That commitment extends into the governance of LEA itself. I have served on the NSW Chapter Committee since 2015 and continue to do so. I was Regional Chair in 2021-2022, Chair Elect in 2023-2024, and I remain Past Chair through 2026, ensuring a stable handover and institutional memory across successive leadership groups.

I convened the Regional Day Out in 2025, I have served on the Sponsorship subcommittee since 2023, and I am currently leading the membership model review that will shape how our organisation grows into the future. This is not a résumé assembled for a single application. It is a decade-long pattern of taking on the roles that need doing, including the ones that are more work than glory.

Relationships with the international body are already built
The International Director role lives or dies on the strength of the relationship between our region and the wider Association for Learning Environments. I have been cultivating that relationship for years, and in the roles that matter most.

I first attended an A4LE conference in Chicago in 2018, where I was also a workshop presenter, contributing our region’s thinking to the international stage rather than simply observing. I returned to Chicago in 2023 as Regional Chair, and again to Portland in 2024 in that same capacity.

Attending as Chair meant I was there not as an individual but as a representative of our members, participating in the conversations that shape how the international group and our region relate to one another.
Crucially, that involvement did not stop when my Chair term ended.

In 2025 I self-funded my attendance in Phoenix, and in 2026 I am self-funding again in Seattle, specifically to maintain a consistency of relationships following my Chair role. International relationships are fragile. They depend on the same faces returning year after year, on trust rebuilt in person, and on the sense that a region’s commitment does not evaporate the moment a title changes hands. I have chosen to pay my own way to protect those connections because I believe they are that important. There are few clearer demonstrations of commitment than putting your own resources behind a relationship when no role obliges you to.

Those in-person moments are backed by less visible work. I have taken part in a range of online meetings to build relationships across time zones, much of it through the careful curation of Deb O’Riley, and I have made a point of being a steady, reliable presence in that dialogue. Relationships of this kind are maintained in the quieter spaces between conferences, and I have shown up in both.

A smooth transition from Deb’s work
One of the most important reasons I am the right person is continuity. Deb O’Riley has done extraordinary work building and holding our region’s international relationships, and the single greatest risk in any transition is that this hard-won trust is lost in the handover.

Because I have been working alongside these relationships for years, and because in Seattle in 2026 I will co-present a workshop with Deb to showcase the great work coming out of our region, I am uniquely positioned to ensure a smooth transference.

I am not an unknown quantity to our international colleagues. I am afamiliar face who has already been introduced, already been trusted, and already been in the room.Appointing me protects the investment Deb has made and allows our region to carry it forwardwithout a damaging break.

Why this matters beyond titles
Underpinning all of this is why any of it matters. LEA exists to bring educators and designers together to shape the future of learning environments, and that work ultimately serves young people and their communities.

The International Director role is not an honorific. It is the mechanism by which our region’s ideas reach the world and the world’s best thinking reaches us. Done well, it means the learning spaces our members design are informed by the strongest global practice, and the innovations emerging from Australia & NZ are heard internationally rather than developed in isolation.

I have the record, the relationships and the reasons to do this role well. Eighteen years of conference attendance, a decade of governance service, a presenter and Chair-level presence at A4LEgatherings, self-funded commitment to relationship continuity, and a direct working partnership with Deb to ensure a seamless handover: these are facts already on the record, not aspirations.

I am asking to continue work I have already been doing, now with the mandate to do it on behalf of us all. I would be honoured to serve as International Director.

As an Architect, I am conversant with concepts around ‘responsive spaces’ and the ability of spaces to expand and contract to provide affordances to learning opportunities.

To design to these opportunities, we must all understand the drivers that encourage deep learning and what skills we actually seek for young generations.

The deindustrialisation of education, the advent of STEM/STEAM, the promotion of soft skills, the advent of outdoor engagement and other forces of change have driven very specific responses or reactions in terms of education facility design. New forces of change are on the international frontier, including advocacy of wellbeing, inclusion and the behemoth of Artificial Intelligence.

As LEA International Director, I believe the task is to engage in this evolving narrative in a meaningful and informed manner so the full global resources of the A4LE | Edmarket network can be shared with our Australasian network.

My personal interests in the role include developing traction with Europe and in particular, a concerted drive to re-engage with the UK, which of course has provided a significant historical contribution to education systems in the Western world.

Much like A4LE has partnered with Edmarket, I also have an interest in developing partnerships; from understanding the international movement towards Multi-School Organisations (MSOs) as seen in England and New York City, to international partnerships with research institutions and think tanks.

Understanding the forces of change is fundamental to how schools and places of learning are created and designed to adapt.

It is my desire to assist in collecting this message from international discourse and ensuring LEA has a voice to contribute and share in the global debate.