Melany Blackwell BSci MBA GAICD

Melany has over 20 years’ in executive-level management and board governance, with extensive experience in a broad range of areas including project leadership and management, business strategy, finance and grants, retail strategy, large-scale infrastructure projects, policy development, marketing, internal reviews, audits, risk management, strategic planning and governance.

Neville Higgins BSc, PhD

A leading expert in his field, Neville has almost 30 years experience in learning design and development with Education, Government and industry clients. Neville specialises in the development of learning strategies, learning needs analysis, educational research specifications, project management, scripting, content research, change management, user interface design, instructional system design, multimedia design and quality assurance.

Andrea Heyward B.Ec, M.Admin, CAHRI

Andrea has over 16 years experience in strategic HR, following on from a career in public sector management and internal consulting.

Her strategic HR experience includes transforming the HR function of one of Australia’s top universities from a transactional personnel function to one with embedded HR business partners and centres of expertise providing strategic capability to accelerate the university’s success.

She has developed frameworks for talent management, quality, performance management, leadership and onboarding and developed strategies and programs for internal mobility, global mobility and gender equity.

Nick Thorburn DipEPA, BA, GradDipBA

Nick Thorburn is a dynamic and experienced higher education management consultant, providing advice and services in strategic and operational areas of management to clients primarily in the education sectors. The variety of work undertaken for these clients reflects skills and experience acquired in many functional areas in the university and schools sectors: governance, audit, review, legal compliance, risk management, stakeholder management, customer service, assessment, graduations, and community engagement and partnerships.

Cherry Stewart BA, MEd, MSci, PhD

Cherry is the Senior Learning Advisor at Liberate Higher Education, contributing pedagogical expertise to projects. Cherry has over 40 years experience as a teacher and designing, developing and teaching computer-based and online learning for community, government and industry, VET and primary, secondary and tertiary Education sectors. Cherry has extensive experience in curriculum design, teaching and management from early childhood to adult level education in public and private sectors. She has a varied career working in Australian and international contexts.

Lisa Smith BpsySc DipPM

Lisa has over 15 years’ experience in adult learning, content analysis and design, higher education and distance learning. Her skill set includes: project management; training, communications and change management; scheduling; resource planning and management; learning needs analysis; strategic planning; stakeholder management; facilitation; and solution design. In addition to tertiary qualifications, Lisa also has a Diploma in Project Management; Project Management certifications (Prince2 and CPPM); and Cert IV Training and Assessment.

Rodney Beach BA, BTeach, GradDip Ed MM, GradCert HR, Dip PM, Cert IV Trg Assess

Rod is the Founding Director of Liberate. Rod has a long and unmatched understanding of designing digital learning and consulting for the Australian Government, higher education and corporate training sectors.

Rod has accumulated an intimate appreciation of the organisational development, eLearning strategies to convert traditional training materials, practices and trends facing a broad variety of medium and large Australian and global organisations.

With further experience in training needs assessments, human resource development, organisational learning, business management and project management, Rod has been involved as a Creative Director, Production Manager, Solutions Manager and Operations Manager – all in the context of learning design and media production.