritual with something people actually use is one of the more difficult wins in the people profession, and it is a good reason to follow her work.

42. Carolyn Davis

Executive Director, People and Capability, Northern Victoria Institute of TAFE

Carolyn Davis leads workforce strategy, capability development and organisational culture at the Northern Victoria Institute of TAFE, the new entity bringing together GOTAFE and Wodonga TAFE from January 2026.

She is an experienced executive with almost thirty years of work across human resources, organisational development, workplace relations, wellbeing, information technology and early childhood learning. She serves on the committee of a local sporting club and on the board of a national organisation delivering employment, health and training programs. Leading the people function through a two institute merger, in regional Victoria, is a demanding assignment and a live case study for the sector.

43. Lana King

Director of Human Resources and Strategic Projects, Christ Church Grammar School

Lana King supports the Principal in establishing and facilitating strategic intent at Christ Church Grammar School, working closely with staff on appraisal and professional development as a member of the school's executive team.

She brings more than 25 years of leadership experience across the private and public sectors, most recently as Director of People and Culture at Lotterywest, and she holds a Master of Human Resources and Industrial Relations and a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Western Australia. Pairing human resources with strategic projects is a signal that the school treats workforce capability as part of strategy delivery.

44. Angelle Laurence

Chief People Officer, Australian Catholic University

Angelle Laurence leads the People and Capability directorate at Australian Catholic University and is the named responsible manager for the university's staff facing policy framework, including records approved as recently as July 2026.

She is the responsible executive for ACU's Prevention and Response to Gender-Based Violence Policy, approved in December 2025, which gives effect to the university's obligations under the National Higher Education Code to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence. Before joining ACU she led the inaugural People Strategy at the University of Southern Queensland and rebuilt its human resources operating model. Owning the gender based violence response from the people portfolio is exactly where that accountability belongs.

45. Niki McCarthy

Director, People and Culture, Nuriootpa High School

Niki McCarthy is a member of the 2026 executive leadership team at Nuriootpa High School in the Barossa Valley, one of the few government secondary schools in Australia with a dedicated people and culture director.

In February 2026 she was one of five staff pictured representing the school when it was selected as one of only twenty secondary schools nationally for the Entrepreneurial Schools Project, a fully funded initiative running through 2026 and 2027. Having the people and culture lead in the frame for a teaching and learning initiative, rather than off to one side, tells you how the role is understood there.

46. Regan Sterry

Executive Director, Human Resources, La Trobe University

Regan Sterry leads human resources at La Trobe University, where the people portfolio sits within the operations group led by the Chief Operating Officer and Vice-President.

In June 2026 she appeared on the sector future workforce panel at the HE People and Performance conference in Melbourne, alongside the Chief People Officer of Monash University and the Chief Executive of the Association for Tertiary Education Management. Higher education people leaders are increasingly expected to speak publicly about workforce sustainability rather than only manage it internally, and she is one of the ones doing it.

47. Jacqueline Bate

Chief People Officer, University of Notre Dame Australia

Jacqueline Bate is a member of the executive management team at the University of Notre Dame Australia, leading people and culture for a workforce of 883 full time equivalent staff.

The university teaches more than 13,000 students across campuses in Fremantle, Broome and Sydney, along with seven clinical schools in New South Wales and Victoria. That means her people function spans two states, a remote Kimberley campus and a substantial clinical placement network, each with different workforce conditions. Geographic spread of that kind makes consistency of employee experience a real design problem rather than a talking point.

48. Anthea White

Director, People and Culture, University of New England

Anthea White is the named responsible officer for the University of New England's people policies, including a redeployment procedure approved in July 2026, and for the university's Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Rule.

That rule underpins the Belonging at UNE Action Plan 2025 to 2027, in which her role personally owns actions including publishing the university's executive remuneration framework and reviewing recruitment policy against gender pay gap commitments. UNE describes a team of 1,229 permanent staff, 57 per cent of them women. Attaching named accountability to specific inclusion actions, rather than to a general commitment, is what makes a plan like that testable.

49. Mark Schultz

Chief People Officer, Flinders University

Mark Schultz leads People and Culture at Flinders University within the Corporate Services portfolio, heading a division of around 69 staff.

He personally gave the undertaking under section 190 of the Fair Work Act that secured Fair Work Commission approval of the Flinders University Enterprise Agreement 2023 to 2026, the instrument governing pay and conditions for the entire workforce. Signing your own name to a statutory undertaking is one of the more consequential things a people leader does, and it rarely gets noticed outside the profession.

50. David Ward

Chief People Officer, Macquarie University

David Ward is the named responsible officer for Macquarie University's staff facing policy suite, covering leave, flexible work, probation, academic promotion and the complaint management procedure for staff, with several instruments refreshed during 2026.

In practical terms that means he is accountable for monitoring and reviewing the rules that govern how everyone at Macquarie is hired, promoted, granted leave and heard when they raise a complaint. Policy ownership sounds procedural until you consider that these are the documents staff reach for on their worst day at work. Keeping them current, fair and usable is a real contribution to a university's culture.

Conclusion

Three themes run through this group. The first is that the people function in Australian education has widened well beyond human resources. Child safety, student services, internal communications, safety governance and organisational renewal now sit inside these portfolios, which means the people leader is often the executive holding the organisation's risk and its culture in the same hand.

The second is that the most credible work here is specific and named. A wage remediation program with a published number. A wellbeing strategy with a title. An enterprise agreement clause that funds cultural leave.

A performance framework that replaced an annual ritual. None of that is abstract, and all of it is testable, which is exactly why it earns trust from staff.

The third is that scale in this sector is extraordinary and unevenly distributed. One person in this directory supports a workforce of more than 94,000. Another supports a single secondary school in the Barossa Valley.

The craft turns out to be similar. Understand the actual experience of the people doing the work, change something that genuinely gets in their way, then tell them plainly what happened.

If you lead people in a school, university, institute or education office, that is the useful test to take away. Pick one friction your staff meet every week, fix it visibly, and say so.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Brisbane based leadership consultant who works with corporates, nonprofits, schools and leadership teams around the world. He is the bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out, which has sold more than 10,000 copies, and a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, using the framework created by Patrick Lencioni and The Table Group.

He hosts The Leadership Conversations Podcast, with more than 240 episodes and listeners in more than 150 countries, and founded The 7 Questions Movement, which has more than 6,000 participating leaders. At the ASBA 2025 National Conference his work received a 93.75 per cent satisfaction score.

Next Read

If this directory was useful, the broader regional companion is 46 Essential People and Culture Leaders in Australia and New Zealand to Follow on LinkedIn, which widens the lens across both countries and every industry rather than education alone. For the wider human resources profession, there is also 50 Essential Thought Leaders in Human Resources in Australia and New Zealand.

Readers who work in schools will find two more directly useful. Thought Leaders in Public Schooling in Australia and New Zealand covers the principals, researchers and policy figures shaping public education, and 33 Inspiring School Leaders Building Staff Culture looks specifically at principals working on teacher wellbeing, morale and retention.

I work with school leadership teams, university and institute executives, and education boards on the things this directory is really about: clarity about who decides what, teams that trust each other enough to disagree well, and leaders who can carry change without exhausting their people. If a leadership team you are responsible for would benefit from a keynote, a Working Genius workshop or a facilitated executive team session, write to me at jonno@consultclarity.org and tell me what you are working on.