Gabrielle Sinclair is the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA).
Gabrielle commenced her career as a teacher and has held senior executive positions in a number of Queensland Government portfolios including Education, Infrastructure and Planning, Local Government and Corrective Services. Before her appointment to ACECQA, Gabrielle was Deputy Director-General, Early Childhood and Community Engagement in the Queensland Department of Education and Training.
Gabrielle has a Master’s degree in Education and Executive Master’s degree in Public Administration.
Gabrielle Sinclair, CEO - Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA)
As CEO of Goodstart Early Learning, Australia’s largest provider of early learning and care since February 2011, Julia has successfully shepherded the organisation from its early beginnings to establish a unique and sustainable social enterprise employing more than 15,000 educators and supporting 70,000 children and their families.
Julia’s focus is on ensuring Goodstart is a flexible, innovative organisation in which all children, families and educators have a voice in shaping its future. Over the past three years she has worked very deliberately to nurture this culture of innovation across the organisation. She is excited by what the next five years will bring, as innovation becomes further embedded in Goodstart’s DNA.
Prior to joining Goodstart Julia had extensive senior management experience in the human services sector in Australia and the UK.
Julia Davison, CEO - Goodstart Early Learning
Gary Carroll joined Australia’s largest for-profit early childhood education provider, G8 Education, as Chief Financial Officer in July 2016 and was appointed as Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director in January 2017. An ASX200 company, G8 Education comprises approximately 10,000 team members across a network of more than 500 early learning centres in Australia, providing quality early education to more than 50,000 Australian children every week.
Gary came to G8 Education having spent more than a decade with ASX listed Super Retail Group, where he commenced as Chief Financial Officer in 2006. He later moved on to become General Manager Group Development before taking on the role of Chief Supply Chain Officer during a particularly significant period of change and expansion for the organisation.
Gary’s leadership experience also includes roles with National Australia Bank as Director of Institutional Banking and retail travel group, Flight Centre, where he was General Manager, Business Services.
He holds Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) and Bachelor of Laws (Honours) degrees and is a CPA.
Gary Carroll, CEO - G8 Education
Jenni is the CEO of Big Fat Smile. Big Fat Smile is a child and family services provider whose vision is to enrich the lives and minds of our children and families in their communities. Big Fat Smile primarily provides centre-based care to children 0-12 through early learning and care, out of school hours and vacation care. Big Fat Smile also provides inclusion support nationally in partnership with KU and Gowrie. Big Fat Smile provides community-based services such as Post Natal Depression groups and supported playgroups. Big Fat Smile partners with educational institutions to collaborate on research projects to continually improve on best practice.
Jenni brings a passion for strong governance and actively developing and enhancing innovative service delivery to reduce disadvantage in our communities and scaffold children and families to flourish and thrive. The underlying philosophy is about quality and inclusion for all children, through our values of Inclusion, Integrity, Safety, Child-centric, Collaboration and Leadership. Jenni’s work in NFPs has centered on working with individuals and communities to create change and meet the needs of our most vulnerable in the community. Jenni led the commencement of one of Australia’s first Social Benefit Bonds and has a passion for creating Child Safe Organisations.
Jenni has specialised in child protection for more than 20 years and is passionate about providing high quality services to children, women and families to enrich their lives and help to build strong and vibrant communities.
Jenni Hutchins, CEO - Big Fat Smile
Kim joined Early Childhood Management Services (ECMS) as CEO in April 2018. Established in 1996, ECMS is a leading not-for-profit Victorian Early Years Manager with 65 licensed services across Victoria that benefit educators, families and, most importantly, children. Adhering to our vision, ‘for every child to realise their right to a strong foundation for lifelong success’, ECMS’ 750+ staff employ evidence-based practice to make every day count by providing high-quality play-based learning in a safe and inclusive environment; ensuring that ECMS’ 6,000 children and their families in our community thrive in life.
Kim brings a wealth of experience in the early childhood sector to her role as CEO at ECMS. Throughout her career, Kim has held a range of positions in children and family services, local government and not-for-profit sectors, and is the National Secretary for Australian Community Children's Services (ACCS).
Kim has represented the Australian Early Childhood Education and Care as sector delegate on several key Government Reference Groups including the Australian Research Council’s Engagement and Impact Assessment Pilot and the Australia Skills Quality Authority.
Kim has a firm commitment to early childhood education being built on an integrated, inclusive community approach based on a child’s right to access high quality pedagogy and practice.
Kim has a Bachelor of Early Childhood Education, Master of Business and recently completed two executive education courses at Harvard Business School in Boston, focused on strategy, governance and leadership in social enterprise organisations.
Kim Bertino, CEO - Early Childhood Management Services (ECMS)
Sinead has been in the business since October 2016 and during that time she has led several improvements in professionalizing the OSHC delivered via our school partnerships. She has drove consistency and understanding of the importance of the essential service we provide to families and has represented the business by giving input into several sector forums. Sinead brings over 20 years’ experience in leading distributed teams and implementing large transformational change programs including mergers and acquisitions. She has extensive experience in embedding governance and process controls to ensure standards are embraced and encourages business improvement and innovation from the bottom up. Sinead has held several General Manager and COO roles across multiple sectors and has led significant global transformation programs with Ernst & Young and Deloitte both overseas and in Australia. Sinead holds a BA(Hon), MSISS (Mathematics and Statistics) from Trinity College Dublin.
