About GDPN 2023

Dr Kerry Elliott is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). She is currently leading a multi-sector collaboration through a partnership with the Menzies Foundation and school leaders across Australia who are committed to generating insights and creating possible solutions to supporting school leaders to build engaged, connected and successful teams, and strengthening a pipeline of school leadership to cultivate collective efficacy. Kerry has over 25 years of experience working in various education sectors including positions as a researcher, school leader, teacher and university lecturer. She works with schools and educational systems nationally and internationally and conducts research to support teaching and school leadership initiatives to improve outcomes for students.

Katherine Henderson began her career as a teacher and has had extensive experience for forty years in executive leadership roles in education, health, and human services at local and state government levels, and at the University of Melbourne, including positions as the Chief Executive Health in the Northern Territory, as Regional Director and as Deputy Secretary Education in the Department of Education Victoria Australia, and as the Director of the University of Melbourne Network of Schools. With extensive experience leading policy and strategy within large, dispersed organisations, her focus is always on implementation with sustained impact and on how to build leadership within and beyond the bureaucracy and in schools and health services to ensure this.

Order of Australia recipient, Professor Lea Waters holds a PhD in Organisational Psychology and been a psychology researcher at The University of Melbourne for 27 years, initially in the Business Faculty and then moving to the Melbourne Graduate School of Education in 2009. Professor Waters was the Founding Director of the Centre for Positive Psychology at the University of Melbourne and is a world leader in this field with over 120 research publications. She is the only Australian to have been President of the International Positive Psychology Association and has been the Ambassador of the Positive Education Schools Association for a decade.

Visible Wellbeing, the school wellbeing program designed by Professor Waters, is being in Australia, Canada, South Africa, The Netherlands, India, Belgium, Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, China, and New Zealand. Lea has worked with the Catholic schools across all States and Territories in Australia. Her wellbeing Framework is embedded into CEWA’s (Catholic Education Western Australia) Wellbeing Model, impacting 162 schools.

Visible Wellbeing has been endorsed by the South Australian Department of Education and is listed on the SA Schools Mental Health. It is also on the Victorian Department of Education Schools Mental Heath Menu and is approved as an evidence-based program by Beyond Blue.

Lea’s best-selling book ‘The Strength Switch’ was the top release on Amazon, listed among the Top Reads by Berkeley University’s Greater Good Science Center and one of the Top Five Books for Parents and Children in the UK’s Top Five site. It has been translated into 10 languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Hungarian, Arabic, Spanish, French and Russian.

In 2015, Professor Waters was listed as one of Australia’s Top 100 Women of Influence by the Financial Review and Westpac bank. In 2017 she was listed in the Who’s Who of Australian Women. In 2020, Lea was honoured by the Governor General of Australia and named a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her leadership in psychology, education and the mental health sector.

Lea has written for The Wall Street Journal, TIME, The Atlantic, and The Guardian and her work is featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Toronto Globe, Huffington Post and Vogue.