Our Fellows
FORWARD director Peter Thomas on our Senior Industry Fellows, a group of extraordinary people who will work with us flexibly and with passion and purpose to bring their insight and a sharp future-focused lens to radically inform what we do.
As we said in a previous story, Building our ecosystem, we, along with our collaborators, partners and stakeholders, believe that in a networked and interconnected world, we need to embrace and seek value from many types of contributors in many different ways.
But it's not just a way of working. It's a way of seeing the world, being in it and reimagining how we create and orchestrate an ecosystem built on flexible, self-determining and autonomous principles.
So we've invited a group of Senior Industry Fellows to join us to help build that ecosystem. While the term 'Fellow' might be a thousand years old, we want to bring fellowship into a modern context where we work together to create shared value.
Our Fellows were all nominated by our Development Partners, who talked to prospective Fellows about their interests and passions, our aims, how we work, what we are working on — and what we might work on together.
There was no objective that informed our invitations — and certainly no defined role description or set of required things to do — apart from our sense that those we talked to would work with us flexibly and with passion and purpose to act as a sounding board, advisor or collaborator for one of FORWARD's portfolio of projects and bring their insight and a sharp future-focused lens to radically inform what we do.
Our Fellows reflect our local knowledge ecosystem in Australia, but also in the US, Europe and Asia (but for many of our Fellows, of course, their geography is global); they span those who have long records of achievement and decades of experience to those who are just starting on their entrepreneurial and business (and many other) journeys; they have expertise in fields as far apart as the future of work, logistics, software development and venturing; and they come from a range of disciplinary backgrounds and orientations including systems thinking, social innovation, the anthropology of the future and organisational culture. We celebrate this diversity just as we seek to celebrate and welcome diversity and inclusion in all forms. We are committed to ensuring the people we work with are not limited by traditional stereotypes, roles or prejudices.
So we are — genuinely, passionately and wholeheartedly — excited to have to join us as part of FORWARD, as part of the College of Vocational Education and part of RMIT University, the following exceptional individuals:
Sami Mäkeläinen, an expert in foresight, automation, skill degradation, ethics in AI & technology and aviation and former Head of Strategic Foresight for Telstra.
Monique Conheady, Chairperson & Non-Executive Director | Venture Partner & Advisor
David Cordover, entrepreneur, mentor and angel investor, Melbourne
Deanna Pantin Parrish, clinical instructor and lecturer on law at Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Mass
Sophia Woloschin, AWS
Diana Wu David, future of work strategist, Hong Kong
Sam Spurlin, Organization design consultant, advisor, and coach
Nina Montgomery, Forbes 30 under 30, previously Design Director, IDEO
Daniel Layne, CEO at QV Systems, London
Josie Gibson, Director at CatalystFX and The Catalyst Network, Melbourne
Cass Sprong, director and founder, ENTHEOS Consulting, Melbourne
Lene Rachel Andersen, co-founder, president and systems thinker, Nordic Bildung, Copenhagen
Alex Young, Head of Business Growth and Innovation, The Australian Red Cross Blood Service, Melbourne
Peter Tullin, co-founder, REMIX Summits, Melbourne
Stephen Bartlett, Chief Technology Officer at Programa, Melbourne
Jerry Michalski, curator of the world's largest mind map, Oregon
Lexon Li, developer at Momatu, Melbourne
Antony McMullin, cooperative founder, developer and advocate for the common good, Melbourne
Matt Collier, culture and capability initiatives leader, Singapore
May Samali, leadership coach and facilitator and venture partner, San Francisco
Annabel Astbury, Head of Education, ABC, Melbourne
Sarah Lorimer, brand strategy and cultural insight, London
Tony Hackett, host of StartupsRoundtable, Sydney
Chloe Beevers, experience curator, Melbourne
Julie-Anne VandenHoff, Chief People Officer, TMX Global, Melbourne
Khayshie Tilak Ramesh, Inclusion and Diversity Lead, MECCA Brands, Melbourne
Meredith Doig OAM, President, Rational Society of Australia, Melbourne
Stowe Boyd, the ecology of work and the anthropology of the future, New York
Peter Creeden, international freight, logistics and supply chain expert and strategic advisor, Sydney
Andy Spence, workforce futurist, Lisbon
Ed Wong, conference and community organiser, Melbourne
Aaron McEwan, VP Research and Advisory, Gartner, Sydney
Hans Van Dam, CEO, Conversation Design Institute, Amsterdam
Mark Cooray, MD, Linking Integrating
Katie Wyatt, Head of Diversity & Inclusion, Coles Group and Board member, Melbourne
FORWARD is the RMIT Centre for Future Skills and Workforce Transformation.
Our role is to build an innovative learning ecosystem at scale, create new collaborative applied research and invent next-generation skills solutions that will catalyse workforce development in the future-oriented industries crucial to Victoria's economic renewal.
We lead collaborative applied research on future skills and workforce transformation from within RMIT's College of Vocational Education, building and scaling the evidence and practice base to support Victorian workforce planning and delivery and acting as a test lab for future skills to develop and pilot new approaches to skills training and education through digital transformation and pedagogical innovation.
We leverage RMIT's multi-sector advantage to translate research insights into identifying workforce requirements and the co-design of practice-based approaches with industry.
