Awards Judges

Sean Gordon

SchoolAid Founder and former school principal

With over 18 years' experience as school principal and after serving on many state and national peak association committees for principals (APPA, ACPPA, APAPDC and ACSP), Sean was awarded Life Membership of the Australian Primary Principals Association (2004) and the Australian Catholic Primary Principals Association (1991).

Sean's community involvement saw him recognised as an ambassador for the Year of the Outback, Gold Duke of Edinburgh recipient and Premier of NSW Award for his involvement at the Thredbo landslide rescue. Sean and his wife Jo-Anne live in Redcliffe in QLD where they share the parenting of 4 beautiful children: Josie, Caitlin, Michael and Cristin.

Zoe Eaton

Cartoon Network's Associate Director of Marketing

Zoe is Associate Director, Marketing, for Australia and New Zealand, Turner International Australia Pty Ltd.  As Associate Director, Marketing, Eaton oversees the communications and PR strategy for both Cartoon Network and Boomerang, across both consumer and trade marketing. Zoe is responsible for integrating the multi-platform communications strategy across research, programming, licensing, distribution and sales. www.cartoonnetwork.com.au

Jane Mackarell

Microsoft's National Academic Programs Manager

Jane Mackarell is the Academic Programs Manager for Microsoft Australia. She has spent her career working in marketing, communications and content development, focused on the education sector. Jane has been with Microsoft for the past 7 years in Australia, and prior to this, worked in New York and London in a variety of roles within academic publishing and software development companies.  www.microsoft.com/australia/education/schools/partners-in-learning

Professor Rosemary Ross Johnston

Director of UTS Centre for Child and Youth: Culture and Wellbeing

Professor Rosemary Ross Johnston is Head of Education in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney, and is Founding Director of the Australian Centre for Child and Youth: Culture and Wellbeing. She was Director of the Centre for Research and Education in the Arts at UTS for seven years and Director of Teacher Education at UTS for three years.

She has served and continues to serve on the executive of a number of national and international Boards, including as Vice President of the Fédération Internationale des Langues et Littératures Modernes, which is affiliated to UNESCO and has 40,000 members in association across the world; the Children's Literature Association (ChLA) (based in the United States); the International Research Society for Children's Literature (IRSCL); and the Montgomery Institute (Canada). She is also on the Boards of private school and tertiary institutes.

As well as setting up and developing the Literate Australia project, she is currently leading two large Research Projects, New Ways of Doing School: Mixing story and technology to generate innovative learning, social and cultural communities (funded by the Australian Research Council); and New Ways/ Old Ways: Converging Roads, with the Martu communities ofthe Pilbara.

She is widely published in the fields of literacy and children's literature, and her work has been translated into several languages. www.fass.uts.edu.au/research/centres/acy/index

Sara Haghdoosti

Youth activist and high profile member of Australia's Iranian Community

Sara is a 22 year old Iranian-Australian feminist. She has spent years in the women's movement helping coordinate International Women's Day and Reclaim the Night as well as being on the Young UNIFEM national executive and a management committee of the Immigrant Women's Speakout. 

A finalist in the Sydney Morning Herald Young Writer of the Year Awards, editor of several student publications and one of the top 10 delegates chosen for the 2020 Summit, Sara is combining her writing and organising skills in the fight to solve climate change.  She was the national recruitment director for the Power Shift conference earlier this year, has appeared on ABC's Q&A program and currently works as a field organiser for GetUp Australia. www.getup.org.au

Karen Loblay

Founder of the Matana Foundation

Born and educated in Sydney, Karen qualified as an architect and practised for 10 years before joining her family's property investment business in 1985.

In 2003 she founded Matana Foundation for Young People with a vision to address the causes and results of youth disadvantage. On the board are three generations of the family each of whom have helped develop the ethical framework for delivering effective funding for disadvantaged youth. The foundation funds projects such as early intervention, support in juvenile detention, music and art therapies, alternate education, homelessness and back to work programs.  www.matanafoundation.org.au

Mark Sparvell

Microsoft's Worldwide Innovative Teacher 2009 and Principal from Kadina Primary School

Mark is the 2009 Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Teacher Award Winner and will now go onto judge the 2010 APAC and Worldwide Innovative Teacher Awards to be held in Cape Town, South Africa in October this year.

Mark presents widely on innovation and technology in the classroom and web 2.0 to teachers and school leaders and writes for various publications. Mark is Principal of Kadina Primary School in regional Australia.  www.microsoft.com/australia/education/schools/partners-in-learning