Our people

CEO
Dr Stephen Brown has 29 years of education experience in Queensland and Victoria. He was the Regional Director of Hume Region in Victoria for four years and acted in the position of Deputy Secretary, Office of Government School Education (OGSE).  Dr Brown was Executive Director of the Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat in the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development and a member of the departmental leadership team.

Dr Brown has a Doctorate of Education from the University of Southern Queensland and a Master of Arts from the University of London. He was awarded the Australian Council for Educational Leaders (ACEL) Nganakarra Award in 2007 and a presidential citation from the same organisation in 2009. Dr Brown is also a National and State fellow of ACEL. In 2009 he was nominated for membership of the Global Education Leaders Program—a coalition of leading system thinkers. Stephen was identified as a participant in the Victorian Leadership Development Centre’s 2009 program for future Deputy Secretaries in the Victorian Public Sector.

As the author of research papers on public sector change, leadership and organisational redesign, Dr Brown is frequently invited to address national and international conferences on leadership, organisational change and school improvement.

Previously employed by Education Queensland in positions including teacher, principal and Executive Director Schools, Dr Stephen Brown brings to his new role an international and national reputation as an outstanding system leader, thinker and educator.

Director of Programs
Jan Alen has worked in the area of educational leadership for over twenty years in two states, Victoria and Queensland. She brings a wealth of experience and insight to her work supporting the development of leaders, aspirants and school leadership teams in schools.

Jan is driven by a desire to increase the confidence of leaders through quality programs and strategies that blend theory and practice and enable leaders to apply their learning on the job. At a system level her roles have included the development and implementation of a number of leadership capability standards and frameworks, developing and directing leadership assessment centres and establishing mentoring and work shadowing programs. Jan has also coached individual principals and school leadership teams and is known for her excellent facilitation and people skills.

In 2010, Jan was a recipient of the prestigious Endeavour Award where she spent two months working with principals and system leaders in the Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training system which covers 35,000 schools. A key focus of her work in Hanoi was on reshaping the curriculum and methodology for the National Institute for Education Management’s principal training program.

Business Manager
Steven McElhinney has significant experience in financial and management accounting. With a Bachelor of Commerce Degree from the University of Queensland gained in 2002, Steven has gone on to work in both Chartered and commercial environments over the past eight years. He has also satisfied the requirements of professional membership with the Institute of Chartered Accountants Australia (ICAA) by completing his Graduate Diploma of Chartered Accounting in 2010.

Administration Manager
Karen Wright has considerable business administration and business management experience, particularly within the Queensland educational sector, where over a period of fourteen years she has held the positions of registrar, performance measurement executive officer and business analyst. Karen’s most recent posting was as business manager of the first Australian International School established in the Middle East. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE) her brief concentrated heavily on project management (construction and establishment), facility management, human resource management, finance management and public relations/marketing. After more than five and half years in the UAE Karen has returned to continue in corporate service positions in Queensland and looks forward to continuing her business and project management studies.