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Home >  About us > Our leaders

  • “We’re a vibrant and dynamic organisation with a focus on our people – we believe that the search for quality never ends and we’re always looking at innovative ways to ensure that all children have the learning, development and wellbeing outcomes they need for school and life.”

    Julia Davison

  • "Living by the principle of “more money, more mission” is fundamental to our long-term financial sustainability. It’s intrinsic to our ability to deliver ongoing, positive social impact for Australia’s children and their life-long outcomes."

    Jeff Harvie

  • "Our people make the difference in giving Australia’s children the best possible start in life. That’s why we are so focused on enhancing what we do and offer our people, families and children - this drives our work day in and day out. Our purpose and strong ambition means we never stop innovating and being the best at getting better."

    Tracey McFarland

  • “Safety is part of being a Goodstarter. It’s this mindset that is the cornerstone of our success in ensuring we create safe working environments for our children and our people to grow and thrive.”

    Matthew Little

  • "Goodstart is a catalyst of positive change in the early years in Australia, bringing local and international academics in early childhood together to collaborate and translate evidence into practice to make the biggest impact to Australia’s children."

    Sue Robb OBE

  • Lynne Walker

    “Adopting new and more agile ways of working is an important enabler for us to help realise our 2025 ambitions for our children, families and communities. We are excited about the future and the opportunities this presents.”

  • "We are using our unique strengths every day to improve the lives of children and families – within Goodstart and beyond. That’s why I love belonging to Goodstart."

    Myra Geddes

  • “Cultivating a workplace where Goodstarters are curious and inspired to keep learning, amplifies their potential, brings our vision to life and delivers better outcomes for children.”

    Jason Renshaw

Our executives
Our executivesOur state managersBoard members

Meet our Executive Team
Meet our Executive Team

Our executive team is a dynamic mix of passionate leaders committed to our vision and purpose.

They take everyday responsibility for leading our organisation’s strategic direction – our roadmap for the ongoing delivery of social impact – to give Australia’s children the best possible start in life.

Fostering high quality early learning experiences within every centre, creating a great place to work for our people and ensuring great experiences for our families and children in our care – are all in a day’s work for our executive team.
Julia Davison

Julia Davison

Our Chief Executive Officer

BSc (Hons); MPA; MAICD

Julia provides leadership in all aspects of our Goodstart network. As an advocate for all Australia’s children – Julia is a driving force for our sector – influencing positive policy and sector change, and the search for the highest possible quality to improve the outcomes children need for school and life.

Prior to joining Goodstart as our Chief Executive Officer in February 2011, Julia had extensive senior management experience in the human services sector in Australia and the UK. Between 1999 and 2004 she was CEO at Flinders Medical Centre, a large teaching hospital in Adelaide. From 2004 to 2010 Julia was CEO of WorkCover SA, a statutory authority which manages the South Australian Workers Rehabilitation and Compensation Scheme, extending protection to 430,000 employees in SA. Julia is on the Board of Cape York Girl Academy and has held a number of non-executive roles including Chair of Catherine House, a not-for-profit working to solve women’s homelessness, Director of Territory Insurance Office, NT and Director of Business SA. As a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School, Julia has a strong interest in Public Policy.

Jeff Harvie

Jeff Harvie

Our Chief Financial Officer and Interim Chief Operating Officer

BBus; CPA; MAICD

Jeff provides the strategic focus on financial reporting, commercial effectiveness, governance and risk, and oversees Goodstart’s property and facilities management. He is currently also our Interim Chief Operating Officer, overseeing day-to-day operational functions.

Jeff joined Goodstart in 2014 and brings more than 25 years’ experience in senior finance roles across not-for-profit, private and public sectors in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. He brings strategic experience having worked with, and held board roles, including a variety of non-executive director and audit and risk committee positions, across ASX listed and private companies as well as large not-for-profit organisations. This experience has developed the understanding and skills needed for the critical role of discipline, governance, accountability and transparency in the success of financially sustainable organisations.

Tracey McFarland

Tracey McFarland

Our Chief Experience Officer

BBus (Marketing); GAICD

Ensuring incredible experiences for our children, people and families is at the heart of Tracey’s work – a critical foundation that Goodstart recognises will increasingly become the lifeblood of our organisation and success.

Tracey leads Goodstart’s people and culture, corporate affairs, marketing, communications, innovation and customer experience teams Tracey brings more than 25 years' experience working across private and not-for-profit sectors, including Qantas, Telstra, Suncorp, QSuper and UnitingCare, across diverse areas of marketing, commercial strategy, sales and operations, fundraising and customer experience.

