Meet this year’s judging panel

Coming from a background in Mathematics and Computing, Professor Carbone’s research interests have been recognised internationally, and her teaching achievements have been recognised nationally, being the first female recipient of the nation’s highest teaching award, the Prime Minister’s Award for University Teacher of the Year (1998), and to secure two National Teaching Fellowships (2010, 2012). 

At the core of Angela’s professional work is her immersion in pedagogy, drive for innovation and excellence in educational practice, and leadership in continual improvement.

Maryanne is an experienced teacher and leader of Catholic education. She currently holds the position of Supervisor: Specific Learning Difficulties at Sydney Catholic Schools. She has worked as a teacher, librarian, assistant principal, university lecturer and system leader. Maryanne has a particular passion for supporting the literacy acquisition of neurodiverse learners.

Jessica has been a primary school teacher for 16 years. She has worked in regional and metropolitan schools in Victoria, as well as a brief time teaching English in Japan and teaching in England for two years. Jessica has taught mainly in Year 3-6 but has some experience in the Prep-2 area. She has a passion for Art, Reading and life-long learning, and she is currently completing her Masters in Education at Melbourne University.

Valerie has worked in educational publishing for 10 years. She has managed both primary and secondary, and print and digital projects through every stage of the publishing cycle. Valerie is passionate about creating meaningful and engaging resources that cater to the diverse needs of students and teachers alike. She enjoys collaborating with talented authors, publishers, designers and production teams to create resources that ignite a life-long love for learning. Valerie currently works as Senior Editor at Oxford University Press managing the primary literacy list.

Kerry has nearly 20 years’ experience in education publishing and joined Pearson in late 2010. Throughout this time, she has had various editorial and content development roles, helping to create a range of print and digital resources for primary and secondary students. Kerry is passionate about primary literacy and publishing educational resources that both support teachers and help improve student learning outcomes.

Sarah Caffrey is an esteemed primary educator with over 20 years of experience, having worked in diverse settings and countries. Currently serving as the Head of Curriculum at Oakleigh Grammar’s Junior School, she is widely recognised for her professionalism, knowledge, and leadership within the educational community. Sarah is dedicated to creating immersive and captivating learning environments that cater to the individual needs of every student. She places great importance on personalised learning and strives to foster environments that cultivate and nurture the unique abilities and interests of each child. Furthermore, Sarah is deeply committed to supporting teacher development and promoting innovation. She firmly believes that empowering educators is crucial for driving educational excellence.

Lindy is passionate about engaging students and improving educational outcomes, particularly in mathematics. She has fifteen years’ experience working in education. She started her career as a mathematics teacher in regional government schools. She has experience in reviewing study designs and state-wide assessment and in the last decade she has also worked in the publishing industry as an author and more recently as a publisher for Pearson.

Harriet has been working in the publishing industry for 13 years. Before being recruited by Cambridge University Press, she was an Instructional Designer specialising in e-learning. Having started with an exclusively digital focus, she now publishes both print and digital resources, mainly for Humanities subjects. She is a strong advocate for ensuring that the print and digital components of a resource are properly integrated with one another, and that the resource is viewed holistically from the earliest stages of development.

Helen Rabenda is a Publisher with Jacaranda (Wiley) with areas of expertise in humanities and commerce-related subjects. Starting her educational career in the United Kingdom, Helen commenced teaching in 2005 as a senior secondary school teacher of economics and business and has accrued seventeen years’ experience both in the classroom and in educational leadership, developing programs, and curriculum. Helen has also occupied a variety of long term and complementary roles within the VCAA as an examination developer, assessor, and curriculum developer.  Helen is especially interested in developing differentiated teaching resources and has worked as an author and reviewer.  

Kirsten’s career as a Secondary Teacher commenced 16 years ago, and has predominately been spent in Catholic Education. She is currently the Deputy Principal (Personnel) at St Monica’s College, Epping, having held numerous leadership roles, mostly in the area of Teaching & Learning. Her current role sees her work extensively in leadership development and she recently launched a redesigned coaching and mentoring program that aims to nurture the professional growth of both teaching and non-teaching staff at St Monica’s College. She holds a Master of Educational Leadership and prior to entering the Education industry as a teacher of English, she worked in Journalism and Communications having completed a Bachelor Degree in Professional Writing.

Karen has 20 years’ experience as a mathematics educator in primary, secondary and at university. She is currently lecturing in Mathematics Education to pre-service teachers at Australian Catholic University, having lectured at Western Sydney for many years. During this time Karen held roles as Numeracy Advisor, councillor for the Australian Association Mathematics Teachers, President, Vice President, Secretary and board member of the Mathematical Association of NSW as well as Board Curriculum Committee member for the Australian Curriculum and the NSW Curriculum review for Mathematics K-10. Karen’s research focuses on factors that influence attitudes and self-efficacy for learning mathematics and when teaching mathematics.