Sinead Ryan, CEO - Junior Adventures Group
Michael’s vision for establishing TheirCare emerged from over two decades successfully managing large service focused organisations. Michael’s passion is establishing organisations with integrity and unwavering commitment to delivery. His most recent role saw him manage an organisation with over 2,000 field based personnel and delivering complex services in medical, aged care and technology industries. His customer focus results in successful large scale projects, strict adherence to safety with quality outcomes.
Extensive exposure to public/private programs and ensuring community engagement have created the foundation of strong probity and governance of TheirCare’s operations.
Michael Abela , Managing Director - TheirCare
Anna has worked in Australia and internationally for a number of Australian and global organisations, and has 25+ years’ experience in the Childcare, Retirement Living, Financial Services and Leadership Consulting sectors. Her roles have included senior positions in Operations, Internal/External Consulting, and Sales and Marketing.
Anna commenced her current CEO position at Only About Children (‘Oac’) in September 2017. Oac has 70+ early years learning and preschool campuses across Australia, serving 10,000+ families and employs approximately 2500 staff.
Prior to her current role Anna worked as a Senior Executive for ASX listed Stockland in the Retirement Living Business, and held senior roles with Egon Zehnder International and GE Capital.
Anna started her career as a Music Therapist focused on Child Psychology and Special Education. She holds a Masters of Business Administration and Bachelor’s Degree in Music Therapy.
Anna Learmonth, CEO - Only About Children
Joe Waters is the co-founder and CEO of Capita. A nonprofit ideas lab, Capita works at the intersections of research, policy, social innovation, design, and the arts to explore how the great cultural and social transformations of our day affect children and their families, and to foster a future in which all flourish. Joe also serves as a Senior Advisor to Openfields, a Greenville, South Carolina-based consulting firm.
Prior to starting Capita, Joe was the Executive Vice President of the Institute for Child Success. His commentary on issues facing America’s families has been published by Investor’s Business Daily, Stanford Social Innovation Review, The State, The Charlotte Observer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and other outlets, and he has moderated public dialogues with diverse figures including National Book Award finalist Jason Reynolds, Washington Post columnist Arthur Brooks, and architect Itai Palti. Joe has been an invited speaker at the White House’s first forum on social impact finance, the Aspen Forum on Children and Families, the Lego Idea Conference (Denmark), Think Future (South Africa), and the World Forum on Early Care and Education (China).
He is a member of the Board of Directors of AIR Serenbe, the acclaimed artist-in-residence program in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia, the Felician Center, which helps those who struggle to meet their basic needs in South Carolina’s rural Pee Dee region, and the Greenville Chorale. He also chairs the South Carolina Advisory Board for Nurse-Family Partnership, an evidence-based home visiting program that serves first-time mothers across the state. He graduated from Furman University (BA, history) and earned a master’s degree in divinity from Duke University.
Joe Waters, Co-Founder and CEO - Capita
Daniel Donahoo works at the intersection of learning, technology and play.
Daniel is the author of Idolising Children (UNSW) and co-author of Adproofing Your Kids (Finch). These books reflect his work that explores how we support children in the modern world and use what we know about their development to support their use and engagement with digital media technology.
He is currently a Senior Advisor at the Alannah and Madleine Foundation working on projects that explore the ethical dimensions of young people’s use and adoption of technology and improving the way young children and parents use technology together. He has helped develop and deliver a wide range of projects that includes the development of learning apps, alternate reality games for education and mental health programs for children and young people.
Daniel was a member of Early Childhood Australia's policy advisory team that developed the Statement on young children and digital technologies and he is recognised for his work that takes a practical and pragmatic approach to aligning academic research with projects that make an impact on the world.
Daniel Donahoo, Author and Director of Project Synthesis
Little Scientists Australia is a not-for-profit professional development program for early childhood educators. The workshops combine inquiry-based learning with age-appropriate STEM exploration. Hayley has an insatiable thirst for learning – about everything! Her sheer joy of discovery and passion for professional development makes her ideally suited to be a head trainer and she runs the Little Scientist’s National certification program – The Little Scientists House Program.
Her enthusiasm is complemented by her extensive background in science, education and maths. Hayley has taught for 25 years across continents from preschool to tertiary and in a variety of not for profit, community based and corporate organisations such as botanic gardens and Museums .
Hayley Bates, National Certification Coordinator
Bio coming soon
Professor Susan Irvine , Faculty of Education - QUT
Jason Roberts entered the ECEC sector in 2013 as CEO of G8 Education. He spent four years in senior executive positions before transitioning out of the business in January 2018. Since leaving G8 Jason launched Sector Publishing which operates The Sector - News, views and reviews platform and Events series and also continues to actively consult across the sector on matters of strategy, due diligence, business performance and market dynamics. Jason is an active contributor to The Sector platform with responsibility for covering policy, provider and innovation related topics.
Jason Roberts, Founder - Sector Publishing