Matthew Little

Matthew Little

Our Chief Safety Officer

BA (Psychology; Sociology); GAICD

Ensuring safety is wrapped around everything we do at Goodstart is driven by Matthew – who harnesses his extensive safety expertise and behavioural psychology and change management to embed a behaviour-based safety culture alongside his team of safety, health and wellbeing professionals.

Matthew Little joins Goodstart with deep expertise in health and safety, having worked for global organisations in a range of sectors including power manufacturing, engineering, retail, construction and entertainment. By combining his commercial and strategic skills with a hands-on approach to leadership – Matthew takes pride in supporting organisations to enhance their safety performance through cultural safety and engagement. He believes that every leader has a responsibility to improve safety performance one conversation at a time, by being present and employing high quality engagement skills. At Goodstart, Matthew takes great pride in ensuring Goodstart’s safety commitment is lived and breathed across its centre network nationally. He maintains a strong and unwavering focus on our people and their wellbeing with this deep understanding of its critical nature and connection to health, safety and engagement outcomes for our people, children, families and communities.

Sue Robb OBE

Sue Robb OBE

Our Pedagogy and Practice General Manager

BEd; FCCT

Sue leads a range of work and initiatives to bring our ambition of becoming a world leader in early years pedagogy and practice to life. This sees Sue and her colleagues on any given day working closely with educators in our centres, the sector, academics and national and international thought leaders to translate and embed early learning evidence into practice.

Sue is an international thought leader in early childhood pedagogy and OBE (Order of the British Empire). Prior to joining Goodstart, Sue was the Head of Early Learning at Action for Children in the United Kingdom (UK). As a complement to her role at Action for Children, Sue provided specialist advisory services on early years and childcare policy and quality to the UK Government and relevant Ministers. In her early career, Sue spent 14 years as a teacher, including three years in the British School, Athens, and six years as Early Years and Infant Lead in the British School in Manila, Philippines. She has also been a school principal and held the regulatory role of lead inspector for the Early Years Foundation Stage (the UK version of Australia’s Early Years Learning Framework).

Myra Geddes

Myra Geddes

Our Social Impact General Manager

BEd; BBus

Myra oversees Goodstart's social impact strategy, policy, measurement, research and evaluation and social inclusion programs and initiatives such as EChO (Enhancing Children’s Outcomes) and Family Connections. Myra and her team amplify the delivery of Goodstart’s social purpose and impact across the country.

Myra brings significant experience to Goodstart, as a driving force of social policy and reform that has helped transform and improve the quality of life of Australians. She has been the senior social policy advisor to two Australian prime ministers and has worked across early childhood education and care, schools, community services and health policy at state and national levels. Myra’s career began as a teacher in the northern suburbs of Brisbane. She is deeply committed to supporting those Goodstarters working closest with children and is a passionate believer in the power of early learning to transform children’s lives. Myra co-wrote Preschool – Two Years are Better Than One with Dr Stacey Fox at the Mitchell Institute which aimed to help compel Australia to pursue a national commitment to ensuring all three-year-olds have access to high-quality early childhood education by offering a second year of preschool. Myra has also been a Goodstart mum since 2013, with her daughter currently attending Goodstart Kedron.

Lynne Walker

Lynne Walker

Our Chief Orchestration Officer

BSc – (Mathematics & Physics)

As our Chief Orchestration Officer, Lynne is supporting the creation of an organisation where rapid and sustainable transformation is our new normal, enabling Goodstart’s short and longer-term ambitions.

Lynne has over 20 years of experience in operations and business transformation, working globally for Amex, Dell and IBM. Before joining Goodstart, Lynne was Vice President of Services and Infrastructure Transformation at American Express Global Business Travel. Lynne has a strong track record of leading complex change across workforces, requiring process redesign, implementation of new technologies, workforce capability rebuild, and new ways of team-based problem solving. At Goodstart, Lynne oversees organisational transformation, ensuring leadership and resources are optimised to realise Goodstart’s 2025 ambitions.

Jason Renshaw

Jason Renshaw

Our Chief Learning Officer

BA; Dip TDD; Dip VET

Keeping pace with the digital age, organisational transformation and employee capability build, are all in a day’s work for Jason. Jason is about supporting the here and now and the future – ensuring workplace learning is woven across everything we do.

Jason is a highly accomplished learning and development executive who joined Goodstart in 2020, bringing more than 20 years’ experience in transforming organisations’ leadership and learning approaches to be more strategic and agile to achieve high-impact outcomes. Jason has led major learning transformations for a number of large and complex organisations including Australian Unity, Australian School of Applied Management, the National Excellence in School Leadership Initiative and the University of Melbourne. He is recognised for creating and embedding best and next practice approaches to build strong learning cultures. His experience spans education, strategy, change management, leadership and culture development, partnerships and large-scale capability uplift initiatives.

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