Leil is an Experienced Senior Teacher at Wavell State High School.  She has worked at Wavell for over twelve years in a variety of faculties including Languages, English and Humanities and a variety of year levels across Years 7-12.  Leil is particularly passionate about Languages education and the opportunities it affords students in the current climate of globalisation.  Leil also has experience as an Endorser for QCAA, textbook reviewer for Pearson and Focus Group Leader for Wavell State High School.  She enjoys exploring innovative digital resources and strives to utilise technology to enhance teaching pedagogy.    

Anne Forbes (PhD) has a wide range of science-related experiences including being a Plant Pathology researcher, primary school science teacher, and currently, a university researcher and educator in primary school science education. She describes her role as ‘finding effective ways to open doors to the world of science and STEM for young learners and their teachers’. A recent highlight was being part of the winning author team for the text STEM Education in the Primary School: A Teacher’s Toolkit that won the 2021 EPAA Award for ‘Outstanding Tertiary/VET Resource’. She has just published a companion publication titled Science Education in the Primary School: A Teacher’s Toolkit.   

Grace has over a decade of experience in both secondary and tertiary education, as well as curriculum management, assessment and learning design. With a background as a research mathematician, she has a love for both the challenges and successes that come from the study of mathematics. Her goal as an educator is to establish a culture of engagement and confidence in young people in mathematics, and to encourage them to create, question and explore the wide ranging and exciting applications of numbers, patterns, and logic in the world around them.

Sandy has worked in educational publishing for over 17 years and has published several best-selling titles across multiple subject areas including secondary and VET in Australia. She is passionate about developing products that are customer-centric, providing learning experiences that are meaningful and engaging for the learner to enable successful outcomes. She believes in the positive impact publishers have on educators and students by providing them with high quality content and technology to achieve their aspirations through education. 

Julie is an Adjunct Professor at QUT specialising in Early Childhood Education for Sustainability in which she is recognised as an international leader. In her 30 years as an early childhood teacher educator, she embedded sustainability into science, social studies, and health education. Julie has edited several textbooks for ECE preservice educators and the profession, building sound pedagogical practices into print. She initiated the international Transnational Dialogues on Research in ECEfS, co-editing two texts from these collaborations. She continues to write and research in ECEfS as one of her retirement hobbies!

Craig is a digital education expert with extensive experience designing and overseeing online subjects, software projects, and LMS systems. With a Masters and Doctoral degree in digital media (digital humanities), he brings a rigorous, evidence-based and qualitative research perspective to his work.

George is a Commissioning Editor at CSIRO Publishing. He previously worked at Taylor & Francis, working in the areas of Computer Science and Statistics under the CRC Press/Chapman & Hall imprints. He holds a PhD in English intersecting the study of literature and cognition. George is passionate about bringing new voices and books to publication.

Angela Glindemann is a writer and editor based in Melbourne. She worked in educational publishing for over six years, and has experience across primary, secondary and tertiary publishing, as well as dictionaries. In her work, she is focused on issues of accessibility, diversity and inclusion in literacy and literature, and she is passionate about inspiring curiosity and lifelong learning through books and reading. She is currently an editor at Books+Publishing.

James has worked in publishing in commercial roles for almost 25 years in Australia, Singapore and the UK. Based out of Springer Nature’s Melbourne office James is the Regional Sales Director for Oceania. Between 2004 and 2008 he was responsible for Oxford University Press’ journals business across the Asia-Pacific region. Prior to joining OUP he fulfilled a number of positions at Blackwell’s after graduating from the University of Leeds in 1999.

Elspeth Menzies, Executive Publisher at NewSouth/UNSW Press, publishes books of history, politics, current affairs, biography and memoir – many of them prize-winners – along with highly illustrated books in partnership with Australia’s leading cultural institutions.

Susannah Bowen has been in publishing and the booktrade since 1996, in Australia and Europe, in marketing, sales, training, consulting and as an author. She is currently General Manager, Marketing at Campion Education, and the Industry Associate, Publishing & Communications, University of Melbourne. She’s co-author on books including How to Market Books 6e and How to Get a Job in Publishing 2e.

Louise Stark left Brisbane after university and landed in publishing in London. She held a variety of sales and marketing roles at Ryland Peters & Small, Faber & Faber and Hodder & Stoughton before returning home as the Sales & Marketing Director of Hodder & Stoughton at Hachette Australia. Louise then spent a very interesting couple of years at Google Play as their UK and Australian store merchandiser and at Bloomsbury as their Australian MD. She is currently CEO of Hachette Australia & New Zealand and is passionate about promoting the benefits of reading to all Australians.

Angela Wong has almost 20 years’ experience in the educational publishing industry, primarily on the content creation side as a publisher and contributing author. She has a further 10 years’ experience in educational resources supply, in sales and account management roles. Angela is currently a School Engagement Manager with Box of Books.